Library › Greek: Myth, Hymn & Religion › Verses on the Seven Planets
Verses on the Seven Planets is a short hexameter poem that Stobaeus quotes in his Anthology under the heading Hermes, and it is counted among the Hermetic fragments. It names the seven wandering stars, says that each is also present within human beings, and pairs each with a human trait: Kronos with tears, Zeus with birth, Hermes with speech, Ares with anger, the Moon with sleep, Aphrodite with desire and the Sun with laughter.
The poem gives a compact picture of the belief, central to Hermetic and astrological thought, that the human being is a small copy of the cosmos governed by the planets. Its neat pairing of planets with passions and faculties makes it a useful text for understanding ancient ideas of fate, astrology and the make-up of the soul.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: Stobaeus, Anth. I 5.14 (Wachsmuth p. 77) = Hermetica fr. 29 Nock–Festugière). Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ).