“When he is on the point of dying toward the well-built abode of Hades, on the right there is a fountain and near it, erect, a white cypress tree. There the souls, when they go down, refresh themselves. Don’t come anywhere near this fountain! But further on you will find, from the lake of Mnemosyne, water freshly flowing. On its banks there are guardians. They will ask you, with sagacious discernment, why you are investigating the darkness of gloomy Hades. Say: “I am the son of Earth and starry Heaven; I am dry with thirst and dying. Give me, then, right away, fresh water to drink from the lake of Mnemosyne”. And to be sure, they will consult with the subterranean queen, and they will give you water to drink from the lake of Mnemosyne, So that, once you have drunk, you too will go along the sacred way by which the other mystai and bacchoi advance, glorious. (Tablet from Hipponion (c. 400 B.C.), Museo Archeologico Statale di Vibo. First edition, Pugliese Carratelli (1974) 108 f.. Traduction Alberto Bernabé, Instructions for the Netherworld. The Orphic Gold Tablets, Brill 2008) Drink not here, traveler, from this warm pool in the brook, full of mud stirred by the sheep at pasture; but go a very little way over the ridge where the heifers are grazing; for thereby yonder pastoral pine you will find bubbling through the fountained rock a spring colder than northern snow.”
(Leonidas, Anthologie palatine, 16, 230, traduction Alberto Bernabe)
“When he is on the point of dying
toward the well-built abode of Hades, on the right there is a fountain
and near it, erect, a white cypress tree.
There the souls, when they go down, refresh themselves.
Don’t come anywhere near this fountain!
But further on you will find, from the lake of Mnemosyne,
water freshly flowing. On its banks there are guardians.
They will ask you, with sagacious discernment,
why you are investigating the darkness of gloomy Hades.
Say: “I am the son of Earth and starry Heaven;
I am dry with thirst and dying. Give me, then, right away,
fresh water to drink from the lake of Mnemosyne”.
And to be sure, they will consult with the subterranean queen,
and they will give you water to drink from the lake of Mnemosyne,
So that, once you have drunk, you too will go along the sacred way
by which the other mystai and bacchoi advance, glorious.”
(Tablet from Hipponion (c. 400 B.C.), Museo Archeologico Statale
di Vibo. First edition, Pugliese Carratelli (1974) 108 f.. Traduction Alberto Bernabé, Instructions for the Netherworld. The Orphic Gold Tablets, Brill 2008)
“Drink not here, traveler, from this warm pool in the brook,
full of mud stirred by the sheep at pasture;
but go a very little way over the ridge where the heifers are grazing;
for thereby yonder pastoral pine you will find
bubbling through the fountained rock a spring
colder than northern snow.”
(Leonidas, Anthologie palatine, 16, 230, traduction Alberto Bernabe)