On Long, Snow-clad Olympus

or, On Time as the Home of the Gods

The Derveni Papyrus is an anonymous pre-Socratic exegetical interpretation of an Orphic poem. The scroll was discovered in 1962 and dated to the 3rd/4th century BCE, and the work is dated roughly to the 5th century BCE. The author gives us many insights into various details of Orpheus’ poem. Today, we will begin by examining Column 12:

and … The next verse is as follows:

“so that he might occupy the fair seat of snow-clad Olympus.”

Olympus and Time are the same. Those who think that Olympus and Heaven are the same are mistaken, because they do not realize that Heaven cannot be long rather than wide, while if someone were to call Time long, he would not be mistaken. Wherever he wanted to say ‘Heaven’ he added ‘wide’ but wherever he wanted to say ‘Olympus’ he did the opposite, he never added ‘wide’ but ‘long.’ By saying that it is snow-clad he likens Time in its property to the snowy. And the snowy is cold and white. … gleaming … and the air bright …¹

The Derveni author gives us a radical interpretation here of Olympus: when Orpheus sings in his poems about the Gods on Olympus, he isn’t referring to a corporeal ‘heaven,’ but rather to the all-encompassing domain of ‘time.’ It is a shame we may never get to read the whole of the Derveni author’s interpretation of ‘snowcapped.’ It is worth noting that “snowy” as an epithet of Olympus appears frequently in the sources we will be looking at, and even appears more often than what is translated here as “long”².

The author is very clear that Orpheus never refers to Olympus as wide, and only ever as “long.” He likely meant that, as far as size descriptors and incorporeal locations in Orpheus’ poem, wide only describes Heaven and long only describes Olympus. Armed with this, we are going to briefly survey a handful of other ancient religious poems for the phrase “Long Olympus.”

The word that Derveni uses to mean “long” is “μακρός” in the original Greek. This word as an epithet of Olympus appears across ancient sources, and is not limited to the poem discussed by the Derveni author. However, it is never translated into English as “long.” Keeping this in mind, I will modify the word in the quoted translations to match the Derveni papyrus. To start, Hesiod’s Theogony gives Olympus the epithet μακρός:

A hundred arms sprang from the shoulders of all alike, and each had fifty heads growing from his shoulders upon stout limbs. These, then, stood against the Titans in grim strife, holding huge rocks in their strong hands. And on the other part the Titans eagerly strengthened their ranks, and both sides at one time showed the work of their hands and their might. The boundless sea rang terribly around, and the earth crashed loudly: wide Heaven was shaken and groaned, and [long] Olympus reeled from its foundation under the charge of the undying gods, and a heavy quaking reached dim Tartarus and the deep sound of their feet in the fearful onset and of their hard missiles. So, then, they launched their grievous shafts upon one another, and the cry of both armies as they shouted reached to starry heaven; and they met together with a great battle-cry. Then Zeus no longer held back his might; but straight his heart was filled with fury and he showed forth all his strength. From Heaven and from Olympus he came immediately, hurling his lightning: the bolts flew thick and fast from his strong hand together with thunder and lightning, whirling an awesome flame. The life-giving earth crashed around in burning, and the vast wood crackled loud with fire all about.³

Here, the Titanomachy is underway, and we get two mentions of Olympus. The first is explicit in that Olympus is separate from the sea, the earth, the sky, and wide heaven. The second mention reiterates that Zeus comes down both from heaven and from Olympus. Between those, we get a mention of starry heaven on its own. This is very clearly the sort of thing the Derveni author was writing about. There is a section of the Iliad that is similar to this one, and Homer gives us a bit more information:

For three brethren are we, begotten of Cronos, and born of Rhea,—Zeus, and myself, and the third is Hades, that is lord of the dead below. And in three-fold wise are all things divided, and unto each hath been apportioned his own domain. I verily, when the lots were shaken, won for my portion the grey sea to be my habitation for ever, and Hades won the murky darkness, while Zeus won the broad heaven amid the air and the clouds; but the earth and [long] Olympus remain yet common to us all.⁴

Rather than leave Olympus vaguely separate, Homer has Poseidon clarify that Earth and long Olympus are common to all of the Gods and were not divided between them. When viewed normally, without the Derveni author’s interpretive lens, Olympus being common to all of the Gods still conveys the idea that the Gods dwell together or share a common sphere of influence. With the Derveni lens, however, this shared seat of the Gods that is Olympus is clearly defined as the cyclical nature of time. Let’s turn now to the Homeric Hymns, starting with Hymn 2 - To Demeter:

But grief yet more terrible and savage came into the heart of Demeter, and thereafter she was so angered with the dark-clouded Son of Cronos that she avoided the gathering of the Gods and [long] Olympus, and went to the towns and rich fields of men, disfiguring her form a long while. And no one of men or deep-bosomed women knew her when they saw her, until she came to the house of wise Celeus who then was lord of fragrant Eleusis.⁵

This comes immediately after Demeter has learned of Persephone’s abduction. Maddened at the news, she withdraws from the Assembly of the Gods and from Long Olympus. In this Hymn, leaving the domain of 'long Olympus' plunges the Goddess and the world into a long period of suffering, which is only resolved here by the establishment of the Eleusinian Mysteries: a cyclical, seasonal rite, explained etiologically by the abduction of Persephone. The next use of the epithet μακρός to describe Olympus is in Homeric Hymn 12 - To Hera:

I sing of golden-throned Hera whom Rhea bare. Queen of the immortals is she, surpassing all in beauty: she is the sister and the wife of loud-thundering Zeus, —the glorious one whom all the blessed throughout [long] Olympus reverence and honor even as Zeus who delights in thunder.⁶

Here again, 'long Olympos' is presented as a singular domain common to all the Gods, mirroring the excerpt from the Iliad. The last use of μακρός referring to Olympus in the Homeric Hymns comes in Hymn 19 - To Pan:

At that hour the clear-voiced nymphs are with him and move with nimble feet, singing by some spring of dark water, while Echo wails about the mountain-top, and the god on this side or on that of the choirs, or at times sidling into the midst, plies it nimbly with his feet. On his back he wears a spotted lynx-pelt, and he delights in high-pitched songs in a soft meadow where crocuses and sweet-smelling hyacinths bloom at random in the grass.

They sing of the blessed Gods and [long] Olympus and choose to tell of such an one as luck-bringing Hermes above the rest, how he is the swift messenger of all the Gods, and how he came to Arcadia, the land of many springs and mother of flocks, there where his sacred place is as God of Cyllene.⁷

Here, like the Hymn to Demeter, we get reference to the cyclical, blooming, and twisting nature of plant life. A bit later in the Hymn to Pan, Hermes wraps up his son and sits him next to the other Gods, who are all delighted by his presence; especially Bacchic Dionysus. This reference to Bacchic Dionysus is our sign to look toward surviving Orphic examples. Specifically, in Orphic Hymn 45, Dionysus is mentioned as howling “throughout Olympus:”

Come blessed Dionysos, bull-faced God conceived in fire,

Bassareus and Bacchos, many-named master of all.

You delight in bloody swords, you delight in the holy Maenads,

as you howl throughout Olympos, all-roaring and frenzied Bacchos.

Armed with the thyrsus, wrathful in the extreme, you are honored

by all Gods and all men who dwell upon the earth.

Come, blessed and leaping God, bring abundant joy to all.⁸

This, given with the evidence so far, paints a picture of Olympus as cyclical. While it is not unusual for someone to yell throughout the hills, it can be argued that the subject of the hymn gives us our biggest clue yet: Dionysus of the Triennial feasts. These feasts are called triennial because they belong to three year periods, counting inclusively (meaning that the “third year” of the three year period is the same as the “first year”)⁹. Taking this into account, Dionysus’ cries in the hymn echo throughout time just as much as throughout the mountains.

Given our brief survey of these foundational texts through the lens of the Derveni author’s interpretive method, we can conclude in agreement with him that not only Orpheus, but Homer, and Hesiod, too, distinguish between an accessible but distant Wide Heaven and an all-encompassing, cyclical Long Olympus. The presence of this specific and nuanced vocabulary across both Orphism and the wider mainstream epic poetry of ancient Greece is evidence of their deeply intertwined theological heritage.

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Works Cited

Anonymous. “Homeric Hymn 2.” Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914) http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0138:hymn=2 (Accessed 19 June 2025)

Anonymous. “Homeric Hymn 12.” Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914) http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0138:hymn=12 (Accessed 19 June 2025)

Anonymous. “Homeric Hymn 19.” Homeric Hymns and Homerica. Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914) http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0138:hymn=19 (Accessed 19 June 2025)

Anonymous. “Orphic Hymn 45.” Athanassakis, Apostolos N, and Wolkow, Benjamin M. Orphic Hymns, The. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

Hesiod. Theogony. Translated Hugh G. Evelyn-White. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1914.), Perseus Digital Library. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0130:card=654 (Accessed 16 June 2025)

Homer. Iliad. Translated A. T. Murray. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924.), Perseus Digital Library. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0134:book=15:card=186 (Accessed 16 June 2025)

Kerényi, Karl. Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. Princeton University Press, 2020.

Kouremenos, Theokritos, et al. The Derveni Papyrus. Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2006.

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Footnotes

1. Derveni Papyrus Col. 12 (Kouremenos, Theokritos, et al.)

2. A hasty survey of the texts:

Theogony: Snowy appears 5 times, Long once.

Homeric Hymns: Snowy and Long each appear 3 times.

Orphic Hymns: Snowy appears twice, Long makes no appearance.

3. Hesiod Theogony 674-695

4. Homer, Iliad 15.186-195

5. Homeric Hymn 2 91-97

6. Homeric Hymn 12

7. Homeric Hymn 19 22-32

8. Orphic Hymn 45

9. For more on this, see Chapter 5 of Karl Kerényi’s Dionysos beginning on p.189