[49] IG. xiv = IG. Sic. et It., 641, 1–2–3. [Harrison-Murray, Prolegom. 661 ff.; Vors. 66 B, 18, 19.]—The inscription of the oldest of these poems belongs to the fourth century B.C. The verses can, however, be cited here because the original or rather the two originals upon which the poems are modelled were older than the oldest of the three surviving inscr. (which itself shows serious corruption of the primitive text); and nothing prevents us from supposing that the original forms of these verses go to the fifth century.—The common ancestor of versions 2 and 3 is not derived from version 1, even in the parts in which it agrees with that version, but from a still older original.—Acc. to Dieterich, Nekyia 128 f., 135 f., the lines are taken from a poem of Orpheus’ descent to Hades; but of this they themselves offer not the slightest suggestion.
[50] The feminine ἔρχομαι ἐκ καθαρῶν καθαρά—and also νῦν δ’ ἱκέτις ἡκω (though this indeed is metrically impossible) IG. xiv, 641, 2, l. 6—refers probably to the ψυχή and not to the sex of the dead person as though a woman were speaking in all three cases. Moreover, in [448] No. 1, 9, Persephone speaks as though to a man ὄλβιε καὶ μακαριστέ, θεὸς δ’ ἔσῃ ἀντὶ βροτοῖο.
[51] l. 1, ἔρχομαι ἐκ καθαρῶν καθαρά, χθονίων βασίλεια. This is certainly the right punctuation (and is given by the editors), and not Hofmann’s ἐκ καθαρῶν, καθαρὰ χθ. β. “Pure and born of the pure” (referring to the immediate parents of the dead: more distant ancestry would be expressed by ἀπό); cf. κάκιστος κἀκ κακῶν, etc. (Nauck on Soph., OT. 1397; Ph. 874); ἀγαθοὶ ἐξ ἀγαθῶν ὄντες, Andoc., M. 109.
[52] The parents are καθαροί, the soul of the dead καθαρά, simply as being “purified”, “sanctified”, in τελεταί of the χθόνιοι. In the same way, elsewhere, the Mystai are ὅσιοι “the pure”: see above, chap. vi, [n. 18].
[53] καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼν ὑμῶν γένος ὄλβιον εὔχομαι εἶμεν—so in all three versions.
[54] ἀλλά με μοῖρ’ ἐδάμασσε καὶ ἀστεροπῆτα κεραυνῶν (particip.): so in the original to which the readings of three versions point, as restored by O. Hofmann in GDI. 1654. ἀστεροβλῆτα is in No. 1—this might simply = ἀστεροποβλῆτα, but it may only have been substituted by mistake for ἀστεροπῆτα (= ἀστεροπητής of Homer). The line in this form occurs in No. 1, 4. Versions 2 and 3 have εἴτε με μοῖρ’ ἐδάμασσ’ εἴτ’ ἀστροπῆτα κεραυνῶν. But the dead had no choice between natural death (for this is what μοῖρα must mean as contrasted with death by the thunderbolt) and death by being struck by lightning; one or other of the two (or more) forms of death must in actual fact have occurred. In this embarrassment—for death by lightning is not a very frequent occurrence—the ancient verse was altered in such a way that it might refer also to one who had died a natural death. The attempt was indeed not a great success. Originally death by lightning can alone have been mentioned (as in No. 1) and the original form of the lines must have referred to someone who had actually perished in this way. The dead person was then immediately regarded as sanctified simply on account of the method of his death; he became a ἱερὸς νεκρός translated to a higher and continued life: see above, chap. ix, [n. 127], and [Appendix i]. This is the only interpretation of the lines which gives any point to the introduction here of this peculiar manner of death—one who has been thus translated out of life will certainly now be θεὸς ἀντὶ βροτοῖο.
[55] κύκλος τῆς γενέσεως, rota fati, etc. Lob., Agl. 798 ff.
[56] ἱμερτοῦ δ’ ἐπέβαν στεφάνου ποσὶ καρπαλίμοισι, Δεσποίνας δ’ ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν χθονίας βασιλείας, No. 1, 6–7. The στέφανος will probably be the sacred precinct, the enclosure that surrounds the realm of Persephone, as Dieterich, De hymn. Orph. 35, very plausibly suggests.
[57] See [Appendix xi].
[58] ὥς με πρόφρων πέμψῃ ἕδρας ἐς εὐαγέων. The ἕδραι εὐαγέων correspond to the χῶρος εὐσεβῶν of other poets and mythologists. But the strange phrase does also contain an allusion to the fact that this paradise of the “pure” is specially reserved for the initiates of the mysteries. The εὐαγής, the man untouched by any ἄγος, is ὅσιος (ὅσιος ἔστω καὶ εὐαγής law ap. And., M. 96): εὐαγεῖν = ὁσιοῦν in an ins. from Ialysos in Rhodes, IGM. Aeg. i, 677. Ordinary non-religious language also preserves the original meaning of the word: it frequently means (in contrast to σκοτώδης and the like) “bright, pure, clean” (and in places, too, where it is customary to insert without good reason εὐαυγής, following the ex. of Hemsterh. on Eur., Suppl. 662).