Good Works Translation from Ancient Greek and Latin

This page translates Kern fragments 334-349 from Otto Kern's Orphicorum fragmenta. Kern places them under Incertae sedis, "of uncertain place." They are short sayings, citation notices, and stray verses that he could not securely assign to a named Orphic poem. Some witnesses quote or summarize only a few words; others preserve single hexameters, philosophical explanations, or late antique references to Orpheus beside Plato, Moses, Isaiah, Hermes, and Iamblichus.

Translation

Kern Fr. 334 — Sing to the Understanding

Kern gives the true reading of a very famous line as:

I sing to the understanding;
close the doors, you profane.

He says that we do not know which Orphic poem began with this verse. The same line was also ascribed to Pythagoras, and it resembles the first line of the Orphic Testament tradition.

Kern Fr. 335 — Poseidon, Zeus, and Aegina

A scholion on Pindar says:

Poseidon and Zeus contended over Aegina, when Poseidon seems to have changed the island, as others say and as Pythaenetus says, adducing Orpheus.

Kern says that the notice may perhaps belong among the older fragments, but Pythaenetus' date is uncertain.

Kern Fr. 336 — Reverence and Wealth

A medieval Latin translation of an Aristotelian work on the laws of husband and wife preserves a confused Orphic-looking notice. From the glosses and commentary, Rohde drew this Orphic fragment:

Holy Reverence,

and Wealth,
the fair son
of Good-Cheer.

Kern Fr. 337 — Zeus and the Erinyes of Parents

Stobaeus quotes Orpheus:

Zeus watches over all
who honor the ordinances of parents,

and over all who do not care,
holding a shameless heart.

To the first,
kind and gentle,
he gives good things.

Against the others,
thinking evil,
he is angry always
and without pause.

For dreadful Erinyes
of parents
are beneath the earth.

Kern Fr. 338 — Son and Father of Zeus

Clement of Alexandria says that Homer already appears to show father and son through the Odyssean lines he quotes, and that before Homer, Orpheus said of the subject before him:

Son of great Zeus,
father of aegis-bearing Zeus.

Kern says that it is not certain whether the verse flowed from the Orphic Testaments.

Kern Fr. 339 — Zeus Kronides in Aether

Tzetzes gives a similar line from Orpheus:

Zeus Kronides,
king,
high-throned,
dwelling in aether.

Kern Fr. 340 — The Aid of the Immortal God

Didymus of Alexandria, writing on the Trinity, names Orpheus as the first theologian among the Greeks and quotes:

For by the great aid
of the immortal God

human beings accomplish
all things,

under the wise impulse
of spirit.

Didymus introduces the lines while arguing that Greek verses can also receive a fitting understanding of the Son's ordering toward God the Father and of the Spirit.

Kern Fr. 341 — Orpheus and the Names of God

The commentary transmitted under Lactantius Placidus, on Statius' Thebaid, asks whether the name of the god can be known:

Can the name of this god be known, who by his nod alone rules and contains all things, whose command they serve, whose world can neither be measured nor enclosed by limits?

It continues:

When magi wanted, as they thought, to grasp the individual appellations of his power, they designated them in a figurative way through the powers of natures. They tried to call God by the nobility of many divine names, as though drawing words from the effect of each thing. Orpheus did this, and Moses, priest of the highest God, and Isaiah, and those like them.

Kern says that this may refer to the hymn to Zeus, to the Testaments, or to similar Orphic material.

Kern Fr. 342 — The Muse of Leibethra, Pimpleia, and the Corybants

Tzetzes says that Leibethra was a city of Macedonia, where Orpheus came from, and quotes:

Now come for me,
maiden of Leibethra,
tell me, Muse.

Other scholia give Orphic Muse-addresses in related forms:

Now come for me,
maiden of Pimpleia,
tell me, Muse.

And:

Now come for me,
Corybantian maiden,
tell me, Muse.

Tzetzes adds that Orpheus, being the beginning and father of poets, lived around Helicon and Leibethron, and that the Muses were mythologized as dwelling in those places. Elsewhere he explains the Muse as each poet's own knowledge.

Kern Fr. 343 — Helen of Therapne

A scholion on Lycophron explains that "Pleuronian" is a local expression in place of "Argive." It says:

Pleuron is a city of the Peloponnese, and Therapne likewise. From there Orpheus and Tryphiodorus call Helen "Therapnaian"; Lycophron calls her "Pleuronian," and Homer calls her "Argive."

Kern Fr. 344 — Achelous as Water

Servius, on Vergil's Georgics, says:

Vergil did not say "Acheloian" without reason. For, as Orpheus teaches, the ancients generally called water Achelous.

Kern Fr. 345 — We See by the Bright

The Hermetic Kore Kosmou, quoted by Stobaeus, says that human eyes barely see their ancestral heaven through the moist circles of the eyes, and sometimes do not see at all. Then it quotes Orpheus:

By the bright
we see;

with our eyes
we see nothing.

The Hermetic text continues that miserable human beings have been condemned, and that seeing was not granted to them directly, because sight was not given without light.

Kern compares the Orphic verse with Plotinus on the eye becoming sun-like before seeing the Sun, and with related Platonic and Stoic lines of thought.

Kern Fr. 346 — Sleep on the Eyelids

Tzetzes, after quoting other Orphic material, gives another line:

Nor does sweet sleep
still settle
upon my eyelids,

standing on the soft lids
with dreams
through all the darkness.

Tzetzes explains that the word for "clear" or "sweet" is equivalent to "pleasant," and says that Homer has "sweet sleep," not the variant he is correcting.

Kern Fr. 347 — Athena and the Hands

Orion's etymological collection derives "hands" from use or need, because no craft advances without hands. It then quotes Orpheus:

When hands are lost,
many-working Athena
is gone.

George Syncellus and George Cedrenus say that the followers of Anaxagoras interpret the mythical gods allegorically: Zeus as Mind and Athena as Art. In that setting they give a related line:

When hands are lost,
Athena of many counsels
is gone.

Kern prefers Orion's reading, "many-working Athena," as more apt.

Kern Fr. 348 — The Orphic Same-Essence and the Hermetic Lyre

An unknown author in a Paris manuscript containing a collection of Greek alchemical writings says:

The mystic, divine, and true kinship of the natures among the Egyptians and the sacred scribes of Egypt delights the natures that are of the same essence.

This is the Orphic same-essence and the Hermetic lyre, in which the desired and harmonious interweaving of beings is completed.

Kern Fr. 349 — Nature as the Art of God

Michael Psellus, or Nicetas, in a commentary on Gregory of Nazianzus, says in Latin:

But if we believe Orpheus, and the Platonists, and the Lycian philosopher who treated nature, and the older Chalcedonian Iamblichus the Pythagorean, the nature of God is a certain art.

Colophon

This Good Works translation was made from Otto Kern's Orphicorum fragmenta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922), frr. 334-349, under the title Incertae sedis, "of uncertain place." Kern's numbering is retained.

The source witnesses translated here are scholia on Sophocles, Pindar, and Lycophron; Stobaeus; Clement of Alexandria; Tzetzes; Didymus of Alexandria; the commentary transmitted under Lactantius Placidus; Servius; the Hermetic Kore Kosmou; Orion's etymological collection; George Syncellus; George Cedrenus; an anonymous Greek alchemical writer; and Michael Psellus or Nicetas in a Latin translation.

Source Text

Kern Fr. 334 — Sing to the Understanding

ἀείδω ξυνετοῖσι· θύρας δ' ἐπίθεσθε βέβηλοι.

Kern:

Cuius carminis Orphici initium hic versus fuerit, ignoramus.

Kern Fr. 335 — Poseidon, Zeus, and Aegina

Scholion to Pindar, Isthmian 8.91:

ὅτι ἐφιλονείκησαν Ποσειδῶν τε καὶ Ζεὺς περὶ Αἰγίνης, ὅτε καὶ μεταβαλεῖν δοκεῖ τὴν νῆσον Ποσειδῶν, καθὰ ἄλλοι τέ φασι καὶ Πυθαίνετος προσαγόμενος Ὀρφέα.

Kern Fr. 336 — Reverence and Wealth

Rohde's extracted Greek line:

ἁγνὴ

Αἰδώς τε Πλοῦτός τ' Εὐθυμοσύνης καλὸς υἱός.

Kern Fr. 337 — Zeus and the Erinyes of Parents

Stobaeus, Eclogae 4.25.28:

Ζεὺς δ' ἐφορᾷ γονέων ὁπόσοι τίωσι θέμιστας,

ἠδ' ὅσοι οὐκ ἀλέγουσιν ἀναιδέα θυμὸν ἔχοντες.

καὶ τοῖς μὲν πρόσφρων τε καὶ ἤπιος ἐσθλὰ δίδωσιν,

τοῖς δὲ κακὰ φρονέων νεμεσίζεται ἐμμενὲς αἰεί·

δειναὶ γὰρ κατὰ γαῖαν Ἐρινύες εἰσὶ τοκήων.

Kern Fr. 338 — Son and Father of Zeus

Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5.14.116:

καὶ πρὸ τούτου Ὀρφεὺς κατὰ τὸν προκείμενον φερόμενος εἴρηκεν·

υἱὲ Διὸς μεγάλου, πάτερ Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο.

Kern Fr. 339 — Zeus Kronides in Aether

Tzetzes, Exegesis in Iliadem:

Ζεὺς Κρονίδης βασιλεὺς ὑψίζυγος αἰθέρι ναίων.

Kern Fr. 340 — The Aid of the Immortal God

Didymus of Alexandria, De trinitate 2.27:

πάντα γὰρ ἀθανάτοιο θεοῦ μεγάλῃ ὑπ' ἀρωγῇ

ἄνθρωποι τελέουσι, σοφῇ ὑπὸ πνεύματος ὁρμῇ.

Kern Fr. 341 — Orpheus and the Names of God

Lactantius Placidus, commentary on Statius, Thebaid 4.516:

huiusne dei nomen sciri potest, qui nutu tantum regit et continet cuncta, cuius arbitrio deserviunt, cuius nec aestimari potest mundus nec finibus claudi?

sed cum magi vellent virtutis eius, ut putabant, sese comprehendere singulas appellationes, quasi per naturarum potestates abusive modo designarunt et quasi plurimorum numinum nobilitate Deum appellare conati sunt, quasi ab effectu cuiusque rei ductis vocabulis. sicut Orpheus fecit et Moyses, Dei summi antistes, et Esaias et his similes.

Kern Fr. 342 — The Muse of Leibethra, Pimpleia, and the Corybants

Tzetzes and related scholia:

νῦν δ' ἄγε μοι, κούρη Λειβηθριάς, ἔννεπε Μοῦσα.

νῦν δ' ἄγε μοι, κούρη Πιμπλείας, ἔννεπε Μοῦσα.

νῦν δ' ἄγε μοι, κούρη Κορυβαντιάς, ἔννεπε Μοῦσα.

Kern Fr. 343 — Helen of Therapne

Scholion to Lycophron 148:

Πλευρών γὰρ πόλις Πελοποννήσου καὶ Θεράπνη ὁμοίως, ὅθεν Ὀρφεὺς καὶ Τρυφιόδωρος Θεραπναίαν καλοῦσι τὴν Ἑλένην, οὗτος δὲ ὁ Λυκόφρων Πλευρωνίαν, Ὅμηρος δὲ Ἀργείαν.

Kern Fr. 344 — Achelous as Water

Servius, commentary on Vergil, Georgics 1.8:

sane "Acheloia" non praeter rationem dixit: nam, sicut Orpheus docet, generaliter aquam veteres Acheloum vocabant.

Kern Fr. 345 — We See by the Bright

Hermes Trismegistus, Kore Kosmou, in Stobaeus:

ἔνθεν Ὀρφεύς·

τῷ λαμπρῷ βλέπομεν, τοῖς δ' ὄμμασιν οὐδὲν ὁρῶμεν.

Kern Fr. 346 — Sleep on the Eyelids

Tzetzes, Exegesis in Iliadem:

οὐδέ μ' ἔτι λιγὺν ὕπνον ἐπὶ βλεφάροισιν ἰαύειν,

ἱστάμενος ἁπαλοῖς, σὺν ὀνείρασι πᾶσαν ἀν' ὄρφνην.

Kern Fr. 347 — Athena and the Hands

Orion, Etymologicum:

χεῖρες· ἀπὸ τῆς χρήσεως, ὡσανεὶ χρήσιες οὖσαι ἢ χρεία. οὐδεμία γὰρ τέχνη προκόπτει δίχα χειρῶν. Ὀρφεύς·

χειρῶν ὀλλυμένων ἔρρει πολύεργος Ἀθήνη.

George Syncellus and George Cedrenus:

χειρῶν ὀλλυμένων ἔρρει πολυμήτις Ἀθήνη.

Kern Fr. 348 — The Orphic Same-Essence and the Hermetic Lyre

Anonymous Greek alchemical writer:

ἡ μυστικὴ ἡ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων καὶ ἱερογραμματέων Αἰγύπτου θεία καὶ ἀληθὴς ἡ τῶν φύσεων συγγένεια τέρπει τὰς ὁμοουσίας φύσεις· τοῦτο ἐστὶν τὸ Ὀρφαϊκὸν ὁμοούσιον καὶ ἡ Ἑρμαϊκὴ λύρα, ἐν ᾗ τῶν οὐσιῶν ποθήτη τε καὶ εὐαρμόνιος ἀποτελεῖται συμπλοκή.

Kern Fr. 349 — Nature as the Art of God

Michael Psellus or Nicetas, in a commentary on Gregory of Nazianzus:

at si Orpheo credimus et Platonicis et Lycio philosopho de natura pertractanti et eo antiquiori Chalcedonio Iamblicho Pythagorico, natura Dei ars quaedam est.