O venerable Goddess, hear my prayer, for labour pains are thy peculiar care. In thee, when stretched upon the bed of grief, the sex, as in a mirror, view relief. Guard of the race, endued with gentle mind, to helpless youth benevolent and kind; benignant nourisher; great nature's key belongs to no divinity but thee. Thou dwellest with all immanifest to sight, and solemn festivals are thy delight. Thine is the task to loose the virgin's zone and thou in every work art seen and known. With births you sympathise, though pleased to see the numerous offspring of fertility. When racked with labour pangs, and sore distressed the sex invoke thee, as the soul's sure rest; for thou Eileithyia alone canst give relief to pain, which art attempts to ease, but tries in vain. Artemis Eileithyia, venerable power, who bringest relief in labour's dreadful hour; hear, Prothyraia and make the infant race thy constant care.
Commentarius · Commentary
The second hymn of the collection, standing immediately after Hekate: the sequence begins with birth.
Prothyraea means "she who is before the door". The name is a location. The door here is double: the goddess's image stood at the entrance of a house, and she also governs the passage by which a child comes into the world. A cult position and an anatomical particular are named by one word.
Κλειδοῦχ᾽ — key-holder. She holds the key to the door she stands before, and birth is described as an unlocking. Beside it stands lysizōn᾽, girdle-loosener — the same word as in the hymn to Artemis (orphic-artemis-001), covering both marriage and delivery.
Συμπάσχεις ὠδῖσι — you suffer with the birth-pangs. This is rare: Greek prayers ask a deity to act, not to feel, and of fellow-feeling they say almost nothing. Here the goddess does not merely help — she is in pain along with the woman.
Ἀφανής, ἔργοισι δὲ φαίνῃ ἅπασι — unseen, yet manifest in all your works. A formula that would not surprise a reader of much later religions: an invisible deity, recognised by its operations.
Fons · Source
AuthorAnonymous (Orphic corpus)
WorkOrphic Hymns
Section2
PeriodHellenistic to Roman imperial (3rd c. BC – 2nd c. AD)
OccasionOrphic hymn to Prothyraea (Artemis-Eileithyia at the threshold) with fumigation of storax — invocation of the goddess of childbirth for relief in labour
