Good Works Translation from Ancient Greek

This page translates Kern fragments 309-317 from Otto Kern's Orphicorum fragmenta. Kern places them under Eis ton Arithmon Hymnos, the Hymn to Number. The witnesses connect Orpheus with the arithmetic theology of the one, the triad, the hexad, the hebdomad, the ennead, the holy tetrad, the decad, Hecate, and the saying that all things are like number.

Translation

Kern Fr. 309 — The One Number as Agyieus

John Lydus says:

Orpheus calls the number one Agyieus, that is, without parts. For none of the parts of number is around it: not a half-again ratio, not a third-again ratio. It is complete, since it is whole.

Kern Fr. 310 — The Triad and the Three First Principles

John Lydus says:

The triad rules over all numbers, since it proves to be the beginning of all odd numbers, which fill out and are never left lacking.

And according to Orpheus, three first principles of generation sprang up: Night and Earth and Heaven.

Of the gods within generation there are three kinds: heavenly, earthbound, and the kind between these.

Kern Fr. 311 — The Hexad as Whole-Limbedness

The Theologoumena Arithmeticae, transmitted under Iamblichus' name, says:

Following Orpheus, the Pythagoreans used to call the hexad Holomeleia, "Whole-Limbedness."

They did so either because it alone, among the numbers within the decad, is equal as a whole to its limbs or parts, or because the whole and the All have been divided according to it and are in tune.

For since there are seven starry motions, apart from the motion of the fixed stars, which is eighth and yet not simple, and since through their rushing they make sounds equal in number to themselves, the intervals between them, the things like mean terms, must be six.

Kern Fr. 312 — Father of Blessed Ones, Father of Men

John Lydus says:

Therefore Orpheus too, speaking of the hexad, says this:

Be gracious,
glorious Number,

father of blessed ones,
father of men.

Kern notes that Simplicius gives the same verse to the Pythagoreans, but with "Hear me" instead of "Be gracious."

Kern Fr. 313 — The Monad and the Hebdomad

Proclus says:

For the monad and the hebdomad are certain intellectual numbers. The monad is, plainly, intellect itself; the hebdomad is the light according to intellect.

And therefore the intellect that surrounds the cosmos is both monadic and hebdomadic, as Orpheus says.

Proclus elsewhere says:

This too belongs to the much-repeated doctrines: the unfeminine character of the hebdomad has been hymned, and so has the fact that it comes from the monad alone.

Most of all, the third monad, namely the hebdomad, is an image of Athena: the monad because she is intellectual and turned toward herself and toward the monad; the hebdomad because she proceeds from the Father alone.

Kern Fr. 314 — The Ennead as Kouretic

The Theologoumena Arithmeticae says:

Orpheus and Pythagoras in particular called the ennead Kouretis, because it is sacred to the Kouretes, being three in three parts.

Or else they called it Kore. Both names were fitted to the triad, since the ennead has the triad three times.

Kern Fr. 315 — From the Monad to the Holy Decad

Syrianus asks how the Forms subsist according to the Pythagorean and Orphic theologians, and says:

Intelligibly and tetradically in the Living-itself; intellectually and decadically in the demiurgic intellect.

For divine Number goes forth:

from the undefiled hidden recess
of the Monad,

until it comes
to the all-holy Tetrad,

who bore the mother of all,
all-receiving, eldest,

setting a boundary
around all things,

unturning,
tireless.

Immortal gods
and earthborn human beings

celebrate her
as the holy Decad.

Syrianus adds:

Thus all the truth has been spoken in Pythagorean and Orphic fashion. To speak more plainly, let self-sufficient Intellect, the complete cause of the wholes, be set before them.

Proclus cites the same hymn and explains:

Before these is the monad of the demiurgic cause of the world, through which the world too is a decad. It unfolds the enclosure of all the Forms within the monad and sets a limit to the cosmic multitude.

For, as the Orphic Hymn to Number says:

from the undefiled hidden recess
of the Monad,

until it comes
to the all-holy Tetrad.

The tetrad is the Dionysiac divinity, since Orphic theology ten thousand times hymns the god as four-bright and four-horned.

The hymn says:

who bore the mother of all,
all-receiving, eldest,

because she receives and contains all things within the cosmos.

The hymn says:

setting a boundary
around all things,

unturning,
tireless,

because the nature that holds the cosmos together is everlasting and unloosed.

The hymn says:

celebrate her
as the holy Decad,

because she bounds the All in an ungenerated way.

Kern Fr. 316 — Hecate and the Branch-Holding Decad

Proclus says:

The theologian says that Hecate, the greatest goddess, encloses the limits of the things within the cosmos. For this reason she is called Key-holder, and she has been allotted the twelfth-parts of the cosmos.

John Lydus says:

Therefore Philolaus rightly called it the Decad, as receptive of the unlimited. Orpheus calls it Branch-holder, because from it all numbers grow like branches.

Kern Fr. 317 — All Things Are Like Number

Syrianus says:

To assign to the Pythagoreans only the understanding of sensible numbers would be not only ridiculous, but deeply impious.

For they received from Orpheus the theological principles of intelligible and intellectual numbers. They led them forward very far, revealed that their dominion extends as far as sensible things, and had ready the utterance:

All things are like Number.

How, then, is it not absurd to say that they spent their time only on bodies and on the numbers that accompany bodies?

Syrianus also says:

An Idea is not named in one way and a formal number in another. If the saying "all things are like Number" is sound, then it is not unclear that number too has been named according to its paradigmatic character, and formal number most of all.

Iamblichus, speaking of Pythagoras, says:

He stored in a brief saying a boundless and very full expanse of contemplation, as in the saying, "All things are like Number," which he uttered very often to everyone.

He did the same again in the sayings "Equality is friendship," "Cosmos," "Philosophy," "Hearth," "Ever-being," and in the widely proclaimed word "Tetractys."

Colophon

This Good Works translation was made from Otto Kern's Orphicorum fragmenta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922), frr. 309-317, under the title Eis ton Arithmon Hymnos, the Hymn to Number. Kern's numbering is retained.

The source witnesses translated here are John Lydus, On the Months; the Theologoumena Arithmeticae transmitted under Iamblichus' name; Proclus on Plato's Timaeus and Republic; Syrianus on Aristotle's Metaphysics; and Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras.

Source Text

Kern Fr. 309 — The One Number as Agyieus

John Lydus, De mensibus 2.6:

Ὀ. δὲ τὸν ἕνα ἀριθμὸν Ἀγυιέα καλεῖ, τουτέστιν ἀμερῆ· οὐδὲν γὰρ τῶν μερῶν τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ περὶ αὐτόν, οὐχ ἡμιόλιον, οὐκ ἐπίτριτον· τέλειος, ἐπεὶ ὅλος.

Kern Fr. 310 — The Triad and the Three First Principles

John Lydus, De mensibus 2.8:

ὅτι πάντων ἄρχει τῶν ἀριθμῶν ἡ τριάς, ὡς ἀρχὴ τυγχάνουσα τῶν περιττῶν πάντων, πληρούντων καὶ μηδέποτε λειπομένων.

καὶ τρεῖς πρῶται κατ᾽ Ὀρφέα ἐξεβλάστησαν ἀρχαὶ τῆς γενέσεως, νὺξ καὶ γῆ καὶ οὐρανός, θεῶν δὲ τῶν ἐν γενέσει τρία γένη, οὐράνιον καὶ ἐπίγειον καὶ τὸ μεταξὺ τούτων.

Kern Fr. 311 — The Hexad as Whole-Limbedness

Theologoumena Arithmeticae 6:

ὅτι τὴν ἑξάδα ὁλομέλειαν προσηγόρευον οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ κατακολουθοῦντες Ὀρφεῖ, ἤτοι παρόσον ὅλη τοῖς μέλεσιν ἢ μέρεσιν ἴση ἐστὶ μόνη τῶν ἐντὸς δεκάδος, ἢ ἐπειδὴ ὅλον, καὶ τὸ πᾶν κατ᾽ αὐτὴν διαμεμέρισται καὶ ἐμμελὲς ὑπάρχει· ἑπτὰ γὰρ κινημάτων ἀστερικῶν ὑπαρχόντων παρὲξ τοῦ τῶν ἀπλανῶν ὀγδόου μέν, οὐχ ἁπλοῦ δέ, καὶ φθόγγους ἀποτελούντων ἰσαρίθμους διὰ τῆς ῥοιζήσεως, ἀνάγκη τὰ διαστήματα αὐτῶν καὶ οἷον μεσότητας ἓξ ὑπάρχειν.

Kern Fr. 312 — Father of Blessed Ones, Father of Men

John Lydus, De mensibus 2.11:

ὅθεν καὶ Ὀ. περὶ ἑξάδος ταῦτά φησι·

ἵλαθι, κύδιμ᾽ ἀριθμέ, πάτερ μακάρων, πάτερ ἀνδρῶν.

Kern Fr. 313 — The Monad and the Hebdomad

Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum 34a:

καὶ γὰρ ἡ μονὰς καὶ ἡ ἑπτὰς ἀριθμοὶ νοεροί τινες, ἡ μὲν γε μονὰς αὐτόθεν νοῦς, ἡ δὲ ἑπτὰς τὸ κατὰ νοῦν φῶς. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ὁ περικόσμιος νοῦς μοναδικὸς τε καὶ ἑβδομαδικός ἐστιν, ὥς φησιν Ὀ.

Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum 24a:

καὶ ἔστι καὶ τοῦτο τῶν τεθρυλημένων, καὶ τὸ ἀθήλυντον τῆς ἑπτάδος ὕμνηται καὶ τὸ ἐκ μόνης εἶναι μονάδος, καὶ ὅτι μάλιστα τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς εἰκὼν ἡ μονὰς ἡ τρίτη καὶ ἡ ἑπτάς· ἡ μὲν ὡς νοερᾶς καὶ πρὸς ἑαυτὴν καὶ τὴν μονάδα ἐπεστραμμένης, ἡ δὲ ὡς ἀπὸ μόνου τοῦ πατρὸς προελθούσης.

Kern Fr. 314 — The Ennead as Kouretic

Theologoumena Arithmeticae 9:

Κουρήτιδα δὲ ἰδίως καὶ Ὀ. καὶ Πυθαγόρας αὐτὴν τὴν ἐννεάδα ἐκάλουν, ἅτε Κουρήτων ἱερὰν ὑπάρχουσαν, τριῶν τριμερῆ ἢ Κόρην γε, ἅπερ ἀμφότερα τριάδι ἐφηρμόσθη, τρὶς τοῦτο ἐχούσῃ.

Kern Fr. 315 — From the Monad to the Holy Decad

Syrianus, In Aristotelis Metaphysica M 4:

νοητῶς μὲν καὶ τετραδικῶς ἐν τῷ αὐτοζώῳ, νοερῶς δὲ καὶ δεκαδικῶς ἐν τῷ δημιουργικῷ νῷ· πρόεισι γὰρ ὁ θεῖος ἀριθμός·

μουνάδος ἐκ κευθμῶνος ἀκηράτου, ἔστ᾽ ἂν ἵκηται
τετράδ᾽ ἐπὶ ζαθέην, ἣ δὴ τέκε μητέρα πάντων
πανδεχέα, πρέσβειραν, ὅρον περὶ πᾶσι τιθεῖσαν,
ἄτροπον ἀκαμάτην· δεκάδα κλείουσί μιν ἁγνὴν
ἀθάνατοί τε θεοὶ καὶ γηγενέες ἄνθρωποι.

λέλεκται μὲν οὖν πᾶν τὸ ἀληθὲς Πυθαγορείως τε καὶ Ὀρφικῶς· εἰ δὲ χρὴ συνηθέστερον εἰπεῖν, νοῦς αὐτάρκης καὶ παντελὴς αἴτιος τῶν ὅλων προτετάχθω.

Proclus, In Platonis Rempublicam 2:

πρὸ δὲ τούτων μονὰς τῆς δημιουργικῆς αἰτίας τοῦ κόσμου, δι᾽ ἣν καὶ ὁ κόσμος δεκάς, τὴν ἐν τῇ μονάδι περιοχὴν τῶν εἰδῶν πάντων ἐξαπλώσασα καὶ περατώσασα τὸ πλῆθος τὸ κοσμικόν· μουνάδος ἐκ κευθμῶνος ἀκηράτου, φησὶν ὁ εἰς τὸν ἀριθμὸν Ὀρφικὸς ὕμνος, ἔστ᾽ ἂν ἵκηται τετράδ᾽ ἐπὶ ζαθέην.

ἔστιν δὲ τετρὰς ἡ Διονυσιακὴ θεότης, τετραυγέα τετρακέρατον μυριάκις τῆς Ὀρφικῆς θεολογίας τὸν θεὸν ὑμνούσης· ἣ δ᾽ ἔτεκε μητέρα πάντων πανδεχέα πρέσβειραν, ὡς πάντων χωρητικὴν τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ καὶ περιεκτικήν· ὅρον περὶ πᾶσι τιθεῖσαν ἄτροπον, ἀκαμάτην, ἀΐδιος γὰρ καὶ ἄλυτος ἡ συνέχουσα τὸν κόσμον φύσις· δεκάδα κλείουσί μιν ἁγνήν, ὡς ἀγενήτως τὸ πᾶν ὁρίζουσαν.

Kern Fr. 316 — Hecate and the Branch-Holding Decad

Proclus, In Platonis Rempublicam 614d:

τὴν μεγίστην θεὸν Ἑκάτην τὰ πέρατα τῶν ἐγκοσμίων συγκλείουσαν καὶ διὰ τοῦτο κλῃδοῦχον ἀποκαλουμένην τὰ δωδέκατά φησιν ὁ θεολόγος τοῦ κόσμου κληρώσασθαι.

John Lydus, De mensibus 1.15:

ὀρθῶς οὖν αὐτὴν ὁ Φιλόλαος δεκάδα προσηγόρευσεν ὡς δεκτικὴν τοῦ ἀπείρου, Ὀ. δὲ κλαδοῦχον, ἐξ ἧς ὡσεὶ κλάδοι τινὲς πάντες οἱ ἀριθμοὶ φύονται.

Kern Fr. 317 — All Things Are Like Number

Syrianus, In Aristotelis Metaphysica M 6:

τὸ δὲ μόνων αὐτοῖς τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἀριθμῶν τὴν κατανόησιν ἀνατιθέναι, μὴ πρὸς τῷ καταγελάστῳ καὶ λίαν ἀσεβὲς ἤν· τοὺς γὰρ ὑποδεξαμένους μὲν παρ᾽ Ὀρφέως τὰς θεολογικὰς ἀρχὰς τῶν νοητῶν καὶ νοερῶν ἀριθμῶν, ἐπὶ πλεῖστον δὲ αὐτὰς προαγαγόντας καὶ τὴν ἄχρι τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἐπικράτειαν αὐτῶν ἀναφήναντας καὶ πρόχειρον ἔχοντας ἐπίφθεγμα τό·

ἀριθμῷ δέ τε πάντ᾽ ἐπέοικε

πῶς οὐκ ἄτοπον περὶ τὰ σώματα μόνον καὶ τοὺς συνόντας τοῖς σώμασιν ἀριθμοὺς διατετριφέναι λέγειν;

Syrianus, In Aristotelis Metaphysica M 4:

οὐ γὰρ κατ᾽ ἄλλο μὲν ἰδέα κατ᾽ ἄλλο δὲ ἀριθμὸς εἰδητικὸς κατονομάζεται, ἀλλ᾽ εἴπερ ὑγιὲς τὸ "ἀριθμῷ δέ τε πάντ᾽ ἐπέοικεν," οὐκ ἄδηλον ὅτι κατὰ τὸ παραδειγματικὸν ἰδίωμα καὶ ὁ ἀριθμὸς κέκληται καὶ μάλιστα πάντων ὁ εἰδητικός.

Iamblichus, Vita Pythagorica 162:

βραχυλογίᾳ τινὶ ἐναποθησαυρίζων ἀπερίβλεπτον καὶ παμπληθῆ θεωρίας ἔκτασιν, οἷόνπερ καὶ ἐν τῷ "ἀριθμῷ δέ τε πάντ᾽ ἐπέοικεν," ὃ δὴ πυκνότατα πρὸς ἅπαντας ἀπεφθέγγετο, ἢ πάλιν ἐν τῷ "ἰσότης φιλότης," ἢ ἐν τῷ "κόσμος" ὀνόματι, ἢ νὴ Δία ἐν τῷ "φιλοσοφία," ἢ καὶ ἐν τῷ "ἑστώ" καὶ "ἀείεστω," ἢ τὸ διαβοώμενον ἐν τῷ "τετρακτύς."