Prayer to Asclepius

A modern LABRYS text (see greek-agathodaimon-001), and it is an abridgement of the Orphic hymn to Asclepius — the very one that stands in this corpus as a card of its own (orphic-asclepius-001).

Compare: "healer of all" — iētēr pantōn; "charming away men's much-paining afflictions" — thelgōn anthrōpōn polyalgea pēmata; "come, blessed saviour" — elthe, makar, sōtēr. Almost line for line.

But one thing is dropped, and it is the essential one. The Orphic hymn ends with the words biotēs telos esthlon opazōn — granting a good end of life. That request stands at the close of nearly every hymn in the collection and betrays who sang them: a community of initiates promised a better lot after death.

Here, in its place, stands "health and an end of pain". A good death has been replaced by recovery.

The substitution is eloquent and spoils nothing: the rite is called a health ceremony, and the request suits it. But it shows what part of ancient piety does not carry over. Texts that take the ancients' words are not obliged to take their hopes as well.