46 κύκλος τῆς γενέσεως, fr. 226; ὁ τῆς μοίρας τροχός, rota fati et generationis: see Lob. 797 ff.
47 οἱ δ’ αὐτοὶ πατέρες τε καὶ υἱέες ἐν μεγάροισιν (πολλάκις) ἠδ’ ἄλοχοι σεμναὶ κεδναί τε θύγατρες . . . γίγνοντ’ ἀλλήλων μεταμειβομένῃσι γενέθλαις, 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 παλιγγενεσία or ἀποκατάστασις ἁπαντων (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 ἀποκατάστασις τῶν ἁπάντων): Lob. 792 ff.
48 κύκλον τε λῆξαι καὶ ἀναπνεῦσαι κακότητος were the words Proclus probably had before him: (fr. 226) in Tim. 330 B. The forms ἂν λήξαι καὶ ἀναπνεύσαι—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 αὖ λῆξαι 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., κύκλον τ’ ἀλλῦσαι καὶ ἀναψῦξαι κακότητος, the subject is the gods to whom the soul prays; ψυχή being object. In either form the freeing of the soul from the circle is regarded as a grace from the gods.
49 fr. 76. The lines of the Carm. Aur. 55 ff. (Nauck, p. 207) are probably modelled on the Orphic οὔτ’ ἀγαθοῦ παρεόντος κτλ. The point is: few are they who trouble about the salvation that Orpheus (or Pythagoras) brings them; the ὅσιοι are always a small minority.
50 frr. 208, 226. Διόνυσος λυσεύς, λύσιος, θεοὶ λύσιοι; see Lob. 809 f. and cf. fr. 311 (Ficinus).
51 Ὀρφέα τ’ ἄνακτ’ ἔχων βάκχευε . . . E. Hp. 953 (N.B. ἄναξ not δεσπότης, l. 88).
52 Ὀρφικὸς βίος, Pl., Lg. 782 C; Lobeck, 244 ff.
53 The Pythagorean ἔπου θεῷ, ἀκολουθεῖν τῷ θεῷ (Iamb., VP. 137, from Aristoxenos) might also have been given to the Orphics as their motto.
54 ἄψυχος βορά of the Orphics: E., Hp. 952, Pl., Lg. 782 CD; Lob., p. 246. This, too, is the meaning of Ar., Ra. 1032, Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ’ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε φόνων τ’ ἀπέχεσθαι, 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 Prohibition to bury corpses in woollen garments: Hdt. ii, 81 (in each case in order that nothing θνησείδιον 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 χθόνιοι, 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 χθόνιοι: it is because they are used as offerings to the beings of the lower world, πρὸς τὰ περίδειπνα καὶ τὰς προκλήσεις τῶν νεκρῶν, or even because they have names which, like ἐρέβινθος or λάθυρος, recall ἔρεβος and λήθη: 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 Cf. fr. 208.
57 The soul is confined within the body (according to those ἀμφὶ Ὀρφέἀ), ὡς δίκην διδούσης τῆς ψυχῆς ὧν δὴ ἕνεκα δίδωσιν, 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.
59 ψυχὰς ἀθανάτας κατάγει Κυλλήνιος Ἑρμῆς γαίης ἐς κευθμῶνα πελώριον fr. 224 (it would be vain to look for an example of ἀθάνατος used as adjective to ψυχή in Homer). Hermes χθόνιος leads the souls down into Hades and also upwards again (to fresh ἐνσωματώσεις): Orph., H. 57, 6 ff. (For the Pythagorean Hermes see D.L. viii, 31.)
60 Especially in the κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου (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: πολλὰ μεμυθολόγηται περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου πραγμάτων τῷ τῆς Καλλιόπης, Jul., Or. vii, p. 281, 3 Hertl. [216 D].
61 λύσεις καὶ καθαρμοί 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 τελεταὶ καὶ καθαρμοί: 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 It is significant that the belief in a judgment and punishment of ψυχαί is based in [Pl.] Ep. vii, 335 A not on popular acceptance or the statements of poets but on παλαιοί τε καὶ ἱεροὶ λόγοι; cf. above, chap. vii, n. 13.
63 fr. 154 (punishment in Hades of those guilty of crimes against their own parents? fr. 281).
65 δεινὰ περιμένει: Pl., Rp. 365 A; cf. fr. 314 (Ficinus).
66 fr. 208 (Rhaps.) ὄργιά τ’ ἐκτελέσουσι (ἄνθρωποι), λύσιν προγόνων ἀθεμίστων μαιόμενοι· σὺ (sc. Dionysos) δὲ τοῖσιν (dat. commodi), ἔχων κράτος, οὗς κ’ ἐθέλησθα λύσεις ἔκ τε πόνων χαλεπῶν καὶ ἀπείρονος οἴστρου (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 λύσεις τε καὶ καθαρμοί of the Orphics which promised to deliver living and dead from the ἀδικήματα αὐτοῦ ἢ προγόνων. (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 πολλοὶ μὲν ναρθηκοφόροι κτλ. was an Orphic verse. Lob. 809, 813.
68 fr. 154.
69 ὁ κεκαθαρμένος τε καὶ τετελεσμένος ἐκεῖσε (εἰς Ἅιδου) ἀφικόμενος μετὰ θεῶν οἰκήσει, fr. 228 (Pl.).
70 συμπόσιον τῶν ὁσίων in Hades, μέθη αἰώνιος 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 οἱ δέ, 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 τὸν Ὀρφέα for the Μουσαῖος named in Pl.
71 Pl., Lg. 870 DE; then in more detail for a special case but derived from same source: νόμῳ . . . τῷ νῦν δή (i.e. in 870 DE) λεχθέντι 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 We may, however, suppose that the ideas of the Orphics corresponded with the statements of Empedokles, Plato, etc., about the series of births.
73 σῶμα—σῆμα is Orphic: Pl., Crat. 400 C.
74 Complete escape from the world of birth and death is distinctly anticipated for the pious Orphic in fr. 226, κύκλον τε λῆξαι κτλ. 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 frr. 1, 81. The moon was regarded as inhabited, like the world, by Pythagoreans too (esp. Philolaos) and also by Anaxagoras.
76 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 ὡς ἀστέρες γιγνόμεθ’ ὅταν τις ἀποθάνῃ, 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 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 ἑνίζειν τὰ μερισθέντα τοῦ Διονύσου μέλη 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 Διονύσου μελῶν κολλήσεις in Jul., Chr., p. 167, 7 Neum. But Or., Cels. 4, 17, p. 21 Lom., speaks of the reanimation of Dionysos συντιθεμένου 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 Of the Thracian Mysoi λέγει ὁ Ποσειδώνιος καὶ ἐμψύχων ἀπέχεσθαι (which Pythagoras is said to have learnt from Zalmoxis, Str. 298) κατ’ εὐσέβειαν, διὰ δὲ τοῦτο καὶ θρεμμάτων· μέλιτι δὲ χρῆσθαι καὶ γάλακτι καὶ τυρῷ, ζῶντας καθ’ ἡσυχίαν· διὰ δὲ τοῦτο καλεῖσθαι θεοσεβεῖς τε καὶ καπνοβάτας (perh. καπνοβότας acc. to an ancient conjecture). εἶναι δέ τινας τῶν Θρᾳκῶν οἳ χωρὶς γυναικὸς ζῶσιν, οὓς κτίστας καλεῖσθαι, ἀνιερῶσθαί τε διὰ τιμὴv καὶ μετ’ ἀδείας ζῆν, Str. 296. The religious character of this asceticism is seen in the words κατ’ εὐσέβειαν and the name θεοσεβεῖς; also in the word ἀνιερῶσθαι, which are all used of the κτίσται as of a monastic order. Jos., AJ. 18, 1, 5, says of the Essenes ζῶσι δ’ οὐδὲν παρηλλαγμένως ἀλλ’ ὅτι μάλιστα ἐμφέροντες Δακῶν (i.e. Θρᾳκῶν, Γετῶν: Getae, Daci Romanis dicti, Plin., NH. iv, 80) τοῖς πολισταῖς καλουμένοις. In any case the same Thracian ascetics are meant whom Poseidonios (literally translating a Thracian word) calls the κτίσται. 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., Ν 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.—ἀποχὴ ἐμψύχων occurred also among the Atlantes and certain Indian races: Hdt. iv, 184; iii, 100.) 361
79 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 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 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 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 τῆς τυχούσης ψυχῆς εἰς τὸ τυχὸν σῶμα 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. κ 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 ψυχή: e.g. ξ 426.
83 Brahmins, Buddhists, Manichaean, etc.
84 A fixed term for “transmigration of souls” does not seem to have been offered by Orphic teaching. It was later called παλιγγενεσία (a term which did not exactly fit the real meaning of the idea): this seems to have been its oldest name (cf. αἱ ψυχαὶ πάλιν γίγνονται ἑκ τῶν τεθνεώτων, Pl., Phd. 70 C), and remained its most ceremonious one. “Pythagoras” non μετεμψύχωσιν sed παλιγγενεσίαν esse dicit: Serv., A. iii, 68. μετενσωμάτωσις, is not uncommon (frequent in Hippol., RH., p. 12, 53 D.-S.; 266, etc.). The word most commonly used among ourselves, μετεμψύχωσις, 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. Φερεκύδης. μετεμψυχοῦσθαι occurs in Sch., A.R. i, 645.