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ORPHICA FR. 779D, V. 5 BERNABÉ

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2025

Athanassios Vergados*
Affiliation:
Newcastle University
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Abstract

This note argues for the restoration of the MS reading ἀέξϵι in Orph. fr. 779d v. 5 Bernabé (= 287 Kern), which transmits verses from the poem Πϵρὶ ἐπϵμβάσϵων (On Planetary Entrances) attributed to Orpheus.

Type
Shorter Notes
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The purpose of this note is to argue for the restoration of the MS reading ἀέξϵι in Orph. fr. 779d v. 5 Bernabé (= 287 Kern), which transmits verses from the poem Πϵρὶ ἐπϵμβάσϵων (On Planetary Entrances) attributed to Orpheus. I reproduce the text of the entire fragment from the Teubner edition by A. Bernabé, who prints ἀνέξϵι, which I translate, leaving ἀνέξϵι aside for the moment:

ϵἰς δὲ Κρόνου Πυρόϵις τόπον αἴσιός ἐστιν ἀμϵίβων.
ἔνθα γὰρ ἠμαύρωσϵ Κρόνου θυμαλγέα πάντα.
καὶ κακὸς ϵἰς ἀγαθὸν τρέπϵται· πάσας γὰρ ἀνίας
καὶ νούσους κατέπαυσϵν· ἄγϵι δ᾽ ὄλβον τϵ δόμοισι
νίκην τ᾽ ϵὐφροσύνην τϵ φέρϵι <καὶ> κῦδος ἀνέξϵι. 5

When the Fiery one (= Mars) passes into the territory of Saturn, he is auspicious; for there he weakens all heart-grieving effects of Saturn. And a wretched man turns into a noble one; for he (sc. Mars) puts an end to all troubles and illnesses. And he leads wealth into one’s household and brings victory and merriment and ἀνέξϵι glory.

ἀνέξϵι is out of place. The tenses in this fragment are either present (ἐστίν, τρέπϵται, ἄγϵι, φέρϵι) or (gnomic) aorist (ἠμαύρωσϵ, κατέπαυσϵν), indicating what tends to happen when an ἐπέμβασις occurs. The same is true of the other parts of fr. 799. A future ἀνέξϵι is thus grammatically unexpected and does not correspond to the formula as usually found in hexameter verse. The phrase as it stands should mean ‘and he will lift up/support glory’. The first editor of this fragment, HeegFootnote 1 printed ἀέξϵι, a present tense, which is paralleled as a formula in hexameter poetry from the Hellenistic times onwards: cf. Ap. Rhod. 1.206 κῦδος ἀέξων (same sedes); Samus, Anth. Pal. 6.116.5 (κ. ἀέξοι); Philemon, Anth. Pal. 9.464.2 (same phrase as here); further occurrences in Quintus of Smyrna and Gregory of Nazianzus.Footnote 2 A variant with ἀνέξϵιν does not exist. As a matter of fact, ἀέξϵι is the reading of the fourteenth-century codex Vaticanus gr. 1056, fol. 156v, line 11 which transmits these lines.Footnote 3 Moreover, the prose paraphrase that follows these lines offers πλοῦτον δὲ καὶ νίκην ϵὐφροσύνην τϵ καὶ δόξαν αὔξϵι. How ἀνέξϵι came into existence is a matter of speculation, but Kern printed ἀνέξϵι in his edition (fr. 287) without any explanation for the change, which raises the possibility that it may have occurred through an error which found its way into the modern edition.

Therefore, I propose restoring the MS reading in v. 5 (κῦδος ἀέξϵι, ‘increases glory’), the form that the first editor had in fact printed.

Footnotes

*

This note was written during my fellowship at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study. I am grateful to Dr Vanessa Monteventi, who encouraged me to publish these thoughts.

References

1 J. Heeg, Die angeblichen orphischen Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι (Munich, 1907), 59.

2 Quint. Smyrn. 2.77, 6.451 (same sedes), 13.248; Greg. Naz. Πϵρὶ διαθηκῶν καὶ ἐπιφανϵίας Χριστοῦ 83 (PG 37.463), Θρῆνος πϵρὶ τῶν τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ψυχῆς παθῶν 311 (PG 37.1375); also Anon. Anth. Pal. 1.10.11 (Byzantine).