Hymn to the Charites

A hymn to the Graces, and at the same time the clearest demonstration in this corpus of how these texts are obtained.

The Greek Wikisource reading here turned out to be corrupt, and the card stood flagged until the text was taken afresh from Abel's edition. Four scanning errors had to be corrected in the process, each verified against other places in the same edition: Κλῖτέ → Κλῦτέ, χαλυχώσειδες → καλυκώπιδες, Ἱπερόεσσαι → ἱμερόεσσαι, βαϑυχόλστου → βαθυκόλπου. The scanner systematically produces χ for κ and ϑ for θ, and knowing that regularity is the working instrument.

The English and the Greek on this card diverge — and diverge legitimately. In line 2 Abel prints Εὐρυνόμης, Eurynome; that is Schrader's conjecture. The manuscripts give εὐνομίης, Good Order, and Taylor, whose translation underlies the English, was rendering the manuscript reading — hence "Eunomia" in English and Eurynome in Greek. The divergence is not an error on the card but the trace of two different editorial decisions.

The seam […] stands where lines 6-9 were: Abel marks them as transferred here by Ruhnken from another hymn, and Taylor does not have them.

The content is simple: charmosynēs geneteirai, begetters of gladness, and aei mystēsi prosēgeis, always kindly to the initiates. The word mystai confirms what the rubrics also show: these hymns were sung by a community of initiates.