Hymn to Dionysus Amphietes
Dionysus · Persephone · the NymphsThe first hymn from the Orphic collection in this corpus, and the collection should be described at once.
These are eighty-seven short hymns, composed in all likelihood in the second or third century AD in Asia Minor for an actual cult — a community of initiates — and not for reading. The proof lies on the surface: over each hymn stands a direction as to what is to be burned. Θυμίαμα πάντα πλὴν λιβάνου καὶ σπένδε γάλα — fumigation of everything except frankincense, and pour a libation of milk. This is not poetry, it is a service book with rubrics.
And the rubric carries meaning. Frankincense belonged to the celestial gods; here Dionysus is chthonic, and the powers below received bloodless and frankincense-free offerings, with milk. A theology is set out in a list of incenses.
Orpheus' name on the collection is a marker of genre, not information about an author; it was signed that way to indicate the class of text.
The hymn's content is a calendar. Dionysus sleeps in Persephone's halls and wakes for the triennium, that is, every other year: the Greeks counted inclusively, and a trietēris came round in alternate years. Εὐνάζων κινῶν τε χρόνους ἐνὶ κυκλάσιν ὥραις — putting to sleep and setting in motion the times in their circling seasons. The god here simply is the year's round, and his sleeping and waking are the festival timetable.