Prayer to Hygieia

A modern LABRYS text (see greek-agathodaimon-001), going back to the Orphic hymn to Hygieia: much-desired, queen of all, ever-blooming, the repose of mortals, "without you all else is vain".

That last thought is the whole business, and it appeared long before the Orphics. In Ariphron of Sicyon, in the fourth century BC, the paean to Hygieia ends with the words sethen de chōris ou tis eudaimōn ephy — without you no one was ever born happy (greek-hygeia-ariphron-001). The Orphic hymn, seven centuries later, says the same: sou gar ater pant' estin anōphelē, without you everything is useless. The present book says it a third time.

Of everything in this collection, the argument about health is the only one that has needed neither correction nor restatement in two and a half thousand years. Gods were renamed, rites were transposed, hopes about the afterlife were added and taken away (greek-asklepios-001); but "without you all the rest is no use" is said now as it was said then.

"From you the crafts too flourish" is an economic aside, and quite an ancient one: health is needed in order to work, and that is its first value.