Chapter L: Appendix: IX

THE GREAT ORPHIC THEOGONY

The information about a coherent Orphic Theogony and Anthropogony which has come down to us from the statements of Neoplatonic philosophers and their contemporaries, is derived, as Lobeck very rightly concluded, from the ~en tai=s _rhapsô|di/ais_ Orphikai=s theologi/a, hê\n kai\ hoi philo/sophoi diermêneu/ousin~ (Damasc., _Princ._, p. 380 K.). This last statement means that they were explained in lectures given by the heads of the Platonic school since the time of Syrianos (~Orphikai\ sunousi/ai~ of Syrian.: Procl., _in Tim._ 96 B; Scholia of Proclus on Orpheus, ~ei kai\ mê\ eis pa/sas ta\s _rhapsô|di/as_~: Marin., _V. Procl._ 27). Written commentaries were also published, more particularly in order to prove the ~sumphôni/an Orphe/ôs, Puthago/rou kai\ Pla/tônos~ (Syrianos wrote a book with this title, wrongly ascribed to Proclus by Suidas: see R. Schöll on Procl. _in Rp._, p. 5. Probably the work of Syr. ~eis tê\n Orphe/ôs theologi/an~ is the source of Orph., _frr._ 123-4, which are traced back in the ~Theosophi/a~, § 50, to ~Suriano\s en toi=s heautou= ponê/masin~. From Syr. also probably comes the citation from Orpheus ~en tê=| teta/rtê| rhapsô|di/a|~, ib., § 61). The older Neoplatonists before Syrianos took little notice of the Orphica. Plotinos gives no quotation at all (though perhaps an allusion in 4, 3, 12; see Lob., p. 555), Iamblichos quotes nothing from immediate acquaintance, Porphyrios, who read everything, gives a little (_frr._ 114; 123 Euseb. from Porph.; 211) and what he does give certainly comes from the Rhapsodiai. In fact, {597} the Neoplatonics as a whole when they quote Orpheus from their own knowledge (and do not, for example, simply write "Orpheus" instead of "Pythagoras": see above, chap. x, n. 9) use the Rhapsodiai _only_, as Lobeck rightly maintains, p. 466 (Abel did not realize this, to the detriment of his collection of the _frr._). The title of the poem they used can hardly have been ~Theogoni/a~. (This seems to occur as a title in _fr._ 188 [Clem. Al. from auct. ~p. klopê=s~]. In _fr._ 108 it is only a description of contents; _fr._ 310 is spurious. In Suidas, Gaisford's MSS., we do indeed read of a ~theogoni/a, e/pê "as'"~: but the figure indicating the number of lines corresponds most suspiciously with that of the previous ~onomastiko/n~, and in any case would be insufficient for the great length of the ~rhapsô|di/ai~.) It seems extremely probable (as Lobeck already suspected, p. 716, 726) that the simple description: an Orphic poem divided into several Rhapsodiai, ~_hieroi\ lo/goi_ en rhapsô|di/ais kd'~ (Suid.), was the real title of the poem, which consisted of several ~rhapsô|di/ai~. This ~hiero\s lo/gos~ (the plural only means that there were several books) is, however a different one (Lobeck missed this, p. 716) from the ~hiero\s lo/gos~ which Epigenes (ap. Clem. Al., _Str._ i, 21, p. 144 P.) attributed to the Pythagorean Kerkops. (And again when Suid. attributes the 24 Rhaps. to the Thessalian Theognetos or to Kerkops he also means the _old_ ~hiero\s lo/gos~ not divided into Rhaps., and confuses this with the later and much extended ~hiero\s lo/gos~.) The older ~hiero\s lo/gos~ is that alluded to by Cic., _ND._ i, 107, and prob. also by Plu., _Smp._ 2, 3, 2, p. 636 D (_fr._ 42); the quotation in _EM._ (_fr._ 44) from the 8th Bk. refers to the later ~hiero\s lo/gos~. But it is certain that the ~hiero\s lo/gos~ in 24 Bks., the poem possessed by the Neoplatonists, from which by far the greater number of our fragments are taken, was not a work of the sixth century, written for instance (as Lobeck was inclined to think, 683 f.) by Onomakritos. It is even untrue--regrettably enough we might add--that as the Neoplatonists presumed (and Lobeck believed in consequence: p. 508, 529 f., 602, 613) Plato knew and made use of the "Rhapsodies". (This emerges with particular plainness from Gruppe's study of the question in _Jb. Philol. Supp._ xvii, 689 ff.). And when this is gone no other evidence for the earlier date of the Orphic Theogony in this form is left. And in the very few passages in which a real coincidence (and not a doubtfully assumed one) exists between the Rhapsodies and Pherekydes, Herakleitos, Parmenides (see Lob., p. 532; Kern, _Theogon._, p. 52; Gruppe, p. 708) or Empedokles, the poet of the Rhapsodies is the borrower not the creditor. The age in which he lived cannot be precisely determined; the fact that Neoplatonic writers are the first to quote him does not settle the question; it is uncertain whether he lived after (as I think) or before the (otherwise unknown) Hieronymos whose statement about an Orphic Theogony is quoted by Damasc., _Princ._ 381 f. K. In any case Gruppe (p. 742) has correctly appreciated the character of the bulky poem (equalling or even surpassing the length of the Iliad), when he says that it consists in the main of a loosely connected patchwork of older Orphic tradition. {598} There are many points in which agreement between the Rhapsodies and older Orphic teaching and poetry is still demonstrable; lines from older Orphic poems were taken over unaltered; subjects from older Orphic Theogonies were combined, sometimes without regard for their divergent character; different versions of the same motif occur together. Thus we have the ~kata/posis~ (modelled eventually upon Hesiod) twice over: in the first version Zeus swallows Phanes, in the second the heart of Zagreus. Both mean the same thing; the devouring of the heart of Zagreus may perhaps belong to the older Orphic legendary material, the devouring of Phanes to the later. The personality of ~Pha/nês~, however, cannot have been unknown even to the older stratum of Orphic poetry. D.S. 1, 11, 3, quotes a line of "Orpheus", which certainly was not taken from the Rhaps., in which ~Pha/nês~ is mentioned (and identified with Dionysos). And in a gold tablet, folded up with the tablet bearing an inscription of Orphic character, _I. Sic. et It._ 642, and found in the same grave near Sybaris, there occurs in addition to other (illegible) matter a list of divine names which includes that of _~Pha/nês~_ (and also ~Prôto/gonous~ here apparently distinguished from ~Pha/nês~ with whom this figure of Orphic theology is generally identified): see Comparetti, _Notizie degli scavi di antichità_, 1879, p. 157; 1880, p. 156. This establishes the existence of this figure of Orphic mythology as early as the third cent. B.C. (the prob. date of these tablets).--We may therefore employ the facts derived from the Rhapsodies with some confidence for the reconstruction of Orphic poetry and doctrine at those points at least in which coincidence with older Orphic teaching and the fantastic creatures of Orphic theology can still be proved. [I leave these remarks exactly as they stood in the first edition of this book, for they still fully correspond to my own opinion. Others in the meanwhile have expressed divergent views, esp. Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, i, p. 539. But that Gruppe's proof of the fact that Plato did not know the Rhapsodist Theogony is "wholly unsuccessful", is something which no one has yet sought to show upon intelligible _grounds_. Until such a disproof is forthcoming the belief in the early date of the Rhapsodies has no real ground on which to stand.]