hymn · Greek

Hymn to Mother Antaia

Demeter · Persephone · Iacchus · Dis Pater

Basileia Antaia, of celebrated name, from whom both men and Gods immortal came; who widely wandering once, oppressed with grief, in Eleusis' valleys foundest relief, discovering Persephone thy daughter pure in dread Aides, dismal and obscure. A sacred youth while through the earth you stray, Dysaulos Iakkhos, attending leader of the way; the holy marriage Khthonios Zeus relating, while oppressed with grief you rove. Come, much invoked, and to these rites inclined, thy mystic suppliant bless, with favouring mind.

Commentarius · Commentary

The same goddess as in the previous hymn (orphic-demeter-001), but under another name and therefore in a separate hymn. The collection contains several addresses to one deity: each name is a distinct address, and one cannot sing the wrong one if a particular aspect is wanted.

Antaia means roughly "she who is met face to face, she who is entreated"; hence also polyllistē, much-entreated — a title describing not the goddess but the volume of prayer directed at her.

The narrative here is Orphic and differs from the Eleusinian one. Her guide to Hades is "the holy son of Dysaules", who showed her the sacred bed of chthonic Zeus, and Demeter herself bears Eubouleus "by mortal necessity". None of this is in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (homeric-demeter-001), which has neither Dysaules nor Eubouleus nor this birth.

Two texts in this corpus give one myth incompatibly, and neither is in error. The Eleusinian tradition existed in different local recensions, and the Orphic communities kept to their own, in which the genealogy of the gods and the order of events were different. They should be compared, but they cannot be reconciled.

Fons · Source

AuthorAnonymous (Orphic corpus)

WorkOrphic Hymns

Section41

PeriodHellenistic to Roman imperial (3rd c. BC – 2nd c. AD)

OccasionOrphic hymn to Demeter as Mother Antaia — invocation of the wandering grieving mother who finds her daughter in Hades, with Iacchus as guide

English translationThomas Taylor, 1792

Classificatio · Taxonomy

CultureGreek

Formhymn

DeitiesDemeter, Persephone, Iacchus, Dis Pater

FunctionsInvocation · Petition

SphereAgricultural