The Orphic Hymns by Apostolos N Athanassakis

Author:Apostolos N Athanassakis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2013-05-29T06:00:00+00:00

37. To the Titans

The Titans in myth are a group of twelve beings born of Earth and Sky, along with the three Kyklopes and three Hundred-Handers. For the story of their birth and their problems with Sky, and later Zeus, see OH 4i and OH 13i. In Orphic mythology, the Titans, sometimes spurred by Hera, become jealous when Zeus places the infant Dionysos on his throne. They paint their faces and, with the help of toys and a mirror, lure the child away from the throne despite his being guarded by the Kouretes. They then kill him and eat his corpse. Zeus eventually finds out about this horrid crime and incinerates the Titans with his lightning bolts. The heart of Dionysos is saved by Athene, and this heart serves as the basis for the god’s reconstitution. Out of the smoldering ashes of the Titans, charged with Zeus’ lightning bolts, is born the human race. Our knowledge of this story comes from later sources, and it is not clear how far back it goes: see Orphic fragment 57–59 and 301–331, West 1983, pp. 74–75, Burkert 1985, pp. 297–298, and Graf/Johnston 2007, pp. 66–93. For the significance of this myth for Orphism, see the introduction to the translation. Our hymn obliquely refers to this origin of the human race in lines 2 and 4, and it is expanded to include all living things in line 5; see also OH 78.11–12+n, and cf. OH 10.14–16+n. The murder of Dionysos is tactfully left out.

3 Tartarean homes: After their defeat by Zeus, the Titans are cast down into Tartaros, a primeval being who had become a particularly gloomy part of the underworld; see OH 18.2n. There they are imprisoned, guarded by the monstrous Hundred-Handers (Hesiod Theogony 717–735). Despite being locked up in mythology’s version of Alcatraz, they can still wreak harm on the upper world. They are among the gods Hera invokes when she strikes the earth with the palm of her hand in a request to give birth apart from Zeus to a powerful child; this results in Typhon, a great monster that threatens the gods and is eventually defeated by Zeus (Hesiod Theogony 820–880). She makes a similar, if less sinister, appeal at Iliad 14.271–279.

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