Orphic Hymns

The Orphic Hymns are a collection of eighty-seven hymns addressed to various deities, and are among the few extant works of Orphic literature. They were most likely composed in Asia Minor, possibly in the second or third centuries AD. The poems, which are in dactylic hexameter, are relatively short in length, and the collection is prefaced by a dedication entitled "Orpheus to Musaeus"; each individual hymn comes alongside a prescribed offering. Among the deities praised in the Hymns, Dionysus is given the place of highest importance.^[1] The poems survive through a manuscript which also contained the Homeric Hymns, the Orphic Argonautica, and the hymns composed by Callimachus and Proclus.^[2] At the beginning of the 20th century, Otto Kern postulated that the poems belonged to a religious community in Pergamon, a view which some later scholars have accepted.