This library is built in the open.
If you spot an error, have a suggestion, or just want to say hello — we’d love to hear from you.

original Greek: "τῶν (scr. τῷ γεννητῷ) παντὶ..." By the created world, in every way and in all things, the affairs here are clearly governed by her likely referring to Hecate or the World Soul, as the Oracles say:
Nymphs of the springs and all water-dwelling spirits,
and the earthly hollows, and those of the air and the under-light,
monthly ones, mothers and overseers of all
matter—heavenly, starry, and inexhaustible.¹)
...unless Olympiodorus a 6th-century Neoplatonist philosopher wrote in his commentary on the Alcibiades (p. 19): "For Orpheus also says:
The matter cannot be decided. — Regarding the theurgists practitioners of "god-working" or ritual magic, I shall speak in another place: therefore, nothing prevents us from beginning to examine the fragments.
If we believe Proclus and Damascius late Neoplatonic scholars, the dogmas of the Oracles do not differ from Plato—at least as they themselves understand him—nor from Orpheus, Homer, or Pythagoras. This is a claim that will be accepted by no one who has, to any extent, seen through the artifices of Proclus.²) For it is marvelous how much he exercises his ingenuity to demonstrate that those things are in harmony which do not possess even the slightest resemblance. Indeed, the idea that the theology of the Oracles agrees with that of Proclus (having been perfected by him) lacks all credibility, for the Oracles were first employed by Porphyry c. 234–305 AD and are therefore much older.
That the "One"—the supreme god of the Platonists—was also celebrated by the Oracles is testified by Psellus a Byzantine scholar (1149ᶜ): "They glorify one principle of all things and strip it bare the text suggests a correction to 'hymn it' as the One and the Good." See also the anonymous Oxford Hypotyposeis (1, 181,3) and Damascius (I 100,20): "The gods, after the one God, reveal the Father and Power as a duality only." You should place no faith in these statements: for in the remaining fragments, no mention is made of the "One," nor do the philosophers provide any testimony from the Oracles...
¹) In verse 1, you might propose "streams" Greek: νάματα, but compare Orphic fragment 67; Hymn 58,6; and the Oracle in Theosophy 104,19. In verse 4, "inexhaustible" Greek: ἀρύσσου is to be preferred. Compare 23,11: "One might call Aphrodite... the first-born matter, which the Oracles also call starry and heavenly."
²) One mostly deals with Proclus here: for Damascius, although Simplicius says (in his commentary on the Physics 795,15) that he took offense at many of Proclus's dogmas, brought forth almost nothing new, such was the sterility of his genius.