“Divine Hypnos, god who knows no pain,
Hypnos, stranger to anguish,
come in favor to us, come happy,
and giving happiness, great King!
Keep before his eyes such light as is spread before them now.
Come to him, I pray you, come with power to heal!”
Sophocles, Philoctetes (409 B.C.)
“O, Hypnos,
divine repose of all things!
Gentlest of the deities!
Peace to the troubled mind,
from which you drive the cares of life.
Restorer of men’s strength
when wearied with the toils of day.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XI (1 A.D.)
And passing, sheds it on the silent plains:
No door there was th’ unguarded house to keep,
On creaking hinges turn’d, to break his sleep.
But in the gloomy court was rais’d a bed,
Stuff’d with black plumes, and on an ebon-sted:
Black was the cov’ring too, where lay the God,
And slept supine, his limbs display’d abroad:
About his head fantastick visions fly,
Which various images of things supply,
And mock their forms; the leaves on trees not more,
Nor bearded ears in fields, nor sands upon the shore.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XI (1 A.D.)
“To Hypnos (Sleep), Fumigation from Poppies. Hypnos, king of Gods, and men of mortal birth, sovereign of all, sustained by mother earth; for thy dominion is supreme alone, over all extended, and by all things known. ‘Tis thine all bodies with benignant mind in other bands than those of brass to bind. Tamer of cares, to weary toil repose, and from whom sacred solace in affliction flows. Thy pleasing gentle chains preserve the soul, and even the dreadful cares of death control; for Thanatos (Death), and Lethe (Forgetfulness) with oblivious stream, mankind thy genuine brothers justly deem. With favouring aspect to my prayer incline, and save thy mystics in their works divine.” – Orphic Hymn 85 to Hypnos
