Words
spoken
to the
gods.
Antiquae Preces — an open collection of ancient prayers: hymns, incantations, votive formulas, liturgical texts of Greece and Rome. With originals, translations, and brief commentary.
Who gathers the collection
Emily A Žurković
Editor and translatorMarcus Aurelius' Meditations, read the same way: the whole text, no ads, a URL for every passage.
Three goals we set for ourselves
Preserve
To gather ancient prayer texts in one place: from Homeric hymns to Roman votive inscriptions. Scattered across editions and libraries, they are rarely found together.
Translate
To provide each text with an honest translation that preserves the rhythm and ritual gravity of the original. The original is always presented alongside the translation.
Explain
A commentary on every text: who prayed, to whom, on what occasion and in what form — and whether the text is ancient or a modern reconstruction. Without academic verbosity, but with a precise reference to the edition.
Selection of texts and translation principles
We include texts that ancient authors themselves called prayer — εὐχή, ὕμνος, prex, carmen. These are the Homeric and Orphic hymns; prayer fragments from tragedy and lyric poetry; liturgical formulas preserved by Cato and Varro; votive inscriptions in stone; the philosophical “prayers” of the Stoics.
We do not include spells and magical papyri — these belong to a separate tradition with a different grammar of ritual. Exceptions are borderline cases, which we mark accordingly.
Translation. We strive to preserve the rhythm of the original, even in prose formulas. The English of the Homeric hymns is Evelyn-White's (1914) and of the Orphic hymns Thomas Taylor's (1792); both are long out of copyright, and the translator is named on every such card. Every other translation, English and all the Russian, was made for this collection.
Commentary. Each prayer is annotated with: author, work, section, period, occasion, form, addressee, function. And every one, without exception, carries a written commentary in English and in Russian: what the text is, where it comes from, and what is worth noticing in it.
Provenance. Every text says whether it is ancient or a modern reconstruction; there are several dozen modern ones here, and none of them is passed off as ancient. Where the original has not yet been obtained, the card says so plainly and says what stands in the way — which edition, which library, which database.
Editions we rely on
The 16 most cited of 108 sources in the collection. Every prayer carries its own exact reference.
Editor's Note
“The ancients prayed differently — without confession, without faith in our sense of the word. They asked for the birth of livestock, for a harvest, for a favorable wind. It is good for us to hear this honest voice: then our own words to heaven become less anxious.”