CHAPTER X

THE ORPHICS

The earliest authority who mentions Orphic sects and their practices

is Herodotos (ii, 81), who calls attention to the correspondence

between certain sacerdotal and ascetic ordinances of the Egyptian

priesthood, and the "Orphic and Bacchic" mysteries. The latter, he

says, are really Egyptian and Pythagorean, or in other words they

were founded by Pythagoras or Pythagoreans upon Egyptian models; and

thus, in the opinion of the historian, they cannot have come into

existence before the last decade of the sixth century. Herodotos

then, either in Athens or elsewhere, had heard during his journeys

of certain private societies who by calling themselves after the

name of Orpheus, the prototype of Thracian song so well known to

legend, recognized the origin of their peculiar cult and creed in

the mountains of Thrace, and did honour to Bakchos the Thracian god.

The fact that the Greek Orphics did indeed worship Dionysos, the

lord of life and death, before all other gods, is clearly shown by

the remains of the theological poems that originated in their midst.

Orpheus himself, as founder of the Orphic sect, is actually said to

have been the founder also of the Dionysiac

initiation-mysteries.[1\10]

This gathering-together in the name of Orpheus for the purpose of

offering a special worship to Dionysos was, then, the work of

_sects_ who, in private association, practised a cult which the

public and official worship of the state either did not know of or

disdained. There were many such associations, and of very varied

character, which kept themselves aloof from the organized religion

of the community, and were tolerated by the state.[2\10] As a rule,

they were "foreign gods"[3\10] who were thus worshipped; and

generally by foreigners who thus kept up the special worship of

their own homes, though they did not always exclude natives of their

adopted country. Now, Dionysos, the god of the Orphic sects, had for

a long time ceased to be a foreigner in Greek countries; since his

arrival from Thrace he had been refined and matured under the

humanizing sun of Greece, until he had become a Greek god, and a

worthy associate of the Greek Olympos. It is possible, however, that

in this process, the old Thracian god may have seemed to his

original worshippers to have lost his real {336} character, and they

may on that account have joined together to offer, in separation

from the official worship, a special cult in which all the old ideas

of the national religion should be preserved unaltered. A secondary

wave of influence thus broke upon the long-since-Hellenized god, the

Thracian Dionysos in Greece, and _this_ wave the official worship

either had not the power or lacked the will to assimilate. It was

therefore left to special sects who honoured the god after their own

private laws. Whether indeed they were _Thracians_ who, as in the

similar case of the unmodified worship of Bendis,[4\10] or Kotytto,

thus reinstituted their ancient and national worship of Dionysos in

Greek countries, we cannot with certainty tell; but this special

cult would certainly not have achieved the importance it did in

_Greek_ life if it had not been joined by Greek adherents brought up

in the native conceptions of Greek piety, who under the name of

"Orphics" once more adapted the Thracian god to Greek modes of

thought--though this new adaptation differed from the previous

assimilation of the god by the official worship of the state. We

have no reason for believing that Orphic sects were formed in Greek

states before the second half of the sixth century,[5\10] that

critical age of transition when in so many places primitive and

mythological modes of thought were developing into a _theosophy_,

which in its turn was making an effort to become a philosophy. The

Orphic religious poetry is itself clearly marked by this effort--for

in Orphism it never became more than an effort and never succeeded

in reaching its goal.

The exact point of origin of this combined movement of religion and

theosophy, the various steps and manner of its development remain

hidden from us. Athens was a centre of Orphism; it does not

therefore follow that Orphism had its origin there, any more than

had the multifarious tendencies and activities in art, poetry, and

science that at about the same period flowed together, and as though

driven by an unseen intellectual current, found their meeting place

at Athens. Onomakritos, we are told, the giver of oracles in the

court of Peisistratos "founded the secret worship of

Dionysos".[6\10] This appears to refer to the first founding of an

Orphic sect at Athens; and we meet with the name of Onomakritos

among the authors of Orphic poems. But the real authorship of these

poems is far more often ascribed to certain men of Southern Italy

and Sicily, who can be more or less clearly connected[7\10] with the

Pythagorean societies which were flourishing in those districts

about the last decades of the sixth and the first of the fifth

centuries. {337}

It seems certain that in Southern Italy at that time, Orphic

societies were already in existence--for whom else can these writers

have intended their "Orphic" poems? In any case we must take it as

certain that the correspondence of Orphic and Pythagorean doctrine

on the subject of the soul is not purely accidental. Did Pythagoras

when he came to Italy (about 532) find Orphic societies already

settled in Kroton and Metapontum, and did he associate himself with

their ideas? Or did the "Orphic" sectaries (as Herodotos

imagined[8\10]) owe their inspiration to Pythagoras and his

disciples? The various cross-currents of reciprocal influence can no

longer be disentangled by us, but if the Pythagoreans were the sole

creditors in the bargain we should undoubtedly find the whole body

of Orphic doctrine thoroughly permeated with conceptions that belong

exclusively to the Pythagorean school. In the wreckage of the Orphic

poems, however, except for a few negligible traces of the

Pythagorean mystic theory of numbers,[9\10] we find nothing that

must necessarily have been derived by the Orphics from Pythagorean

sources.[10\10] Least of all did they need to derive the doctrine of

the migration of souls and its application from this source. It is

possible, therefore, that it was the independently developed Orphic

doctrine which exerted an influence upon Pythogoras and his

adherents in Southern Italy; just as it was a ready-made Orphic

teaching (and that, too, perhaps, brought from Southern Italy) with

which Onomakritos, the founder of the Orphic sects at Athens,

associated himself--about the same time as Pythagoras' similar

action in Kroton. It is hardly possible to interpret in any other

way the various relations of the Orphics with each other when we

learn that at the court of the Peisistratids, in addition to

Onomakritos, two other men who had arrived from Southern Italy were

active and were counted among the earliest writers of Orphic

poems.[11\10]

§ 2

The Orphics wherever we meet with them in Greek countries always

appear as members of a private cult-society who are held together by

a specially organized and individual mode of worship. The old

Thracian worship of Dionysos in its straining after the infinite

conducted its revels under the open sky of night, seeking out

deserted mountain-sides and forests where it was farthest from

civilization and closest to unspoiled and untrammelled nature. How

this cult may have accommodated itself to the narrow limitations of

ordinary {338} city-life, it is hard to imagine;[12\10] though it is

natural to suppose that much of the extravagance that was literal

and actual enough in the old northern festival of night was

represented in the milder worship of Greece by mere symbol. We have

less difficulty in discovering the side of their religious activity

which the Orphics, apart from the private worship of the

conventicle, revealed to the outer world of the profane. Orpheus

himself in the tradition had been not merely the inspired singer but

the seer, the magically endowed physician and purification-priest as

well,[13\10] and the Orphics, as his followers, were active, too, in

all these directions.[14\10] In the composition of Greek Orphism the

kathartic ideas which had been evolved on Greek soil were combined

in a not unnatural alliance with the old Thracian worship of

Dionysos. The Orphic priests of purification were preferred to

others of their kind by many religious people.[15\10] But among the

inner circles of Orphism the sacerdotal activities of purification

and the removal of daimonic hindrances, which were by no means given

up, tended rather to produce deeper and broader ideas of purity and

of release from the earthly and the transitory. In some such way was

evolved that asceticism which in close combination with the Thracian

worship of Dionysos gave the peculiar tone to the faith and

temperament of the sectaries and gave to their lives their special

direction.

The Orphic sect had a fixed and definite set of doctrines; this

alone sufficed to distinguish it both from the official worships of

the state, and from all other cult-associations of the time. The

reduction of belief to distinct doctrinal formulæ may have done more

than anything else to make Orphism a _society_ of believers--none of

the other _theologi_ of the time, Epimenides, Pherekydes, etc.,

accomplished as much. Without its fundamental religious doctrine

Orphism in Greece is inconceivable; according to Aristotle the

"doctrines" of Orpheus were put into poetical form by the founder of

the Orphic sect in Athens, Onomakritos.[16\10] The uncertain

accounts given us by the later authorities do not allow us to make

out quite clearly[17\10] what was the extent of Onomakritos' work in

the formation or collection of Orphic doctrinal poetry. What is

important is the fact that he is distinctly named as the author of

the poem called "Initiations".[18\10] This poem must have been one

of the basic, and in the strictest sense "religious", writings of

the sect; a poem of this character may very well have had for its

central incident the dismemberment of the god at the hands of the

Titans--a story which Onomakritos is said to have put into

verse.[19\10] {339}

The religious beliefs and worship of the sect were founded upon the

detailed instructions of certain very numerous writings dealing with

matters of ritual and theology. These claimed the authority of

religious inspiration,[20\10] and were as a whole supposed to be the

work of the primitive Thracian bard, Orpheus, himself. The anonymity

which concealed the identity of the real authors of these poems was

not, however, very thoroughly preserved; even towards the end of the

fourth century there were those who claimed to be able to give with

certainty the names of the original authors of the various poems.

Strictly canonical authority, such as would at once have reduced to

silence every conflicting view or statement, never seems to have

belonged to any of these writings. In particular, there were several

"Theogonies"[21\10]--poems which attempted to give expression to the

fundamental ideas of Orphic speculation on religious subjects--and

in spite of much harmony in general effect they differed

considerably from each other in particular mode of expression. They

represented ever-renewed and increasingly elaborate attempts to

construct a connected doctrinal system for Orphism. With

unmistakable allusion to the oldest Greek theological system--that

which had been committed to writing in the Hesiodic poem--these

Orphic Theogonies described the origin and development of the world

from obscure primordial impulses to the clear and distinct

variety-in-unity of the organized kosmos, and it described it as the

history of a long series of divine powers and figures which issue

from each other (each new one overcoming the last) and succeed each

other in the task of building and organizing the world until they

have absorbed the whole universe into themselves in order to bring

it forth anew, animated with one spirit and, with all its infinite

variety, a unity. These gods are certainly no longer deities of the

familiar Greek type. Not merely the new gods evolved by the creative

fancy of Orphism--creatures which had almost entirely lost all

distinct and sensible outline under the accumulation of symbolical

meaning--but even the figures actually borrowed from the Greek world

of divinities are turned into little more than mere personified

abstractions. Who would recognize the Zeus of Homer in the Orphic

Zeus who after he has devoured the World-God and "taken unto himself

the power of Erikapaios",[22\10] has become himself the Universe and

the Whole? "Zeus the Beginning, Zeus the Middle, in Zeus all things

are completed."[23\10] The concept here so stretches the personality

that it threatens to break it down altogether; the outlines of the

individual figures are {340} lost and are merged into an intentional

"confusion of deities".[24\10]

Still, the mythical envelope was never quite given up; these poets

could not do without it altogether. Their gods did indeed strive to

become pure abstractions but they were never quite successful in

throwing off all traces of individuality and the limitations of form

and matter: the concept never quite broke through the veil of

mythology. The poets of the Orphic Theogonies vied with one another

in their attempts to make the half-seen and half-conceived

accessible alike to the imagination and the reason; and in

succession gave varying expression to the same fundamental

conceptions until finality was reached as it seems in a poem whose

contents are better known to us than the others from quotations made

from it by Neoplatonic writers--the Theogonical poem of the

four-and-twenty Rhapsodies. Into this poem was poured all the

traditional material of mythological and symbolical doctrine, and in

it such doctrine achieved its final expression.[25\10]

§ 3

This combination of religion and quasi-philosophical speculation was

a distinguishing feature of the Orphics and of Orphic literature.

Religion only entered into their Theogonical poetry in so far as the

ethical personalities of the divinities therein described had not

entirely faded away into transparent allegories.[26\10] It was

abstract speculation alone which really prevailed there, little

respect being paid to religion; and as a result a much greater

licence was given to speculative construction.

This abstract speculation, however, reached its climax in a

religious narrative of the first importance for the beliefs and cult

of the sect. At the end of the series of genealogically connected

deities came the son of Zeus and Persephone, Dionysos, who was also

given the name of the underworld deity Zagreus.[27\10] To him, even

in infancy, was entrusted the rule of the world by Zeus. But the

wicked Titans, urged on by Hera, approached him by a stratagem. They

were the enemies of Zeus, and had already been overthrown by

Ouranos,[28\10] but had, it seems, been let loose again by Zeus from

Tartaros. They made Dionysos trust them by giving him presents, and

while he was looking at his own image in a mirror[29\10] that they

had given him, they fell upon him. He tried to escape them by

repeated transformations of shape; finally, in the form of a

bull,[30\10] he was at last overcome and his body torn to pieces

which his savage foes thereupon devoured. The heart alone {341} was

rescued by Athene, and she brought it to Zeus who swallowed it. From

Zeus there sprang the "new Dionysos", the son of Zeus and Semele, in

whom Zagreus came to life again.

The myth of the dismemberment of Zagreus by the Titans was already

put into verse by Onomakritos;[31\10] it continued to be the

culminating point of the doctrinal poetry of the Orphics. It

occurred not only in the Rhapsodies,[32\10] but in other versions of

the Orphic legend composed in complete independence of these.[33\10]

It is a religious myth in the stricter sense; its _ætioloqical_

character is most marked;[34\10] its purpose is to explain the

religious implication of the ritual dismemberment of the bull-god at

the Bacchic nocturnal festivals, and to derive that feature from the

legendary sufferings of Dionysos-Zagreus.

But though the legend thus has its roots in the primitive

sacrificial ritual of ancient Thrace,[35\10] in its extended form it

belongs entirely to the region of Hellenic thought; and in this

combination of the two elements it becomes truly Orphic. The wicked

Titans belong entirely to strictly Greek mythology.[36\10] In this

case, as the murderers of the god, they represent the primeval power

of evil.[37\10] They dismember the One into Many parts; by their

impiety the One divine being is dispersed into the multiplicity of

the things of this world.[38\10] It is reborn as One in the new

Dionysos sprung from Zeus. The Titans--so the legend goes on to

relate--who had devoured the limbs of the god were destroyed by Zeus

with his lightning flash. From their ashes sprang the race of men in

whom, in conformity with their origin, the good derived from

Dionysos-Zagreus is mixed with a wicked Titanic element.[39\10]

With the rule of the new-born Dionysos and the origin of mankind,

the series of mythological events in the Orphic poetry came to an

end.[40\10] With the entry of mankind into Creation[41\10] the

existing period of the world begins; the period of world-revolutions

is over. The poems now turn to the subject of man and the revelation

of his fate, his duty and his purpose in the world.

§ 4

The mixture of the elements that make up the totality of his being

in itself prescribes for man the direction that his effort shall

take. He must free himself from the Titanic element and, thus

purified, return to the god, a fragment of whom is living in

him.[42\10] The distinction between the Titanic and Dionysiac

elements in man is an allegorical expression of the popular {342}

distinction between body and soul; it also corresponds to a

profoundly felt estimate of the relative value of these two sides of

man's being. According to Orphic doctrine man's duty is to free

himself from the chains of the body in which the soul lies fast

bound like the prisoner in his cell.[43\10] The soul has a long way,

however, to go before it can find its freedom; it may not by an act

of violence tear its bonds asunder for itself.[44\10] The death of

the body only frees it for a short while; for the soul must once

more suffer imprisonment in a body. After leaving its old body, it

flutters free in the wind, but a breath of air sends it into a new

body again.[45\10] So it continues its journey, perpetually

alternating between an unfettered separate existence, and an

ever-renewed incarnation--traversing the great "Circle of Necessity"

in which it becomes the life-companion of many bodies both of men

and beasts. Thus, the "Wheel of Birth"[46\10] seems to return ever

upon itself in hopeless repetition: in Orphic poetry (and there

perhaps for the first time occurs the despairing thought of the

exact repetition of the past; events which have already been lived

through once returning again with the convergence of the same

attendant circumstances.[47\10] Thus, Nature, ever reverting to its

own beginnings, draws men with it in its senseless revolution round

itself.

But the soul has a way open for escape from this perpetual

recurrence of all things that threatens to close in upon it; it may

hope "to escape from the circle and have a respite from

misery".[48\10] It is formed for blessed freedom, and can at last

detach itself from the condition of being it has to endure upon

earth--a condition unworthy of it. A "release" is possible; but man

in his blindness and thoughtlessness cannot help himself, cannot

even, when salvation is at hand, turn himself towards it.[49\10]

Salvation comes from Orpheus and his Bacchic mysteries; Dionysos

himself will loose his worshipper from Evil and the unending way of

misery. Not his own power, but the grace of the "releasing gods" is

to be the cause of man's liberation.[50\10] The self-reliance of the

older Greece is breaking down; in humility of heart the pious man

looks elsewhere for help; he needs the revelation and mediation of

"Orpheus the Ruler"[51\10] in order to find the way of salvation; he

must follow his ordinances of salvation with perfect obedience if he

is to continue in that way.

It is not only the sacred mysteries themselves, in the form in which

Orpheus has ordained them, which prepare for the release; a complete

"Orphic life"[52\10] must be developed out {343} of them. Asceticism

is the prime condition of the pious life. This does not mean the

practice of the respectable bourgeois virtues, nor the discipline

and moral reformation of a man's character; the height of morality

is in this case the turning again towards god,[53\10] and the

turning away not merely from the weaknesses and errors of earthly

being but from the whole of earthly life itself; renunciation of all

that ties man to mortality and the life of the body. The fierce

determination with which the Indian penitent tears away his will

from life, to which every organ in his body clings desperately--for

this, indeed, there was no place among the Greeks, the lovers of

life--not even among the world-denying ascetics. Abstention from the

eating of flesh was the strongest and most striking species of

self-denial practised by the Orphic ascetics.[54\10] Apart from

this, they kept themselves in all essentials uncontaminated by

certain things and situations which rather suggested to a religious

symbolism than actually indicated in themselves attachment to the

world of death and transitoriness. The long-standing ordinances of

the priestly ritual of purification were taken up and added

to;[55\10] but they were also raised to a higher plane. They are no

longer intended to free men from the effects of daimonic contacts;

the soul itself is made pure by them[56\10]--pure from the body and

its polluting association, pure from death and its loathsome

mastery. In expiation of "guilt" the soul is confined within the

body,[57\10] the wages of sin is in this case that life upon earth

which for the soul is death. The whole multiplicity of the universe,

emptied of its innocent and natural sequence of cause and effect,

appears to these zealots under the uniform aspect of a correlation

between crime and punishment, between pollution and purification.

Thus, mysticism enters into the closest alliance with kathartic

practices. The soul which comes from the divine and strives to

return thither, has no other purpose to fulfil upon earth (and

therefore no other moral law to obey); it must be free from life

itself and be pure from all that is earthly.

The Orphics, moreover, were the only people who could venture among

themselves or before strangers to greet each other with the special

name of the "Pure".[58\10] The first reward of his piety was

received by the initiate of the Orphic mysteries in that

intermediate region whither men must go after their earthly death.

When a man dies, Hermes leads the "deathless soul" into the

underworld.[59\10] Special poems of the Orphic community announced

the terrors and delights of the underworld kingdom.[60\10] What the

Orphic {344}mystery-priests vouchsafed to their public upon these

hidden matters--outdoing the promises made in the Eleusinian

mysteries in coarse appeal to the senses--may have been the most

popular, but was certainly not the most original feature of Orphic

teaching.[61\10] In Hades a judgment awaited the soul--it was no

instinctive fancy of the people, but the "sacred doctrine"[62\10] of

these sectaries which first introduced and elaborated the idea of

compensatory justice in the world of the dead. The impious suffer

punishment and purgation in the depths of Tartaros;[63\10] those who

have not been made pure by the Orphic mysteries lie in the miry

Pool;[64\10] "dreadful things[65\10] await" the disdainer of the

sacred worship. By a conception that is quite unique in ancient

religion, participation in the Orphic ceremonial enables the

descendant to obtain from the gods "pardon and purification" for his

departed ancestors who may be paying the penalty in the next world

for the misdeeds of the past.[66\10] But for the initiate of the

Orphic mysteries himself who has not merely borne the _narthex_ but

has been a true Bakchos,[67\10] his reward is that he shall obtain a

"milder fate" in the kingdom of the underworld deities whom he has

revered on earth, and dwell "in the fair meadows of deep-running

Acheron".[68\10] The blessed home of refuge no longer lies like the

Homeric Elysium upon earth, but below in the world of the Souls, for

only the released soul reaches there. There, the initiated and

purified will live in communion with the gods of the nether

world[69\10]--we feel that we are listening to Thracian and not

Greek conceptions of the ideal when we hear of the "Banquet of the

Pure" and the uninterrupted intoxication which they enjoy

there.[70\10]

But the depths restore the soul at last to the light, for its

lasting habitation is not below; it stays there only for the

interval which separates death from its next rebirth. For the

reprobate this is a time of punishment and purgation--the Orphics

could not distress their hearers with the awful and intolerable idea

of the _perpetual_ punishment of the damned in Hell; many times over

the soul rises again to the light and in continually renewed bodies

fulfils the cycle of births. For the deeds of its past life it is

recompensed in the next life that it lives, and each man must now

suffer exactly what he has done to another.[71\10] So he pays the

penalty for ancient guilt: the "thrice-ancient law"--what thou hast

done thou shalt suffer--is thus fulfilled for him in far livelier

fashion than it could be in any torments of the shadow-world. So

surely also shall the pure be rewarded in future lives by

ever-increasing happiness. How exactly the Orphic fancy filled out

the {345} individual gradations in the scale of happiness is beyond

our knowledge.[72\10]

But the soul is immortal, and even sinners and the unredeemed cannot

perish entirely. Hades and the life on earth holds them in their

perpetual round, and this is their punishment. For the soul of the

blessed, however, neither Hades nor earthly life can offer the

highest crown of happiness. If it has been made pure and spotless in

the Orphic mysteries and the Orphic manner of life, it is freed from

the necessity of rebirth and withdrawn from the cycle of becoming

and perishing. The "purification" ends in a final redemption. The

soul mounts upwards from the base level of earthly life, not to

become nothing in a final death, for it is now that it first truly

begins to live; hitherto it has lain imprisoned in the body like the

corpse in the grave.[73\10] It was death for the soul when it

entered into life--now it is free and will no more suffer death; it

lives for ever like God, for it comes from God and is itself divine.

We do not know whether these theosophists went so far as to lose

themselves in detailed picturing and contemplation of the blissful

heights of the divine life.[74\10] In the remains of their poems we

read of stars and the moon as other worlds,[75\10] perhaps as the

dwelling-place of illuminated spirits.[76\10] But perhaps also the

poet allowed the soul to flee from its last contact with mortality

without himself desiring to follow it into the unbroken radiance of

divinity that no earthly eye can abide.

§ 5

This, then, is the keystone that completes the arch of Orphic

religion--the belief in the divine, immortal, and abiding life of

the soul for whom union with the body and its desires is a thwarting

hindrance and repression--a punishment from which its one desire, as

soon as it is awakened to a full knowledge of itself is to escape in

order that it may belong entirely to itself in full enjoyment of its

powers. The contrast between these ideas and those of the Homeric

world is complete; _there_, the soul released from the body was

credited only with a poor, shadowy, half-conscious existence, so

that an eternity of godlike being in the full enjoyment of life and

its powers was only thinkable if the body and the soul, the twofold

self of man, were translated in undissolved communion out of the

world of mortality. The Orphic legends about the origin of the human

race do not tell us the real source and derivation of the very

different beliefs about the soul held by the Orphics; those legends

only give expression to the {346} way--and only one of many

ways[77\10]--in which the already established confidence in the

divinity of the soul was deducible from what might be considered the

oldest historical story of mankind, and how it might be brought into

connexion with the Orphic legend of the gods. This persuasion, the

belief that a god was living in man and a god that could not be free

until he had broken through the prison of the body, was deeply

rooted in the worship of Dionysos and the ecstasies belonging to

that worship; we cannot be in much doubt that it was taken over

ready-made, together with the "enthusiastic" cult of the divinity,

and further developed by the Orphic believers. We have already met

with traces of this belief even in the Thracian home of the

Dionysiac cult; and in what we know of the Thracian form of the

religion, traces are not absolutely wanting of an ascetic tendency

of living that would easily and naturally arise from such a

belief.[78\10] Even in those Northern countries we found the belief

in the transmigration of souls bound up with the religion of

Dionysos, and that belief, when it is naively held, has as its

essential presupposition the idea that the soul, in order to have a

complete life, and one that can survive bodily death, must of

necessity be united to another body. Even this idea is, however,

quite foreign to Orphism. The Orphics retained, in spite of

everything, the doctrine of transmigration, and combined it in a

strange alliance with their own belief in the divinity of the soul

and its vocation to a life of perfect liberty. It is evidently

improbable that they invented that doctrine entirely on their own

account; the first principles of their creed by no means led

necessarily to it. Herodotos[79\10] asserts distinctly that the

doctrine of transmigration came to the Greeks from Egypt; and as a

consequence, that it was from Egyptian tradition that the Orphics

received it. This assertion has no more to recommend it than any

other of Herodotos' many pronouncements as to the Egyptian origin of

Greek opinions and legends, and it is even less likely to mislead us

in view of the fact that it is by no means certain and not even

probable that a belief in transmigration ever really existed in

Egypt.[80\10] This belief has arisen independently in many places on

the surface of the earth, without the need of transmission from one

place to another;[81\10] it might easily arise in a country where

the belief prevailed that there existed only a limited number of

souls of which each one--in order that no earthly body might be

without its spiritual guest--must inhabit many perishable

life-tenements, and not be bound to any one of them by a real inner

necessity. This, {347} however, is a conception common to popular

psychology all over the world.[82\10] If it is still considered more

probable that the idea of a migration of the soul through many

temporary bodies was not spontaneously evolved by the Orphics, but

was received by them from the hands of others, there is yet no

reason to reject the most natural assumption--namely, that this also

was one of the beliefs that the Orphics took over with the cult of

Dionysos from Thrace. Like other mystics,[83\10] the Orphics took

over the belief in transmigration from popular tradition and turned

it into a serviceable member of their own body of doctrine.[84\10]

It served them by giving a striking and physical expression to their

own conception of the inevitable connexion between guilt and

penance, pollution and the refining power of punishment, piety and

future blessedness upon which all their religious ethic depended. It

was with an exactly similar purpose that they also retained and

developed the old Greek idea of a place of the souls in the depths

below the earth.

But if they believed in the transmigration of souls, that belief did

not with them hold the highest place. There is a realm where the

ever free and divine souls have their being, a realm to which the

series of lives in earthly bodies is only transitional, and the way

to it was pointed out by the saving doctrine of the Orphic

mysteries, by the purification and salvation afforded by Orphic

asceticism.

NOTES TO CHAPTER X

[1\10: ~. . . ho/s pote kai\ teleta\s mustêri/das heu/reto

Ba/kchou~, _AP._ vii, 9, 5 (Damagetos). ~dio\ kai\ ta\s hupo\ tou=

Dionu/sou genome/nas teleta\s Orphika\s prosagoreuthê=nai~, D.S. 3,

65, 6. ~heu=re de\ Orpheu\s ta\ Dionu/son mustê/ria~ [Apollod.] 1,

3, 2, 3. (Dionysum) Iove et Luna (natum), cui sacra Orphica putantur

confici: Cic., _ND._ iii, 58; cf. Lyd., _Mens._ 4, 51, p. 107 W.

~Bakchika/~ an Orphic poem: Suid. ~Orpheu/s~ (cf. Hiller, _Hermes_,

21, 364 f.), whence _fr._ 3 (Abel); and perhaps _frr._ 152, 167,

169, 168. ~ta\ Orphika\ kalou/mena kai\ ta\ Bakchika/~ are already

reckoned as a single class by Hdt. ii, 81.]

[2\10: This is seen in the decree of the Council and people of

Athens dealing with the ~e/mporoi Kitiei=s~ and their temple of

"Aphrodite"--_CIA._ ii, 168 (333/2 B.C.).--That on the other hand

such foreign mystery-cults were not always so tolerated (or not

without resistance is shown by the case of Ninos: Dem., _FL._ (19)

281 with Sch.; cf. D.H., _Dinarch._ 11.]

[3\10: ~theoi\ xenikoi/~, Hsch., see Lob., _Agl._ 627 ff. A nameless

~theo\s xeniko/s~ occurs in _CIA._ i, 273 f., 18.--The foundation of

such ~thi/asoi~ for foreign deities (or deities at least not

officially worshipped by the city in question) is almost invariably

the work of foreigners (many exx. from Rhodos in _BCH._ 1889, p.

364). They are all foreigners, e.g. whose names occur in the decree

of the ~thiasô=tai~ of the Karian Zeus Labraundos, _CIA._ ii, 613

(298/7 B.C.); cf. ib. 614; _SIG._ 726. Merchants from Kition found a

cult of their Aphrodite (Astarte) in Athens, just as some Egyptians

had a little while before put up ~to\ tê=s I/sidos hiero/n~ there:

_CIA._ ii, 168. The names of foreigners (in addition to Athenians)

are very numerous among the ~o/nomata tô=n eranistô=n~ of a

_**collegium_ of ~Sabaziastai/~ in the Peiraeus (second century

B.C.): ~Eph. Arch.~ 1883, p. 245 f. The foreign worship would then

begin to receive the support of natives of the host-city (most of

them being at first of the poorer classes), and in this way the new

religion would gain a footing in its adopted home. (Pure Athenian

citizens compose the society of the Dionysiastai in the Peiraeus,

second century B.C., _Ath. Mitt._ ix, 288 = _CIA._ iv, 2, 623 d.)]

[4\10: The Bendideia early became a state festival in Athens (even

fifth century, _CIA._ i, 210, _fr._ K, p. 93). An allusion in Plato

(_Rp._ 327 A), however, shows that the Thracians (who must have

introduced the cult of Bendis into Athens, or at least into the

Peiraeus, the home of most ~thi/asoi~) still kept up a special

worship of their goddess in their own manner, side by side with the

Hellenized cult. It appears at least as if the worship in its

remodelled Greek form seemed to them no longer the right one.

(Bendis, too, like Dionysos, is a divinity of both this world and

the next: see Hsch. ~di/logchon~.)]

[5\10: Alleged traces of Orphic influence on special sections of the

Iliad (~Dio\s apa/tê~) or the Odyssey are entirely illusory, nor did

the Orphic doctrines exert any influence on the Hesiodic _Theogony_.

On the other hand, Orphism was itself strongly affected by the

primitive Greek theology the fragments of which were put together in

the Hesiodic poem.]

[6\10: ~Onoma/kritos . . . Dionu/sô| sune/thêken o/rgia~, Paus. 8,

37, 5.] {349}

[7\10: Among the writers of Orphic poems mentioned by (1) Clem. Al.,

_Str._ 1, 21, p. 397 P. (from Epigenes) and (2) Suidas (from

Epigenes and another authority: both Su. and Clem. probably got

their information through the mediation of D.H.)--two certain

Pythagoreans are named, Brotinos (of Kroton or Metapontum) and

Kerkops (not the Milesian). [Abel, _Orphica_, p. 139.] From lower

Italy or Sicily come: Zopyros of Herakleia (the same person is

probably meant by Iamb., _VP._ 190, 5 N., when he counts Zopyros

among the Pythagoreans coming from Tarentum), Orpheus of Kroton,

Orpheus of Kamarina (Suid.), Timokles of Syracuse. Pythagoras

himself is mentioned among the writers of Orphic poems in the

~Triagmoi/~ of [Ion] (at least as early as the beginning of the

fourth century). Apart from these the only names of conjectured

composers of Orphic poems are: Theognetos ~ho Thettalo/s~, Prodikos

of Samos, Herodikos of Perinthos, Persinos of Miletos; all of whom

are unknown to us except Persinos, whom Obrecht not improbably

identifies with the court poet of Euboulos of Atarneus mentioned by

Poll. ix, 93 (cf. Lob. 359 f. Bgk., _PLG._ iii, 655). In this case

he is an Orphic of a much later period.]

[8\10: ~homologe/ousi de\~ (sc. ~Aigu/ptioi) tau=ta~ (prohibition to

bury the dead in woollen clothing) ~toi=si Orphikoi=si

kaleome/noisi, kai\ Bakchikoi=si, eou=si de\ Aigupti/oisi kai\

Puthagorei/oisi~, Hdt. ii, 81. There can be no doubt that Hdt. in

these words meant to derive the ~Orphika\ kai\ Bakchika/~ (the four

datives are all neuters, not masc.) from the ~Aigu/ptia kai\

Puthago/reia~, i.e. the Pythagorean ordinances which were themselves

derived from Egypt (cf. Gomperz, _Sitzb. Wien. Ak._ 1886, p. 1032).

If he had regarded the ~Puthago/reia~ as entirely independent of the

~Aigu/ptia~ (and the ~Orphika/~ as independent of the Pythag.) he

certainly could not have brought them in here. (This answers Zeller,

_Ber. Berlin. Ak._ 1889, p. 994, who introduces a comma before ~kai\

Puth.~)--It is equally impossible (with Maass, _Orpheus_, p. 165,

1895), to connect the ~eou=si de\ Aigupti/oisi~ with ~Bakchikoi=si~

_only_; it must of necessity go with ~toi=si Orphikoi=si~ as well;

for it is the whole point of Hdt.'s note to show that the religious

usage which he mentions has, like so much else of the kind in Greece

wherever it may be found, been borrowed from Egypt, and "is

Egyptian". In this he would fail completely if he did not regard the

~Orphika/~ (and hence also the ~Puthago/reia~) as ~Aigu/ptia eo/nta~

and clearly say so. Hdt. certainly has no idea, as Maass would have

us believe, of making a generic distinction between ~Orphika/~ and

~Bakchika/~: ~Bakch.~ is the name of the genus of which ~Orph.~ is

the species.--"the ~Orphika/~, and the ~Bakchika/~ in general." Not

_all_ ~Bakchika/~ are ~Orphika/~. This use of ~kai\~ whereby the

whole is added subsequently to the part is perfectly regular and

legitimate (it may also add the part to the whole as in the cases

adduced by Maass, 166 n.: ~ta\s Dionusiaka\s kai\ ta\s Orphika/s~,

etc.). Hdt. mentions the ~Puthago/reia~ last in order to indicate by

what intermediate step the Egyptian element in the first-mentioned

~Orphika/~ was specially assisted--he has further in ii, 123, shown

clearly enough that he regarded Pythagoras as one of the pupils of

the Egyptians (P. in any case is one of the teachers of immortality

there referred to). This is also obvious from his whole

attitude.--Hdt.'s opinion does not in any case oblige us to believe

in it. He was forced to regard Pythagoras as the earliest author of

Orphic doctrine because _his_ connexion with Egypt seemed certain

(cf. Hdt. ii, 123) while that of the ~Orphikoi/~ themselves was not

so: in this way only could Hdt. seem to prove the Egyptian origin of

that doctrine.--The priority of the Orphics is often supposed to be

proved by the witness of Philolaos (_fr._ 14 D.) ap. Clem. Al.,

_Str._ {350} 3, 3, p. 518 P. (and cf. Cic., _Hortens. fr._ 85 Or.);

it must be admitted, however, that the passage does not prove what

it is supposed to do.]

[9\10: _Frr._ 143-51 (cf. Lob. 715 ff.). Here, indeed, Orphic and

Pythagorean doctrine are mixed up inextricably. _Fr._ 143

(~Puthagorei/ôs te kai\ Orphikô=s~ Syrian.) belongs to the ~eis to\n

arithmo\n _Puthago/reios_ hu/mnos~ which is several times distinctly

so called by Proclus. (The _frr._ are in Nauck, Iamb., _VP._, p.

228. _fr._ iii). _Fr._ 147 (Lyd. _Mens._) obviously comes from the

same (Nauck, p. 234, _fr._ ix). The same is at least highly probable

of the _frr._ 144-6, 148-51. Probably what Orpheus says of the

number 12 comes from the same ~hu/mnos~ (ap. Procl. _in _Rp.__ ii,

131, 10 Kroll). Proclus, however (_in _Rp.__ 169, 25 K.), also cites

ll. 2-5 from the ~hu/mnos~ (Nauck, _fr._ iii) but this time

attributes them to an ~eis to\n arithmo\n _Horphiko\s_ hu/mnos~.

This Orphico-Pythagorean ~hu/mnos~ had at any rate nothing to do

with the (Rhaps.) Theogony of Orpheus. On the other hand, the words

~tetra/da tetrake/raton~, which acc. to Procl. _in _Rp.__ 169, 29

K., occurred ~muria/kis~ in the ~Orphikê\ theologi/a~, come from the

Theogony. They were possibly used as a title of Zagreus the ~kero/en

bre/phos~ (Nonn., _D._ vi, 165): though what is here said by Proclus

about the ~Dionusiakê\~ (i.e. of Zagreus) ~theo/tês~, viz. that it

~tetra/s estin~, was applied rather to the four-eyed Orphic _Phanes_

by Hermias (_fr._ 64 Ab.).]

[10\10: On the other hand, there is much in Orphic theology and

poetry that is taken immediately from the primitive Thracian worship

of Dionysos and absent from Pythagorean teaching. This makes it very

probable that even such _theologoumena_ as are common to Orphism and

Pythagoreanism really go back to the fanatical cult of Dionysos, or

at least were easily thence derived by religious speculation: in

this case the Orphics may well have got them from this original

source of mystic lore that was common to both parties and not by the

circuitous route of Pythagorean teaching. Orphism remained more

closely attached to the common source than did Pythagoreanism, and

may for that reason be regarded as somewhat older than its rival and

be supposed to have originated independently of it.]

[11\10: Zopyros of Herakleia, Orpheus of Kroton: Tz., _Prol. in

Aristoph._ ([p. 20, 28 Kaibel, _Com. Fr._] Ritschl, _Opusc._ i,

207); Suid. ~Orph. Krotônia/tês~ (from Asklepiades of Myrlea).]

[12\10: We may not simply take it for granted that the account given

in Dem. 18, 259-60, of the nocturnal initiations and the processions

by day through the city held by a mystical sect, is intended to

describe the secret mysteries of an _Orphic_ conventicle (as Lob.

does 646 ff., 652 ff., 695 f.). The explanation of the ~apoma/ttein

tô=| pêlô=|~ of that passage by reference to the specially Orphic

myth of Zagreus and the Titans is arbitrary in itself and hard to

reconcile with the language of Demosth. (Harp. and Phot. are

responsible for this expl.) Hardly more successful is the derivation

of the call ~a/ttês hu/ês~ from the ~a/tê~ of Dionysos (Zagreus) on

being torn to pieces by the Titans: _EM._ 163, 63. A definite

connexion undoubtedly does exist between the ~Orphika\ o/rgia~ and

the ~Saba/zia kai\ Mêtrô=|a~ (Str. 471) described by Dem.; but the

Orphics were never called worshippers of Sabazios nor their god

~Saba/zios~, and it seems likely that their secret worship was

different from the ceremonies of the ~Sabaziastai/~ that Dem. had in

view (the latter may have retained more of the primitive barbaric

ritual: cf. the ins. given in ~Eph. Arch.~ 1883, p. 245 f. = _CIA._

iv, _Supp._ ii, n. 626 b; from the end of second century B.C.).]

[13\10: See Lob., _Agl._ 235 f., 237, 242 f.]

[14\10: To attribute the practical side of Orphism to a late

degeneration {351} of the once purely speculative character of the

sect (as many have done) is a very arbitrary proceeding and quite

unjustifiable on historical grounds. The fact that a clear

description of this activity does not occur before the fourth

century (in Plato) does not prove that it did not exist earlier.

Apart from this an ~orpheotelestê/s~ named Philippos is mentioned by

Plu., _Apoph. Lac._ 224 E as a contemporary of King Leotychidas II

of Sparta (reigned 491-469). This evidence is not to be so easily

set aside, as K. O. Müller, _Introd. Scient. Myth._ 311 ff., would

like to do. The Orphic sect from the very beginning derived its

strength from its _telestic_ and _kathartic_ practices.]

[15\10: Thphr., _Ch._ 28 (16).]

[16\10: ~autou= (Orphe/ôs) me\n ei=nai ta\ do/gmata, tau=ta de/

phêsin~ (Aristot.) ~Onoma/kriton en e/pesi katatei=nai~ Arist. ~p.

philosophi/as~ _fr._ 10 [7] Rose, _Arist. Pseudepig._]

[17\10: Tatian, _Gr._ 41 (p. 42 Schw.), seems to speak only of

_redaction_ (~sunteta/chthai~) of the ~eis Orphe/a anaphero/mena~

among already existing Orphic poems as the work of Onomakritos (in

the same way Onomakr. is only the ~diathe/tês~--the arranger not the

author--of the ~chrêsmoi/~ of "Mousaios", Hdt. vii, 6). Traces of an

external linking-together of the individual poems of Orpheus in a

"redaction" are not wanting (cf. the linking-together of the poems

of the Epic Cycle or of the corpus Hesiodeum): first of all coming

in all probability the greater ~kratê/r~ (as in the enumeration of

Clem. Al., _Str._ i, 21, p. 397 P.); see Lob. 376, 417, 469.--Clem.

Al., _Str._ i, p. 397 P. (and Eus., _PE._ 10, 11, p. 495 D) is only

derived from Tatian, though Onomakr. is here definitely called the

_author_ of the ~eis Orphe/a phero/mena poiê/mata~. Onomakr. seems

also to have been simply regarded as the author of the ~Orphika/~ in

the doxographical excerpt ap. S.E. _P._ iii, 30 = _M._ 9, 361, p.

287 Mutschm.; cf. Gal., _H. Philos._ (_Dox._, p. 610, 15):

~Onoma/kritos en toi=s Orphikoi=s~.--On the other hand, in

the--admittedly incomplete--enumeration of Orphic poems in Clem.

Al., _Str._ i, 21, p. 397 P., not _one_ is attributed to Onomakr.,

and in Suid. ~Orpheu\s~ he is only given the ~chrêsmoi/~ (no

confusion with the ~chrêsmoi/~ of Mousaios is to be suspected here)

and the _~teletai/~_. Paus. (8, 37, 5) mentions (without naming

them) ~e/pê~ of Onomakr. (cf. Ritschl, _Opusc._ i, 241). Some at

least of the poetry going under the name of Orpheus must have been

ascribed to Onomakr. by Arist. (_fr._ 10 [7 Teubn.]).]

[18\10: Suid. ~Orpheu/s~, 2721 A Gaisf.]

[19\10: Onomakr. ~ei=nai tou\s Tita=nas tô=| Dionu/sô| tô=n

pathêma/tôn epoi/êsen autourgou/s~, Paus. 8, 37, 5. Lob., p. 335,

thinks this refers to the "Theogony": but no authority attributes a

single one of the several Orphic Theogonies to Onomakr. as its real

author. We should rather be inclined to think of the ~teletai/~

which is distinctly ascribed to Onomakr. and which at least dealt

with the practical side of worship: cf. Pl., _Rp._ 364 E-365 A,

~lu/seis, katharmoi/ adikêma/tôn ktl. ha\s dê\ teleta\s kalou=sin~

(but it was not that the mystical ~bi/bloi~ were _called_ ~teletai/~

as Gruppe, _Gr. Culte u. Mythen_, i, 640, mistakenly supposes: he is

otherwise quite right in his protest against Abel's treatment of the

~teletai/~). They must almost necessarily have dealt with the

reproduction of the ~pa/thê tou= Dionu/sou~ (as providing the

~hiero\s lo/gos~ to the ~drô/mena~), and, as the central idea of the

orgiastic cult, must have included the most important circumstance

of the Orphic ~teletai/~ (see D.S. 5, 75, 4; Clem. Al., _Protr._ ii,

17, p. 15 P.).]

[20\10: One of the poems (perhaps indeed the poem of the

~rhapsô|di/ai~, and in that case the ~hiero\s lo/gos~ as well) made

Orpheus distinctly appeal to a revelation made to him by Apollo:

_fr._ 49 (see Lob. 469).] {352}

[21\10: Besides the three Theogonies distinguished by Damascius

there were (apart from other more doubtful traces) at least two

other variations of the same theme: see _fr._ 85 (Alex. Aphrod.) and

_frr._ 37; 38 (Clem. Rom.); cf. Gruppe, i, 640 f.--The series of

divine rulers given by "Orpheus" acc. to Nigid. Fig. ap. Serv.

_Ecl._ iv, 10 (_fr._ 248 Ab.), conflicts with all the other

Theogonies but agrees in some particulars with Lact. i, 13 (_fr._

243). Still, this remark need not necessarily have been taken from

any Orphic "Theogony".]

[22\10: (Zeus) ~. . . prôtogo/noio chano\n me/nos Êrikapai/ou, tô=n

pa/ntôn de/mas ei=chen heê=| eni\ gaste/ri koi/lê|~, _fr._ 120 (from

the Rhapsodiai. We are accustomed to read here ~chanô/n~ with Zoëga

(_Abh._ 262 f.): but ~chanô/n~ does not mean "catching up or

devouring" [Zo.]; at most it might mean, in bad late-Greek, just the

opposite of this--"abandoning" (transitive). Lobeck's explanation (p.

519 n.) is also unsatisfactory. The word may have been originally

~_chadô/n_~.]

[23\10: The line occurred in various forms in the Theogonic poem;

_frr._ 33 (Plato?); 46 [Arist.] _de Mundo_); 123 (Rhapsod).; see

Lob. 520-32. It seems certain then (Gruppe's doubts go too far:

_Rhaps. Theog._ 704 ff.) that the line appeared in the oldest form

of Orphic Theogony and was merely borrowed thence, like so much else

that was ancient, by the Rhapsod. Theogony (i.e. the words, ~Zeu\s

kephalê\ ktl.~ which would be the oldest form, as Gruppe rightly

remarks: ~kephalê\ = teleutê/~; cf. Pl., _Ti._ 69 B). Even the

writer of the speech _against Aristogeiton A_ ([Dem.] 25), an Orphic

adherent, appears, as Lob. remarks, to allude to the words in § 8.]

[24\10: _Theokrasia_ must have belonged to Orphic theology from the

outset: Lob. 614; though the most extreme examples of this may

perhaps come from later poems: _frr._ 167; 169 (Macr.); 168 (D.S.);

201 (Rhaps.), etc., being probably derived from the "Little Krater"

(_fr._ 160), in which Chrysippos seems to be imitated (Lob. 735 and

_fr._ 164), and from the ~Diathê=kai~, _fr._ 7 (J.M.) a forgery in

Judaeo-Christian interests which nevertheless made use of many

ancient pieces of Orphic literature (the ~hiero\s lo/gos~: Lob. 450

ff., 454).--Theokrasia is met with even in the orthodox poets of the

fifth century, though they did not invent it; the "theologoi" of the

sixth century Epimenides and Pherekydes were as familiar with it as

were the Orphics; cf. Kern, _de Theogon._ 92.]

[25\10: See Append. ix.]

[26\10: It must have been chiefly the religious significance of the

gods which caused the retention of their personalities and prevented

them from fading into mere personifications of abstract ideas or

elementary powers with which _religion_ could have had nothing

further to do.]

[27\10: In the statements of the Neoplatonic writers this first

Orphic Dionysos is regularly called ~Dio/nusos~ simply (perhaps also

~Ba/kchos~: _fr._ 192). Nonnus in recounting the Orphic legend calls

him Zagreus: _D._ vi, 165; cf. ~Zagre/a geiname/nê~ (of Perseph.)

with clear allusion to Callim. _fr._ 171, ~hui=a Diô/nuson Zagre/a

geiname/nê~. Callim. here, as elsewhere, seems to have in mind the

_Orphic_ story. Tz. on Lyc. 355 calls the god of the Orphic legend

~Dio/nuson to\n kai\ Zagre/a kalou/menon. Zagreu/s~ the great Hunter

is a name of the all-absorbing Hades: thus also the _Alkmaionis fr._

3 Kink. Zagreus is identified with the Dionysos of nocturnal revelry

in E., _Kret. fr._ 472, 10 (a reference in _Ba._ 1181 Kirchh.); and

see above, chap. viii, n. 28. This Dionysos is regarded as a

~chtho/nios~ (see Hsch. ~Zagreu/s~) and this must indubitably have

been quite familiar to the poets who made him the son of Persephone:

~chtho/nios ho tê=s Persepho/nês Dio/nusos~ (Harp. ~leu/kê~). {353}

They were as clearly conscious as was Herakleitos of the fact that

~hôuto\s Ha/idês kai\ Dio/nusos~, whereas this consciousness was

undoubtedly obscured in the public ceremonial of Dionysos-worship

(to which, however, Hcl.'s saying refers). Zagreus-Dionysos was

never identified with the ~I/akchos~ of the Eleusinia (to which

Orph. _fr._ 215, l. 2 refers); though Dionysos alone was often so

identified.]

[28\10: Ouranos casts the Titans into Tartaros: _frr._ 97, 100. Acc.

to Procl. (_fr._ 205) and Arn. (196: prob. not from the Rhaps.) we

should be led to suppose that the Titans after they had torn Zagreus

in pieces were cast down to Tartaros by _Zeus_. In Arn. this is set

down side by side with the statement that the Titans were destroyed

by the lightning of Zeus (~hê Tita/nôn kerau/nôsis~, Plu., _Es.

Carn._ 1, 7, p. 996 C), though obviously incompatible with the

latter statement, as it is also (even more so) with the origin of

mankind from the ashes of the Titans which is known not only to

Olympiodoros (_ad _Phd.__, p. 68 Finckh: Lob. 566), but also to

Proclus who got it from the "Rhapsodiai" (as also did Olymp.):

Procl., _in _Rp.__ ii, 74, 29; i, 93 Kroll. It seems from this that

Proclus (and perhaps Arn.) in error ascribed the ~katatarta/rôsis~

of the Titans to Zeus instead of to Ouranos.]

[29\10: Nonn. vi, 173; O., _fr._ 195. Perhaps Proclus is right in

explaining this doubling of the god's figure in the mirror as

meaning his entrance upon the ~meristê\ dêmiourgi/a~. A reference to

a similar explanation of this ~Dionu/sou ka/topton~ occurs even in

Plot. 4, 3, 12 (Lob. 555)--? also in the strange statement made by

Marsilius Ficinus as to the crudelissimum apud Orpheum Narcissi

fatum (was Zagreus another Narcissus?) _fr._ 315; cf. Plot. 1, 6, 8.

The entry of the one origin of the universe into the multiplicity of

phenomena is first clearly referred to in the dismemberment of

Zagreus, but it would be quite like this symbol-loving poetry to

introduce the same motif in a different form with a passing

reference earlier in the poem.]

[30\10: Nonn., _D._ vi, 197 ff.]

[31\10: Paus. 8, 37, 5.]

[32\10: Procl., O., _frr._ 195, 198, 199. In any case Nonn. vi,

169 ff. is following the Rhapsodiai.]

[33\10: Callim. and Euphor. knew of the dismemberment of Dionysos by

the Titans: Tz. ad _Lyc._ 208 (from the completer version in _EM._).

In any case it is not from the Rhaps. that this legend is also known

to D.S. 5, 75, 4; Cornut. 30, p. 62, 10 Lang; Plu., _Es. Carn._ 1,

7, p. 996 C; _Is. et Os._ 35, p. 364 F; Clem. Al. (see Orph. _frr._

196, 200).--A roughly caricatured drawing on a hydria belonging to

the early fourth century found at Rhodos and made probably in Attica

appears in _JHS._ xi (1890), p. 243; where it is said to represent

the dismemberment of Zagreus as conceived by Orphics. The picture,

however, does not agree at all with the meaning thus attributed to

it; the interpretation cannot be the right one.]

[34\10: A true ~hiero\s lo/gos~, i.e. an account of the origin of

ritual acts founded upon myth or legend. (The Orphics had such

accounts, e.g. of the prohibition against being buried in woollen

clothing: Hdt. ii, 81 fin.)]

[35\10: That the tearing in pieces of the bull in the primitive

Thracian manner occurred also in the Orphic ~o/rgia~ may perhaps be

deduced from the fact that in the legend Orpheus himself is torn in

pieces by the Mainads. The priest stands in the place of the god:

what the god suffers in the ritual ~drô/mena~ that the priest

suffers too. This is frequently met with. ~Orpheu\s ha/te tô=n

Dionu/sou teletô=n hêgemô\n geno/menos ta\ ho/moia pathei=n le/getai

tô=| sphete/rô| theô=|~, Procl. _in_ {354} _Rp._ i, 175 Kr. The

ancients were fully aware that the bull torn in pieces in the

Bacchic orgies represented the god himself (and this not only in

Orphic ritual but from the beginning in the Thracian worship): the

idea is often expressed (see e.g. Firm. Mat., _Error. P.R._ vi, 5),

but nowhere more clearly than in the Orphic ~hiero\s lo/gos~.]

[36\10: The introduction of the Titans from Hellenic mythology into

the Thracian myth is clearly described as the work of Onomakritos by

Paus. 8, 37, 5.]

[37\10: ~Titê=nes kekomê=tai, hupe/rbion êtor e/chontes~, _fr._ 102.

~amei/lichon êtor e/chontes kai\ phu/sin eknomi/ên~, _fr._ 97. As

early as Hesiod the Titans are hated by their father as ~deino/tatoi

pai/dôn~ (_Theog._ 155). ~Titanikê\ phu/sis~ is the evil character

that cannot keep an oath: Pl., _Lg._ 701 C; Cic., _Lg._ iii, 5;

_impios Titanas_, Hor., _O._ 3, 4, 42.]

[38\10: This explanation of the ~diamelismo/s~ of Zagreus is often

put forward (though subtilized into a Neoplatonic sense) by those who

use the Orphic Rhapsodiai: see Lob. 710 ff. But even Plutarch has

something of the sort (_E ap. D._ 9, p. 389 A), and it cannot be

doubted that this (apart from its Platonist wrappings) was the

meaning of the legend in the mind of its first inventor. Nor can the

conception that the separate existence (multiplicity) of things

first came into the world by an act of _impiety_, have been strange

to the _theologoi_ of the sixth century: we must admit this at once

on remembering the doctrine of Anaximander that the multiplicity of

things which has arisen out of the original one ~a/peiron~ is in

itself an ~_adiki/a_~ for which it must pay "recompense and

punishment" (_fr._ 2 Mull., 9 Diels). Such personification of the

processes of nature and the reading of an ethical sense into them,

combined as it was with a quietist tendency, was much more likely to

have arisen in the fanciful minds of semi-philosophical mystics than

to have been given to them by the philosophers.]

[39\10: See the accounts given in Lob. 565 f.: they come from the

Rhapsodiai. The fact that the origin of men and the doctrine of

Metempsychosis as well were dealt with in the Rhaps. follows from

Procl. _in _Rp.__ ii, 338 Kroll. It must, however, have been from

_older_ Orphic poetry--at any rate, not from the Rhaps.--that the

story was derived by D. Chr. 30, 10 f. Plutarch, too, does at least

refer to it: ~to\ _en hêmi=n_ a/logon kai\ a/takton kai\ bi/aion hoi

palaioi\ Tita=nas ôno/masan~, _Es. Carn._ 1, 7, p. 996 C; and

possibly Opp., _H._ v, 9-10; Ael. _fr._ 89, p. 230, 19 f. Herch.

(Lob. 567 g). Even the words of Xenokrates (_fr._ 20, p. 166 Heinze)

seem to allude to this Orphic myth. Thus the Rhapsodiai in this case

also were following older Orphic teaching and poetry. Orph. _H._ 37

derives from a later age. What Nic. _Th._ 8 ff. reproduces

(mistakenly?) as Hesiodic tradition was perhaps really an echo of

Orphic poetry. Was the derivation of Man from the Titans suggested

by still earlier fancies such as e.g. meet us in passages like _h.

Hom. Ap._ 335 (137) f.: ~Titê=ne/s te theoi\ tô=n e\x _a/ndres_ te

theoi/ te~--? This is not Homeric (for all the Homeric ~patê\r

andrô=n te theô=n te~), though possibly it had a different sense

from what it had for "Orpheus".]

[40\10: Dionysos is the _last_ of the divine rulers of the world:

_frr._ 114, 190. Hence ~despo/tês hêmô=n~, Procl. _in _Crat.__, pp.

59, 114 Boiss. (though Procl. also speaks of e.g. Hermes as ~ho

despo/tês humô=n~ _in Cr._, p. 73 B.). Dionysos is the _sixth_

ruler; Zeus who came before him being the fifth: _frr._ 113 (85,

121, 122). The order given is: 1 Phanes, 2 Nyx, 3 Ouranos, 4 Kronos,

5 Zeus, 6 Dionysos. This is definitely stated by Syrian.: _fr._ 85

(Proclus follows his master: _frr._ 85, 121), and confirmed by the

fragments of the Rhapsodiai: _frr._ 86, 87, 96, 113. It seems,

however, as if Plato actually found this order (as Syrian. thought)

{355} in the Orphic Theogony which he read. It is true that as their

silence shows the Neoplatonists did not find the verse cited by

Plato in the Rhapsodiai as they knew them. (Plato's line is ~he/ktê|

d' en geneê=| katapau/sate ko/smon aoidê=s~: Plu., _E ap. D._ 15, p.

391 D, has the meaningless ~thumo/n~ instead of ~ko/smon~--did he

read ~thesmo/n~?) They were right, however, in deducing from the

line that the ancient Orphic Theogony referred to by Plato also knew

of six generations of the gods (following the Pythagorean ~te/leios

arithmo/s~?) and ended with the sixth generation. The verse was

intended doubtless by Plato himself in rather a different sense and

he only quotes it humorously (Gruppe differs; _Rhaps. Theog._ 693

f.). This passage therefore provides important evidence of the

harmony that existed between the Rhapsodiai and the oldest Orphic

Theogony in the general outlines of their construction. It is, of

course, quite a different question whether the six rulers in the

poem referred to by Plato were the same as those given by the

Rhaps.; nor can we tell whether Dionysos there occupied the last

place, though the predominance held by Dionysos in Orphic belief

makes it very probable that he did.]

[41\10: The authorities who speak of the origin of mankind from the

ashes (or the blood) of the Titans (Lob. 565 ff.) express themselves

in such a way that we are forced to suppose that they regarded this

as essentially the first appearance of men. This, however, cannot be

reconciled with what Proclus, as usual following the Rhapsodiai,

says of the golden and silver ages of mankind under Phanes and

Kronos, which then, and not till then, are followed by the third and

last race, ~to\ titaniko\n ge/nos~: see _fr._ 244 and esp. _in

_Rp.__ ii, 74 Kr. ~thnêtoi/~ in the reign of Phanes even occurs in

the line quoted by Syrian. (_in Ar. Meta._ 935a 22 Us.) _fr._ 85. It

is impossible to say whether this improvement upon the Hesiodic

legend of the Ages of Mankind actually occurred in an ancient Orphic

Theogony (the one used perhaps by Lactant.; O., _fr._ 243, 8; cf.

248), and was thence taken for the Rhapsodiai without being

reconciled with the legend of the origin of men from the ashes of

the Titans; or whether the two scarcely reconcilable accounts of the

origin of men were somehow or other made to agree. (_Fr._ 246 [Plu.]

prob. comes from a picture of the long life enjoyed by the earliest

generations of men: see Lob. 513. This picture does not necessarily

presuppose a series of several ~geneai/~ _before_ the Titanic

race.)]

[42\10: ~me/ros autou= (tou= Dionu/sou) esme/n~, Olymp. (from Orphic

doctrine) _in Pl. _Phd.__, p. 3 Finckh. ~ho en hêmi=n nou=s

Dionusiako/s estin kai\ a/galma o/ntôs tou= Dionu/sou~, Procl. _in

_Crat.__, p. 82 Boiss. The Hellenes are accustomed to make use of

the dismemberment, re-integration and resuscitation of Dionysos ~eis

to\n peri\ tê=s psuchê=s lo/gon ana/gein kai\ tropologei=n~, Orig.,

_Cels._ 4, 17, p. 21 Lo.]

[43\10: ~hoi amphi\ Orphe/a~ think that the soul has the body as a

~peri/bolon, desmôtêri/ou eiko/na~, Pl., _Crat._ 400 C. Certainly

Orphic, too (as the Schol. also say), is ~ho en aporrê/tois

lego/menos lo/gos hôs e/n tini phroura=| esmen hoi a/nthrôpoi ktl.~,

Pl. _Phd._ 62 B; see Lob. 795 f.]

[44\10: _fr._ 221 (_Phd._ 62 B with Sch.). The similar saying of

Philolaos is, as Plato's manner of recording it shows (_Phd._ 61

E-62 B) evidently derived from a saying of the Orphic ~apo/rrêta~

(and Philolaos himself appealed to the ~palaioi\ theolo/goi te kai\

ma/nties~ in confirmation of the closely connected doctrine of the

enclosure of the ~psuchê/~ in the ~sê=ma~ of the ~sô=ma~: _fr._ 23

Mull. 14 Di.). The doctrine continued to be taught by Pythagoreans:

see Euxitheos Pyth. ap. Klearch. in Ath. iv, 157 CD; Cic., _Sen._

73. It had moreover some root in popular belief and in legal usage:

see above, chap. v, n. 33.] {356}

[45\10: According to the ~Orphika\ e/pê kalou/mena~, ap. Arist. _de

An._ 1, 5, p. 410b, 28 ff.: ~tê\n psuchê\n ek tou= ho/lou eisie/nai

anapneo/ntôn pherome/nên hupo\ tô=n ane/môn~. (The ancient

commentators add nothing fresh.) ~ek tou= **ho/lou~ means simply

"out of space". The ~a/nemoi~ were regarded as daimonic powers

subordinate and related to the ~Tritopa/tores~: see above, chap. v,

n. 124. We cannot say how this conception was made to square with

the other articles of Orphic belief (purgation of souls in Hades,

etc.). It is plainly nothing but an attempt at such reconciliation

that (following the Rhapsodiai, _fr._ 224) makes the souls that pass

in death out of the bodies of men, go into Hades, while those that

have inhabited the bodies of animals fly about in the wind ~eiso/ken

auta\s a/llo apharpa/zê| mi/gdên ane/moio pnoê=|sin~. Aristotle

knows nothing of any such restriction. Plato (_Phd._ 81 D; rather

differently 108 AB) apparently making free use of Orphic ideas

regards _all_ the ~mê\ katharô=s apoluthei=sai psuchai/~ as liable

to the same fate as that allotted by the Rhapsodiai to the beasts.

(Of course it is possible to suppose that the ~psuchai/~ on being

released from Hades for a new ~ensôma/tôsis~ first of all fly about

in the wind round the dwelling places of the living and are then

breathed into a new body. This would not prevent there being a

predestined conjunction of a particular soul with the particular

~sô=ma~ corresponding to its state of purification.)--The

establishment in later Orphic poetry of the theory that the

~psuchai/~ dwelt in the air may have been assisted by the

philosophic theory of the soaring-up of the ~pneu/mata~ into their

element the aether (of which more below). This theory, though not

first put forward by the Stoics, was specially favoured by them: it

almost attained the status of a popularly accepted belief. When the

realm of the souls had thus been at least in part transferred to the

air, late Orphic poetry began to regard one of the four rivers of

the soul-world, ~Ache/rôn~, as the ~aê/r~: _frr._ 155, 156 (Rhaps.).

There is no reason to see in all this the traces of a supposed

ancient conception in which Okeanos is really a river in the sky (in

spite of Bergk's fanciful speculations in _Opusc._ ii, 691-6). The

elevation of the soul-kingdom to the sky is in Greek thought

invariably the result of comparatively late speculation. We might

even ask whether there is not Egyptian influence at work in the

transference of Okeanos (= the Milky Way?) to the sky. Such

influence would be late of course; but in Egypt the idea of the Nile

in the sky was quite familiar.]

[46\10: ~ku/klos tê=s gene/seôs~, _fr._ 226; ~ho tê=s moi/ras

trocho/s~, _rota fati et generationis_: see Lob. 797 ff.]

[47\10: ~hoi d' autoi\ pate/res te kai\ huie/es en mega/roisin

(polla/kis) êd' a/lochoi semnai\ kednai/ te thu/gatres . . .

gi/gnont' allê/lôn metameibome/nê|si gene/thlais~, _frr._ 225, 222

(Rhaps.). Here, as Lob. 797 rightly remarks, there is an allusion to

the dogma of the recurrence of exactly the same state of things in

the world. The doctrine of complete ~paliggenesi/a~ or

~**apokata/stasis hapantôn~ (see Gataker ad. M. Ant.^1, p. 385) was

closely and indeed indissolubly bound up with the doctrine of the

migration of souls. (Illogicality belongs rather to the conception

of the break in the circle caused by the secession of individual

souls.) It was therefore found among the Pythagoreans to whom it is

ascribed by Eudemos _fr._ 51 sp. (see Porph., _VP._ 19, p. 26, 23

ff. N.; used later still in a Pythagorean sense by Synes., _Aeg._ 2,

7, p. 62 f. Krab.). It was borrowed from the Pythagoreans by the

Stoa (by Chrysippos esp.), which after its usual fashion pushed the

rather bizarre fancy to pedantic extremes. (After the Stoic model is

Plot. 5, 7, and perhaps also the _genethliaci_ spoken of by Varro

ap. Aug., _CD._ 22, 28.) It is at least {357} probable in the

extreme that these ideas were first held by the Orphics and not

borrowed by them from the Stoics: there are even traces in Orphic

tradition of the great World-year (which is always closely connected

with the ~apokata/stasis tô=n hapa/ntôn~): Lob. 792 ff.]

[48\10: ~ku/klon te lê=xai kai\ anapneu=sai kako/têtos~ were the

words Proclus probably had before him: (_fr._ 226) _in _Tim.__ 330

B. The forms ~a\n lê/xai kai\ anapneu/sai~--thus rightly accented

here by Schneider--come from Procl. himself, who accommodates the

words of the original to the construction of his own sentence. We

must therefore _not_ write ~au= lê=xai~ with Gale and Lob. 800. In

this case the subject of the sentence is the praying soul; on the

other hand, in the form preserved by Simp., ~ku/klon t' allu=sai

kai\ anapsu=xai kako/têtos~, the subject is the gods to whom the

soul prays; ~psuchê/~ being object. In either form the freeing of

the soul from the circle is regarded as a grace from the gods.]

[49\10: _fr._ 76. The lines of the _Carm. Aur._ 55 ff. (Nauck, p.

207) are probably modelled on the Orphic ~ou/t' agathou= pareo/ntos

ktl.~ The point is: few are they who trouble about the salvation

that Orpheus (or Pythagoras) brings them; the ~ho/sioi~ are always a

small minority.]

[50\10: _frr._ 208, 226. ~Dio/nusos luseu/s, lu/sios, theoi\

lu/sioi~; see Lob. 809 f. and cf. _fr._ 311 (Ficinus).]

[51\10: ~Orphe/a t' a/nakt' e/chôn ba/kcheue . . . ~ E. _Hp._ 953

(N.B. ~a/nax~ not ~despo/tês~, l. 88).]

[52\10: ~Orphiko\s bi/os~, Pl., _Lg._ 782 C; Lobeck, 244 ff.]

[53\10: The Pythagorean ~e/pou theô=|, akolouthei=n tô=| theô=|~

(Iamb., _VP._ 137, from Aristoxenos) might also have been given to

the Orphics as their motto.]

[54\10: ~a/psuchos bora/~ of the Orphics: E., _Hp._ 952, Pl., _Lg._

782 CD; Lob., p. 246. This, too, is the meaning of Ar., _Ra._ 1032,

~Orpheu\s me\n ga\r teleta/s th' hêmi=n kate/deixe pho/nôn t'

ape/chesthai~, i.e. using slain animals for food. Hor., _AP._ 391

f.: silvestris homines . . . caedibus et victu foedo deterruit

Orpheus means to speak not of the ritual vegetarianism of "Orpheus",

but of the previous cannibalism of men which Orpheus had put an end

to. As this is nowhere else mentioned of Orpheus we might perhaps

regard it as mistaken allusion on the part of Horace to the passage

of Aristoph. quoted above. It is not, however, impossible that

Horace did in fact have in mind some Orphic verse which really

reported something like what he himself says of Orpheus. The Orphic

fragment [247] ap. S.E., _M._ ii, 31; ix, 15 (Lob., p. 246), may

have arisen in the same way; see Maass, _Orpheus_, 77. (The

well-known lines of Kritias [S.E., _M._ ix, 54 _fr._ 25 Di.] and

Moschion, p. 813 Nauck, can hardly have anything to do with Orphism

and should rather be connected with the theories of the Sophists and

Demokritos--followed later by the Epicureans--about the gradual

evolution of human civilization from miserable and savage origins;

and _not_ from a "golden age" of which the Orphics too spoke.)]

[55\10: Prohibition to bury corpses in woollen garments: Hdt. ii, 81

(in each case in order that nothing ~thnêsei/dion~ might cling to the

departed). Prohibition against eating eggs: Lob. 251 (eggs are part

of the offering to the dead and the food of the ~chtho/nioi~, and so

forbidden: so rightly explained by Lob. 477). It was forbidden in

Orphic poetry, as well as Pythagorean, to eat beans: Lob. 251; Nauck

on Iamb., _VP._, p. 231 f.: the reason here, too, being that beans

as part of the offerings to the dead, _putantur ad mortuos

pertinere_ (Fest.); see Lob. 254 and Crusius, _Rh. Mus._ 39, 165.

The same or similar reasons are everywhere at work to cause the

eating of certain foods to be forbidden {358} both by the

Pythagorean ordinances and in the mystical cult of the ~chtho/nioi~:

it is because they are used as offerings to the beings of the lower

world, ~pro\s ta\ peri/deipna kai\ ta\s proklê/seis tô=n nekrô=n~,

or even because they have names which, like ~ere/binthos~ or

~la/thuros~, recall ~e/rebos~ and ~lê/thê~: Plu., _QR._ 95, p. 286

E. The purified state requires above all complete separation from

anything connected with the realm of the dead and the divinities of

the dead.]

[56\10: Cf. _fr._ 208.]

[57\10: The soul is confined within the body (according to those

~amphi\ Orphe/a), hôs di/kên didou/sês tê=s psuchê=s hô=n dê\ he/neka

di/dôsin~, Pl., _Crat._ 400 C. The exact nature of this "guilt" of

the soul is not explained in our remains of Orphic literature. The

point, however, is chiefly that the life within the body is

according to their doctrine not in accordance with but contrary to

the proper nature of the soul.]

[58\10: ~sumpo/sion tô=n hosi/ôn~, Pl., _Rp._ 363 C. ~hosi/ous

mu/stas~, Orph., _H._ 84, 3; see above, chap. vi, n. 18.]

[59\10: ~psucha\s _athana/tas_ kata/gei Kullê/nios Hermê=s gai/ês es

keuthmô=na pelô/rion~ _fr._ 224 (it would be vain to look for an

example of ~atha/natos~ used as adjective to ~psuchê/~ in Homer).

Hermes ~chtho/nios~ leads the souls down into Hades and also upwards

again (to fresh ~ensômatô/seis~): Orph., _H._ 57, 6 ff. (For the

Pythagorean Hermes see D.L. viii, 31.)]

[60\10: Especially in the ~kata/basis eis Ha/idou~ (Lob. 373; cf.

above, chap. vii, n. 3). The descent lay through the chasm at

Tainaron: see above, chap. v, n. 23, and cf. Orph., _Arg._

41.--Other Orphic poems may also have dealt with such matters:

~_polla\_ memutholo/gêtai peri\ tô=n en Ha/idou pragma/tôn tô=| tê=s

Kallio/pês~, Jul., _Or._ vii, p. 281, 3 Hertl. [216 D].]

[61\10: ~lu/seis kai\ katharmoi/~ of the living and even the dead

carried out by Orphic priests: Pl., _Rp_. 364 E. Reward of the

initiated in Hades: cf. the anecdote of Leotychidas II in Plu.,

_Apophth. Lac._, p. 224 E; and of Antisthenes in D.L. vi, 4. Those

who feared the bite of Kerberos or the water-carrying to the leaky

cask (see App. iii) sought protection against such things in

~teletai\ kai\ katharmoi/~: Plu. _N.P.Q. Suav. Epic._ 27, p. 1105 B.

Hope of immortality for the soul rests on the _Dionysiac_ mysteries

acc. to Plu., _Cons. ad Ux._ 10, p. 611 D.]

[62\10: It is significant that the belief in a judgment and

punishment of ~psuchai/~ is based in [Pl.] _Ep._ vii, 335 A not on

popular acceptance or the statements of poets but on ~palaioi/ te

kai\ _hieroi\ lo/goi_~; cf. above, chap. vii, n. 13.]

[63\10: _fr._ 154 (punishment in Hades of those guilty of crimes

against their own parents? _fr._ 281).]

[64\10: See above, chap. vii, n. 15.]

[65\10: ~deina\ perime/nei~: Pl., _Rp._ 365 A; cf. _fr._ 314

(Ficinus).]

[66\10: _fr._ 208 (Rhaps.) ~o/rgia/ t' ektele/sousi (a/nthrôpoi),

_lu/sin progo/nôn athemi/stôn maio/menoi;_ su\~ (sc. Dionysos) ~de\

toi=sin~ (dat. commodi), ~e/chôn kra/tos, hou=s k' ethe/lêstha

lu/seis e/k te po/nôn chalepô=n kai\ apei/ronos oi/strou~ (of

continual rebirth). That this belief in the efficacy of prayers for

the "poor souls of the departed" belonged to the earlier stratum of

Orphism follows from Pl., _Rp._ 364 BC, E, 365 A, where he speaks of

~lu/seis te kai\ katharmoi/~ of the Orphics which promised to

deliver living _and dead_ from the ~adikê/mata autou= ê\

_progo/nôn_~. (It has been wrongly attempted to fasten the same

belief on Plato himself, in the Phaedo.)--For Gnostic and early

Christian ideas of the same kind see Anrich, _D. Ant.

Mysterienwesen_, 87, 4; 120 n. But even in the Rigveda (7, 35, 4) we

may find the thought that the "pious works of the pious" can help

others to salvation (Oldenberg, _Rel. d._ {359} _Veda_, 289).

Religious pietism seems to produce the same effects everywhere.]

[67\10: ~polloi\ me\n narthêkopho/roi ktl.~ was an _Orphic_ verse.

Lob. 809, 813.]

[68\10: _fr._ 154.]

[69\10: ~ho kekatharme/nos te kai\ tetelesme/nos ekei=se (eis

Ha/idou) aphiko/menos meta\ theô=n oikê/sei~, _fr._ 228 (Pl.).]

[70\10: ~sumpo/sion tô=n hosi/ôn~ in Hades, ~me/thê aiô/nios~ their

reward: Pl., _Rp._ 336 CD (cf. Dieterich, _Nekyia_, 80 n.). Plato

there mentions Mousaios and his son (Eumolpos) as authorities for

these promises and contrasts with them, by a ~hoi de/~, others who

made different promises; perhaps referring to other Orphic poems

(cf. _fr._ 227). But Mousaios, himself always closely connected in

Plato with Orpheus (_Rp._ 364 E, _Prot._ 316 D, _Ap._ 41 A, _Ion_,

536 B), here simply means "Orphic poetry". A literature of

essentially Orphic character went under his name. So Plu., _Comp.

Cim. et Luc._ 1 seems right in substituting simply ~to\n Orphe/a~

for the ~Mousai=os~ named in Pl.]

[71\10: Pl., _Lg._ 870 DE; then in more detail for a special case

but derived from same source: ~no/mô| . . . tô=| nu=n dê/~ (i.e. in

870 DE) ~lechthe/nti~ 872 DE, 873 A.--The idea of such a

religio-juridical _talio_ was popular also in Greece: see below

(chap. xi, n. 44). Frequently for instance in curses of vengeance

the wish is that the doer may suffer exactly the same thing as that

which he has done to his victim. Exx. from Soph. (best is _Tr._ 1039

f.) given by G. Wolff in S., _Aias_, 839; cf. A., _Cho._ 309 ff.,

_Ag._ 1430.--As a Neoplatonic idea: Plot. 3, 2, 13; Porph. and Iamb.

ap. Aen. Gaz., _Theophr._, p. 18 B.]

[72\10: We may, however, suppose that the ideas of the Orphics

corresponded with the statements of Empedokles, Plato, etc., about

the series of births.]

[73\10: ~sô=ma--sê=ma~ is Orphic: Pl., _Crat._ 400 C.]

[74\10: Complete escape from the world of birth and death is

distinctly anticipated for the pious Orphic in _fr._ 226, ~ku/klon

te lê=xai ktl.~ The other and positive side completing this negative

promise is not clearly supplied for us by any fragment. (We never

even hear distinctly of the return of the individual soul to the one

Soul of the World; though certain Orphic myths--probably of late

origin--seem to suggest such a doctrine of Emanation and final

Remanation.)]

[75\10: _frr._ 1, 81. The moon was regarded as inhabited, like the

world, by Pythagoreans too (esp. Philolaos) and also by Anaxagoras.]

[76\10: This at least was the belief of Pythagoreans and later of

Platonics: see _Griech. Roman_, 269; Wyttenb. on Eun. _VS._ 117. But

the idea occurs as early as in the _Ti._ of Plato, esp. in 42 B. It

may have been long familiar to Greek popular belief (as to other

peoples; cf. Tylor, ii, 70), and reached Orphics from that source.

(Similar though not quite the same is the popular belief ~hôs

aste/res gigno/meth' ho/tan tis apotha/nê|~, Ar., _Pa._ 833 f.,

which the Greeks shared with all the nations of the earth: cf.

"Pythagoras" ap. _Comm. Bern. in Lucan_, 9, 9.)--No opinion can be

built upon the statement of Ficinus (_fr._ 321).]

[77\10: Orphic poetry must have varied in its account of what

happened to the dismembered limbs of Zagreus-Dionysos. That the

Titans tore the god limb from limb seems to have been common to all

versions of the Theogonic poem (see nn. 28, 41; p. 341). But whereas

according to one account the Titans then devoured the god (except

the heart) and from the mixed Titanic and Dionysiac elements of

their bodies after they had been destroyed by lightning the race of

men had its origin (p. 341); according to others the mangled limbs

{360} of the god were brought by Zeus to Apollo who buried them

taking them "on to Parnasos", i.e. at Delphi: see Orph. _fr._ 200

(Clem. Al.) and so, too, Callim. _fr._ 374. The Rhapsodiai gave the

first version in detail, but also preserved an account resembling

the second (see _frr._ 203, 204: the ~heni/zein ta\ meristhe/nta

tou= Dionu/sou me/lê~ there refers probably to the reunion of the

collected limbs for the purpose of burial and not for the

restoration of the dead god to life. This is also possibly the

meaning of the ~Dionu/sou melô=n kollê/seis~ in Jul., _Chr._, p.

167, 7 Neum. But Or., _Cels._ 4, 17, p. 21 Lom., speaks of the

_reanimation_ of Dionysos ~suntitheme/nou~ after the dismemberment).

This second account, where it occurs alone, of course excludes the

_Anthropogony_ from the Titans' ashes. The second version

unmistakably connects itself with the Delphic legend of the grave of

Dionysos at the foot of Apollo's tripod (see above, pp. 97 f.) as K.

O. Müller observed, _Introd. Scient. Myth._ 242. It does, in fact,

accord in this instance, but apart from this it has no connexion

whatever with the real Delphic legend about the disappearance of

Dionysos into the underworld and his periodic return to this world.

(See above, chap. viii, n. 28. The Orphic and Delphic legends are

elaborately compared and worked in together as though they were

separate fragments of a single whole in Lübbert's book, _de Pindaro

theologiae Orph. censore_: Ind. Sch. Bonn. Lib. 1888, p. xiii

f.--with shocking results and no intrinsic justification.) Whether

this second version was the one put forward by Onomakritos is

uncertain. In any case, both accounts are much older than the

Rhapsodiai, in which, it appears, they were included side by side

and superficially harmonized (--only the limbs of the god _not_

devoured by the Titans being buried acc. to this version). Besides

these two versions there may have been another Anthropogony

differing from that given in the first account: the existence of

something of the kind is perhaps to be deduced from what the

Rhapsodiai themselves have to tell about the golden and silver

generations of mankind (see above, n. 41).]

[78\10: Of the Thracian Mysoi ~le/gei ho _Poseidô/nios_ kai\

empsu/chôn ape/chesthai~ (which Pythagoras is said to have learnt

from Zalmoxis, Str. 298) ~kat' euse/beian, dia\ de\ tou=to kai\

thremma/tôn; me/liti de\ chrê=sthai kai\ ga/lakti kai\ turô=|,

zô=ntas kath' hêsuchi/an; dia\ de\ tou=to kalei=sthai theosebei=s te

kai\ kapnoba/tas~ (perh. ~kapnobo/tas~ acc. to an ancient

conjecture). ~ei=nai de/ tinas tô=n Thra|kô=n hoi\ chôri\s gunaiko\s

zô=sin, hou\s kti/stas kalei=sthai, anierô=sthai/ te dia\ timê\v

kai\ met' adei/as zê=n~, Str. 296. The _religious_ character of this

asceticism is seen in the words ~kat' euse/beian~ and the name

~theosebei=s~; also in the word ~anierô=sthai~, which are all used

of the ~kti/stai~ as of a monastic order. Jos., _AJ._ 18, 1, 5, says

of the Essenes ~zô=si d' oude\n parêllagme/nôs all' ho/ti ma/lista

emphe/rontes Dakô=n~ (i.e. ~Thra|kô=n, Getô=n~: _Getae, Daci Romanis

dicti_, Plin., _NH._ iv, 80) ~toi=s polistai=s kaloume/nois~. In any

case the same Thracian ascetics are meant whom Poseidonios

(literally translating a Thracian word) calls the ~kti/stai~. Thus,

they are said like the Essence to live without women, eat no meat,

and in the practice of various other asceticisms live together and

have all things in common.--It cannot be certainly decided how old

this Thracian asceticism was, its exact connexion with Dionysiac

religion, and whether it could or did give any impulse in the

direction of asceticism to the Orphics. (Following Hom., ~N~ 4 ff.,

many told similar stories of the nomadic Skythoi: see Ephor., _frr._

76, 78; or of the fabulous Argimpaioi, Hdt. iv, 23; Znb., _Pr._ 5,

25, p. 129, 1, etc. _Griech. Roman_, 203.--~apochê\ empsu/chôn~

occurred also among the Atlantes and certain Indian races: Hdt. iv,

184; iii, 100.)] {361}

[79\10: ii, 123. His words make it plain that the _Greek_ teachers

of transmigration of souls whom he has in mind (Pherekydes,

Pythagoras, Orphics, Empedokles) had no idea of the Egyptian origin

of that doctrine (_Rh. Mus._ 26, 556, 1).]

[80\10: The Egyptian monuments show no knowledge of a general

transmigration of souls, due to a law of nature or the decree of the

gods. We can see very well, however, what it was in Egyptian

traditions that might seem like a doctrine of transmigration to

Herodotos (cf. Wiedemann, **_Erläut. zu Herodots 2. B._ p. 457 f.).]

[81\10: It is sufficient to refer to Tylor's collections: ii, 3

ff.--In antiquity the Greeks met with a doctrine of Transmigration,

apart from Thrace, among the Keltic races (Caes., _BG._ 6, 14, 5;

D.S. 5, 28, 6; cf. Timagenes ap. Amm. Marc. 15, 9, 8). This was the

sole reason why Pythagoras was made the pupil of the Gallic Druids:

Alex. Polyh. ap. Clem. Al., _Str._ i, p. 355/6 P., etc.]

[82\10: That it was not unnatural for the Greeks also to have the

conception of the migration of the soul from its first body to some

other suitable second or third body (entry of ~tê=s tuchou/sês

psuchê=s eis to\ tucho\n sô=ma~ acc. to Arist.) may be seen from the

fact that in Greek popular tales of the transformation of men into

beasts the idea regularly prevails that while the body changes in

such cases the "soul" remains the same as before. Thus, explicitly

in Hom. ~k~ 240 (cf. Sch. there and 329); cf. also Ov., _M._ ii,

485; Nonn., _D._ v, 322 f.; Aesop., _F._ 294 (Halm): [Luc.] _Asin._

13, 15 init.; Apul., _M._ iii, 26 init; Aug., _CD._ 18, 18, p. 278,

11 ff. Domb., etc. (In all transformation stories this is regularly

implied and gives the point to the story.) This is true from the

earliest times onward, down to Voltaire's muleteer who was turned

into a mule et du vilain l'âme terrestre et crasse à peine vit

qu'elle eut changé de place.)--The beasts also have a ~psuchê/~:

e.g. ~x~ 426.]

[83\10: Brahmins, Buddhists, Manichaean, etc.]

[84\10: A fixed term for "transmigration of souls" does not seem to

have been offered by Orphic teaching. It was later called

~paliggenesi/a~ (a term which did not exactly fit the real meaning

of the idea: this seems to have been its oldest name (cf. ~hai

psuchai\ _pa/lin gi/gnontai_ hek tô=n tethneô/tôn~, Pl., _Phd._ 70

C), and remained its most ceremonious one. "_Pythagoras_" _non_

~metempsu/chôsin~ _sed_ ~paliggenesi/an~ _esse dicit_: Serv., _A._

iii, 68. ~metensôma/tôsis~, is not uncommon (frequent in Hippol.,

_RH._, p. 12, 53 D.-S.; 266, etc.). The word most commonly used

among ourselves, ~metempsu/chôsis~, is among the Greeks precisely

the least usual; it occurs e.g. in D.S. 10, 6, 1; Gal. iv, 763 K.;

Tertul. _de An._ 31; Serv., _A._ vi, 532; 603; Suid. s.v.

~Phereku/dês~. ~metempsuchou=sthai~ occurs in Sch., A.R. i, 645.]

{{362}}