Orphic Tablets and Hymns

Glossary

• Bacchus: the Roman name for Dionysius, the Greek god of wine
• Caecilia Secundina: the name of the woman for whom the tablet was written
• Corybantes: a dancing religious order that worshipped the Phrygian goddess Cybele with drumming and dancing and whose members made up the nine dancers who venerated Rhea
• Curetes: also Corybantes, a dancing religious order
• Demeter: the goddess of agriculture and the mother of Persephone
• Dionysus: the god of wine and festivity
• Euboleus: originally a god of plowing; he becomes a swineherd who witnesses Persephone’s abduction.
• Euclês: a common Greek name that may have been chosen for its euphony in the context
• frankincense: an aromatic resin used in perfumes and incense
• Hades: either the underworld itself or the god of the underworld
• Jove: Zeus
• Mars: the god of war
• myrrh: an aromatic resin, at times more valuable than gold
• Persephone: the wife of Hades
• Phanes: a mystic god of procreation
• Pluto: that is, the god Hades
• Priapus: the fertility god
• Proserpine: that is, Persephone
• Protogonus: identified with Phanes, a mystic god of procreation
• Queen of the Underworld: Persephone, the wife of Hades
• Rhea: in Orphic cosmology, the daughter of Protogonus and the mother of earth and heaven
• Samothracia: an island in the Aegean Sea
• Saturn: a god of agriculture and the harvest
• storax: a resinous secretion of sweetgum, used in incense
• Thundering Jove: Zeus
• Titans: the older gods, who existed before the Olympians
• Zeus: the “father of gods and men“ and the ruler of the gods on Mount Olympus