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The Orphic Hymns are a collection of eighty-seven ancient Greek hymns addressed to various deities, which are among the few extant works of Orphic literature.They were composed in Asia Minor, most likely around the time of the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD, and were used in the rites of a religious community which existed in the region.
Orphic Hymn 71 is addressed to Melinoe, and describes her as follows (in the translation by Apostolos Athanassakis and Benjamin M. Wolkow): I call upon Melinoë, saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth, whom revered Persephone bore by the mouth of the Kokytos river upon the sacred bed of Kronian Zeus.
Zeus Meilichios was invoked in an Orphic Hymn to Zeus as the Daimon. This represents an old serpentine aspect of Zeus associated with fortune. This represents an old serpentine aspect of Zeus associated with fortune.
Praxidice, according to the Orphic Hymn to Persephone, was an epithet of Persephone: "Praxidike, subterranean queen. The Eumenides' source [mother], fair-haired, whose frame proceeds from Zeus' ineffable and secret seeds."
Orphic mosaics were found in many late-Roman villas. Orphism (more rarely Orphicism; Ancient Greek: Ὀρφικά, romanized: Orphiká) is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices [1] originating in the ancient Greek and Hellenistic world, [2] associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into the Greek underworld and returned.
In a different Orphic fragment (Fr. 49) of a hymn relating the abduction of Persephone, Baubo is the name of the mother of Demophon — a mortal child whom Demeter unsuccessfully attempts to turn immortal by anointing him with ambrosia and placing him nightly in the fire.
The position of the hymn in the collection at number 78 is odd, far from the Hymns to the Night (3), the Sun (8) and the Moon (9), where it would be expected to be grouped. [68] While many of the Orphic Hymns describe the divinities in terms on light, the hymn to Eos is the only one that calls upon the divinity to provide light to the initiates.
[51] [52] The robe as a mythical image for the earth's surface also appears in some Orphic texts. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Persephone is weaving a rich robe representing the cosmos when she is carried off by Hades to the underworld.Finally, the proverb 'The face of the earth is the garment of Persephone' is in the style of early ...