Hear, Poseidon, ruler of the sea profound, whose liquid grasp begirds the solid ground; who, at the bottom of the stormy main, dark and deep-bosomed holdest thy watery reign. Thy awful hand the brazen trident bears, and sea's utmost bound thy will reveres. Thee I invoke, whose steeds the foam divide, from whose dark locks the briny waters glide; whose voice, loud sounding through the roaring deep, drives all its billows in a raging heap; when fiercely riding through the boiling sea, thy hoarse command the trembling waves obey. Earth-shaking, dark-haired God, the liquid plains, the third division, fate to thee ordains. 'Tis thine, cerulean daimon, to survey, well-pleased, the monsters of the ocean play. Confirm earth's basis, and with prosperous gales waft ships along, and swell the spacious sails; add gentle peace, and fair-haired health beside, and pour abundance in a blameless tide.
Commentarius · Commentary
Ὃς τριτάτης ἔλαχες μοίρης βαθὺ χεῦμα θαλάσσης — you who received as your third portion by lot the deep flood of the sea. The same argument opens Achelous' prayer in Ovid: "you who drew by lot the realm nearest the world" (neptunus-002). Both the Greek hymn and the Latin elegy begin with the same thing — establishing jurisdiction: the matter is yours because this is the lot you drew.
The request, however, is the opposite of the title. The god is called ennosigaie, earth-shaker — and he is asked hedrana gēs sōizois, preserve the foundations of the earth. The shaker of the earth is begged not to shake it.
The device is not unique in this corpus. Ares is asked to stop the war (orphic-ares-001), Faunus to cross the field and go away (faunus-001), Venus to leave the poet alone (venus-003). A dangerous deity is propitiated by being asked to refrain from its own attribute, and this is probably the oldest kind of prayer there is.
The epithets come in opposed pairs: barýktypos, heavy-thundering, and next to it charitōpa, grace-faced; halídoupos, sea-roaring, and kymothalēs, wave-blooming. The sea is described both as a crash and as a flowering, with no choice made between them.
Fons · Source
AuthorAnonymous (Orphic corpus)
WorkOrphic Hymns
Section17
PeriodHellenistic to Roman imperial (3rd c. BC – 2nd c. AD)
OccasionOrphic hymn to Poseidon — invocation of the trident-bearer to confirm earth's basis, send fair winds and bring peace and abundance
