Orphic mosaics were found in many late-Roman villas.
Orphism is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices[1] originating in theancient Greek andHellenistic world, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poetOrpheus, who descended into theGreek underworld and returned. Orphism has been described as a reform of the earlierDionysian religion, involving a re-interpretation or re-reading of the myth of Dionysus and a re-ordering ofHesiod'sTheogony, based in part onpre-Socratic philosophy.[2]
The suffering and death of the god Dionysus at the hands of theTitans has been considered the central myth of Orphism. According to this myth, the infant Dionysus is killed, torn apart, and consumed by the Titans. In retribution,Zeus strikes the Titans with a thunderbolt, turning them to ash. From these ashes, humanity is born. In Orphic belief, this myth describes humanity as having a dual nature: body (Ancient Greek:σῶμα,romanized: sôma), inherited from the Titans, and a divine spark or soul (Ancient Greek:ψυχή,romanized: psukhḗ), inherited from Dionysus.[3] In order to achievesalvation from the Titanic, material existence, one had to be initiated into the Dionysian mysteries and undergoteletē, a ritual purification and reliving of the suffering and death of the god.[4] The uninitiated (Ancient Greek:ἀμύητος,romanized: amúētos), they believed, would bereincarnated indefinitely.[5]
Orphism is named after the legendary poet-heroOrpheus, who was said to have originated theMysteries of Dionysus.[6] However, Orpheus was more closely associated withApollo than to Dionysus in the earliest sources and iconography. According to some versions of his mythos, he was the son of Apollo, and during his last days, he shunned the worship of other gods and devoted himself to Apollo alone.[7]
Poetry containing distinctly Orphic beliefs has been traced back to the 6th century BC or at least 5th century BC, and graffiti of the 5th century BC apparently refers to "Orphics".[8][9][10] TheDerveni papyrus allows Orphic mythology to be dated to the end of the 5th century BC,[11] and it is probably even older.[12] Orphic views and practices are attested as byHerodotus,Euripides, andPlato. Plato refers to "Orpheus-initiators" (Ὀρφεοτελεσταί), and associated rites, although how far "Orphic" literature in general related to these rites is not certain.[13]
Orphic views and practices have parallels to elements ofPythagoreanism, and various traditions hold that the Pythagoreans orPythagoras himself authored early Orphic works; alternately, later philosophers believed that Pythagoras was an initiate of Orphism. The extent to which one movement may have influenced the other remains controversial.[14] Some scholars maintain that Orphism and Pythagoreanism began as separate traditions which later became confused and conflated due to a few similarities. Others argue that the two traditions share a common origin and can even be considered a single entity, termed "Orphico-Pythagoreanism."[15]
The belief that Pythagoreanism was a subset or direct descendant of Orphic religion existed by late antiquity, when Neoplatonist philosophers took the Orphic origin of Pythagorean teachings at face value.Proclus wrote:
all that Orpheus transmitted through secret discourses connected to the mysteries, Pythagoras learnt thoroughly when he completed the initiation at Libethra in Thrace, and Aglaophamus, the initiator, revealed to him the wisdom about the gods that Orpheus acquired from his mother Calliope.[16]
The Orphics were an ascetic sect; wine, to them, was only a symbol, as, later, in the Christian sacrament. The intoxication that they sought was that of "enthusiasm," of union with the god. They believed themselves, in this way, to acquire mystic knowledge not obtainable by ordinary means. This mystical element entered into Greek philosophy with Pythagoras, who was a reformer of Orphism as Orpheus was a reformer of the religion of Dionysus. From Pythagoras Orphic elements entered into the philosophy of Plato, and from Plato into most later philosophy that was in any degree religious.[18]
Study of early Orphic and Pythagorean sources, however, is more ambiguous concerning their relationship, and authors writing closer to Pythagoras' own lifetime never mentioned his supposed initiation into Orphism, and in general regarded Orpheus himself as a mythological figure.[15] Despite this, even these authors of the 5th and 4th centuries BC noted a strong similarity between the two doctrines. In fact, some claimed that rather than being an initiate of Orphism, Pythagoras was actually the original author of the first Orphic texts. Specifically,Ion of Chios claimed that Pythagoras authored poetry which he attributed to the mythical Orpheus, and Epigenes, in hisOn Works Attributed to Orpheus, attributed the authorship of several influential Orphic poems to notable early Pythagoreans, including Cercops.[15] According toCicero,Aristotle also claimed that Orpheus never existed, and that the Pythagoreans ascribed some Orphic poems toCercon (seeCercops).[19]
Belief inmetempsychosis was common to both currents, although it also seems to contain differences. Where the Orphics taught about a cycle of grievous embodiments that could be escaped through their rites, Pythagoras seemed to teach about an eternal, neutral metempsychosis against which personal actions would be irrelevant.[20]
TheNeoplatonists regarded the theology of Orpheus, carried forward through Pythagoreanism, as the core of the original Greek religious tradition.Proclus, an influential neoplatonic philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers of late antiquity, says
"For all the Grecian theology is the progeny of the mystic tradition of Orpheus; Pythagoras first of all learning from Aglaophemus the rites of the Gods, but Plato in the second place receiving an all-perfect science of the divinities from the Pythagoric and Orphic writings."
Nymphs Listening to the Songs of Orpheus (1853) byCharles Jalabert
A number of Greek religious poems inhexameters were attributed to Orpheus, though only a few such works are extant. Lost Orphic poems, which may date back as far as the sixth century BC, survive only inpapyrus fragments or in quotations.[22]
The Orphic theogonies are works which present accounts of the origin of the gods, much like theTheogony ofHesiod. These theogonies are symbolically similar to Near Eastern models.
The main story has it thatZagreus, Dionysus' previous incarnation, is the son ofZeus andPersephone. Zeus names the child as his successor, which angers his wifeHera. She instigates theTitans to murder the child. Zagreus is then tricked with a mirror and children's toys by the Titans, who shred him to pieces and consume him. Athena saves the heart and tells Zeus of the crime, who in turn hurls a thunderbolt on theTitans. The resulting soot, from which sinful mankind is born, contains the bodies of the Titans and Zagreus. The soul of man (the Dionysus part) is therefore divine, but the body (the Titan part) holds the soul in bondage. Thus, it was declared that the soul returns to a host ten times, bound to thewheel of rebirth. Following the punishment, the dismembered limbs of Zagreus were cautiously collected byApollo who buried them in his sacred landDelphi.
There are two Orphic stories of the rebirth ofDionysus: in one it is the heart of Dionysus that is implanted into the thigh ofZeus; in the other Zeus has impregnated the mortal womanSemele, resulting in Dionysus's literal rebirth. Many of these details differ from accounts in the classical authors.Damascius says that Apollo "gathers him (Dionysus) together and brings him back up".
The main difference seems to be in the primordial succession:[23]
In the Eudemian Theogony (5th century BC),[24] the first being to exist is Night (Nyx).[25]
In the Rhapsodic Theogony, it starts withChronos ('Unageing Time', different from Kronos, Zeus' father) who gives birth toEther andChaos, and then lays the egg from whichPhanes/Protogonos arises.
In the Hieronyman Theogony, the egg arises from soil (more specifically 'the matter out of which earth was coagulated') and water, and it is 'Unageing Time' Kronos which arises from it, and gives birth to Ether, Chaos and Erebus. Then Kronos lays a new egg in Chaos, from which arises Protogonos.
In the Derveni Theogony, the Night lays the egg from which Protogonos arises, he then give birth to Ouranos & Gaia, which give birth to Kronos, himself father of Zeus who end up swallowing the primordial egg of Protogonos and recreating the Universe in the process.
But there are other differences, notably in the treatment of Dionysos:[23]
In the Rhapsodic Theogony, Dionysos is dismembered and cooked by the Titans before Zeus struck them with lightning (mankind then arises from the soot, and Dionysos is resurrected from his preserved heart).
The Derveni Papyrus being fragmentary, the story stops without having mentioned him.
The Hieronyman Theogony does not include Dionysos being eaten by the Titans, as both sources for the work (Damascius and Athenagoras) do not mention it, despite the latter describing the war on the Titans.
In later centuries, these versions underwent a development where Apollo's act of burying became responsible for the reincarnation of Dionysus, thus giving Apollo the titleDionysiodotes (bestower of Dionysus).[26] Apollo plays an important part in the dismemberment myth because he represents the reverting ofEncosmic Soul back towards unification.[27][28]
In Orphic theogonies, the Orphic Egg is acosmic egg from which hatched the primordialhermaphroditic deityPhanes/Protogonus (variously equated also withZeus,Pan,Metis,Eros,Erikepaios andBromius), who in turn created the other gods.[29] The egg is often depicted with the serpent-like creature,Ananke, wound about it. Phanes is the golden winged primordial being who was hatched from the shiningcosmic egg that was the source of the universe.
The Derveni papyrus, found inDerveni,Macedonia (Greece), in 1962, contains a philosophical treatise that is an allegorical commentary on an Orphic poem in hexameters, a theogony concerning the birth of the gods, produced in the circle of the philosopherAnaxagoras, written in the second half of the fifth century BC. Fragments of the poem are quoted making it "the most important new piece of evidence about Greek philosophy and religion to come to light since the Renaissance".[30] The papyrus dates to around 340 BC, during the reign ofPhilip II of Macedon, making it Europe's oldest surviving manuscript.
Surviving written fragments show a number of beliefs about theafterlife similar to those in the "Orphic" mythology aboutDionysus' death and resurrection. Bone tablets found inOlbia (5th century BC) carry short and enigmatic inscriptions like: "Life. Death. Life. Truth. Dio(nysus). Orphics." The function of these bone tablets is unknown.[32]
Gold-leaf tablets found in graves fromThurii,Hipponium,Thessaly andCrete (4th century BC and after) giveinstructions to the dead. Although these thin tablets are often highly fragmentary, collectively they present a shared scenario of the passage into the afterlife. When the deceased arrives in the underworld, he is expected to confront obstacles. He must take care not to drink ofLethe ("Forgetfulness"), but of the pool ofMnemosyne ("Memory"). He is provided with formulaic expressions with which to present himself to the guardians of the afterlife. As said in thePetelia tablet:
I am a son of Earth and starry sky. I am parched with thirst and am dying; but quickly grant me cold water from the Lake of Memory to drink.[33]
Other gold leaves offer instructions for addressing the rulers of the underworld:
Now you have died and now you have come into being, O thrice happy one, on this same day. TellPersephone that the Bacchic One himself released you.[34]
TheOrphic Argonautica (Ancient Greek:Ὀρφέως Ἀργοναυτικά) is aGreekepic poem dating from the 4th century CE of unknown authorship.[35] It is narrated in the first person in the name ofOrpheus and tells the story ofJason and theArgonauts. The narrative is basically similar to that in other versions of the story, such as theArgonautica ofApollonius Rhodius, on which it is probably based. The main differences are the emphasis on the role of Orpheus and a more mythological, less realistic technique of narration. In theArgonautica Orphica, unlike in Apollonius Rhodius, it is claimed that theArgo was the first ship ever built.
^Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture by Marilyn B. Skinner, 2005, page 135, "[…] of life, there was no coherent religious movement properly termed 'Orphism' (Dodds 1957: 147–9; West 1983: 2–3). Even if there were, […]"
^A. Henrichs, "'Hieroi Logoi' and 'Hierai Bibloi': The (Un) Written Margins of the Sacred in Ancient Greece," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 101 (2003): 213-216.
^Sandys, John, Pindar. The Odes of Pindar including the Principal Fragments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1937.
^Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, Rituales órficos (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2006);
^Proclus, Commentary on the Republic of Plato, II, 338, 17 Kern 224.
^Janko, Richard (2006). Tsantsanoglou, K.; Parássoglou, G.M.; Kouremenos, T. (eds.)."The Derveni Papyrus".Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Studi e testi per il 'Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini'.13. Florence: Olschki.
^Numerous tablets contain this essential formula with minor variations; for the Greek texts and translations, seeGraf & Johnston 2007 pp. 4–5 (Hipponion, 400 BC), 6–7 (Petelia, 4th century BC), pp. 16–17 (Entella, possibly 3rd century BC), pp. 20–25 (five tablets from Eleutherna, Crete, 2nd or 1st century BC), pp. 26–27 (Mylopotamos, 2nd century BC), pp. 28–29 (Rethymnon, 2nd or 1st century BC), pp. 34–35 (Pharsalos, Thessaly, 350–300 BC), and pp. 40–41 (Thessaly, mid-4th century BC)
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