Epithets: Amaimaketos
Amaimaketos:
Unconquerable, raging, invincible, unapproachable, or uncontrollable.
The LSJ gives us the translation of irresistible, stubborn,
unfathomable, and furious. It further says that it was given to the Chimaera,
to fire, to the mast of a ship, as well as being applied to the Furies. It was
Homer who called the Chimaera amaimaketos.
The Furies are thus suited to this epithet, though it seems
rarely given to them. They are, after all, implacable.
In The Orphic Hymn to Hekate, she is called Unconquerable,
amaimaketon.
Lovely Hekate of the
roads and crossroads I invoke;
In heaven, on earth, and in the sea, saffron-cloaked,
Tomb-spirit, reveling in the souls of the dead,
Daughter of Perses, haunting deserted places, delighting in deer,
Nocturnal, dog-loving, monstrous
queen,
Devouring wild beasts, ungirt, of repelling countenance.
You, herder of bulls, queen and mistress of the whole world,
Leader, nymph, mountain-roaming nurturer of youth, maiden,
I beseech you to come to these holy rites,
Ever with joyous heart and ever favoring the oxherd.
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Athanassakis trans.
Einodian Ekaten kleizo, trioditin, erannen,
ouranian chthonian te kai einalian, krokopeplon,
tymbidian, psychais nekyon meta bakcheuosan,
Perseian, Phileremon, agallomenen elaphoisi.
Nykterian, skylakitin, amaimaketon
Basileian.
Therobromon, Azoston, aprosmachon Eidos echousan.
Tauropolon, Pantos Kosmou Kleidouchon, Anassan,
Hegemonen, Nymphen, Kourotrophon, Ouresiphoitin.
Lissomenos, Kouren, teletais hosiaisi pareinai,
Boukoloi eumeneousan aei kechareoti thymoi.
-
Transliterated Greek.
Athanassakis, who prefers to translate hymns with a poetic
flare, gives amaimaketon the meaning of ‘monstrous.’ But I also like the idea
of Hekate being associated with this epithet in the same sense as that of the
Chimaera, which had a suggestion of unconquerable or raging fire, something
found in Hesiod’s Theogony. It gives us a nod to her torches shining bright in
the night.
Sources:
Theoi.com
Lsj.translatum.gr
http://www.hermeticfellowship.org/OrphicHymnHekate.html
Athanassakis, Apostolos N. The Orphic Hymns, trans. Benjamin Wolkow, Johns Hopkins, 2013.
Blok, Josine. The Early
Amazons: Modern and Ancient Perspectives on a Persistent Myth, Brill, 1994.
Ford, Andrew. Homer:
Poetry of the Past, Cornell, 1994.
McEvoy, J.J. Robert
Grosseteste: New Perspectives on his Thought and Scholarship, In Abbatia S.
Petri, 1995.
Images:
Pintoricchio. “Chimaera” from the Hall of the Demigods at
the Palazzo Della Rovere, 15th c. via wikicommons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soffito_dei_semidei_23_chimera.JPG
