and the narcissus, which Earth grew as a trap for the flower-faced girl, by the will of Zeus, to please the Host of Many: gleaming and wondrous, a thing of awe for all to see, for deathless gods and mortal men alike.

Dolon, "a trap," is the word for Odysseus' tricks and for the bait on a hook. The flower is bait, and the hymn says so plainly. Polydektēs, "the Host of Many" or "Receiver of Many," is a name for Hades that avoids saying his name: everyone is received by him in the end. The poem gives him several such names. The narcissus was a flower of the dead in Greek cult, and its name was connected, in antiquity, with narkē, "numbness." Sebas, the awe it causes, is the feeling the mysteries of Eleusis would later be built to produce.