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"Orpheus and Orphism

Alberto Bernabé

Introduction

In classical Antiquity some religious poems written in hexameters were attributed to Orpheus, a mythical singer, who supposedly had the ability to charm all living creatures with his music. The most relevant aspects of his mythical biography were his traveling as an Argonaut with the mission of counteracting the song of the Syrens and his descent into Underworld searching for his deceased wife. Greeks believed Orpheus to be a real character and attributed to him the foundation of rites, especially mysteries; thus, he was converted into the prophet of a religious movement with imprecise boundaries. Also he was credited as the author of different poems on religious topics. Orphic texts may have been transmitted in the private sphere of mysteries: initiation rites related to the pursuit of salvation in the afterlife. Some scholars suggest that they maintained their integrity through the centuries because the ancient texts were recycled with only slight variations and were scarcely influenced by literary “trends” and characteristics of the following historical periods. Toward the end of the 19th century and early 20th century there was an excessive tendency to label a diverse range of texts under the term “Orphic.” This excess led to a critical reaction, starting in the 1930s, that was skeptical even of the idea that Orphism existed as a religious movement, and for some time Orphic texts received little attention from academics. However, the discovery of a series of fundamental texts (Gold Tablets, Derveni papyrus) led to a revival of the topic in the 1980s, when the interest in Orphic literature and religion increased exponentially even though the discussion of the content, reach, and degree of cohesion of this movement is still debated. From the 1990s to the beginning of the 21st century there have been new editions of the texts and new proposals to interpret them. The debates continue among scholars about the nature and even existence of Orphism, as well as about the interpretation of particular Orphic texts.

General Overviews

Guthrie 1993 is an excellent, albeit outdated, introductory study of Orphism. Linforth 1941 appears to be critical regarding the existence and outreach of Orphism, but he develops a noteworthy and precise philological analysis of the texts. Parker 1995 is shorter, but it is more updated and targeted at a non-specialized audience. Sorel 1995 is a short popular book that shows the common characteristics of a book from the Que sais-je? collection. Bernabé and Casadesús 2008 is a broad handbook in two volumes where specialists from several countries discuss different aspects of the question, from mythology to religion, philosophy, and literature, with special attention to the relation between Orphism with texts of several Oriental literatures, and with Greek literature and philosophy. Edmonds 2013 represents an opposed interpretation denying the existence of Orphism as a religious movement.

Bernabé, Alberto, and Francesc Casadesús, eds. 2008. Orfeo y la tradición órfica: Un reencuentro. Madrid: Akal.Systematic study of the myth of Orpheus, the Orphic works, religious beliefs, rituals, and the link between the Orphic texts and other authors written by various scholars. The bibliography is abundant and the state of the question presented for each theme is updated. Essential handbook for the study of each of the topics discussed.

Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III. 2013. Redefining Ancient Orphism: A study in Greek religion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139814669This work challenges the idea that Orphism existed as a coherent religious movement, suggesting instead that “Orphic” was a label applied to a variety of texts and rituals for a range of different reasons over the ages. It proposes a new way to evaluate the evidence labeled as Orphic in Antiquity.

Guthrie, William Keith Chambers. 1993. Orpheus and Greek religion: A study of the Orphic movement. Foreword by Larry J. Alderink. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.The only introductory handbook of Orphism in English. Although it precedes the publication of fundamental texts, it is nevertheless an excellent introduction to the question: well structured, informative, and easy to read. Originally published in 1935.

Linforth, Ivan M. 1941. The arts of Orpheus. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.This work limits the evidence for Orphism to things explicitly “sealed with the name of Orpheus.” In response to Guthrie’s study, Linforth concludes that this evidence shows no coherent religious movement.

Parker, Robert. 1995. Early Orphism. In The Greek world. Edited by Anton Powell, 483–510. London: Routledge.DOI: 10.4324/9780203269206 Concise but well-documented presentation about Orphism in the first stages of its history. Targeted at non-specialists but contains basic bibliographic references.

Sorel, Reynal. 1995. Orphée et l’orphisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Clear and useful book as a first point of access to the question."

Source: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661-0173.xml

Alberto Bernabé Pajares, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, is a Spanish philologist and Classicist with important work on Orphism, ancient Greek epic and Indoeuropean linguistics.

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Radcliffe G. Edmonds Redefining Ancient Orphism. A Study in Greek Religion, Cambridge Unuverity Press 2013

This book examines the fragmentary and contradictory evidence for Orpheus as the author of rites and poems to redefine Orphism as a label applied polemically to extra-ordinary religious phenomena. Replacing older models of an Orphic religion, this richer and more complex model provides insight into the boundaries of normal and abnormal Greek religion. The study traces the construction of the category of 'Orphic' from its first appearances in the Classical period, through the centuries of philosophical and religious polemics, especially in the formation of early Christianity and again in the debates over the origins of Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A paradigm shift in the study of Greek religion, this study provides scholars of classics, early Christianity, ancient religion and philosophy with a new model for understanding the nature of ancient Orphism, including ideas of afterlife, cosmogony, sacred scriptures, rituals of purification and initiation, and exotic mythology.

Radcliffe G. Edmonds, Bryn Maur College

I reproduce below the review and criticism of Edmond's book and of its "minimalist"-sceptical approach by Robert Parker, University of Oxford (https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014.07.13/ ):

"This learned and intelligent work sums up Radcliffe Edmonds’ studies since 1999, in which he has sought to give us an Orphism without original sin, without, that is, the myth that mankind carries a burden of inherited guilt because they were born from the Titans who devoured the baby Dionysus, son of Persephone. From that starting point he has been led to study almost every aspect of what it is still convenient to call Orphism, whatever reservations the term demands. In many respects he is highly sceptical in the tradition of I.M. Linforth’s The Arts of Orpheus (1941). His Orphism has no fixed traditions, no central myths, nor could it have them, given the unstable channels through which religious traditions were diffused in the ancient world. He acknowledges a debt to Burkert’s ‘ground-breaking’ article of 1982 (62 n. 183), which substituted a model of ‘independent religious craftsmen’ for one of a religious sect. The label ‘Orphic’, he writes, is as vague as ‘New Age’, ‘a set of ideas loosely defined by their distance from mainstream religious activity’ (5). In the denial of core beliefs, he follows a path diametrically opposed to that of Alberto Bernabé in his monumental edition of Orphic remains (2004-5) and many associated articles; courteous polemic against Bernabé runs through the book.

Yet he does not jettison ‘Orphism’ completely. If one thinks in terms not of an essence but of Wittgenstein’s family resemblances, the family of Orphic rituals and ideas is marked for Edmonds by (claims to) ‘extraordinary purity, sanctity, antiquity, and strangeness’. Whereas Linforth rejected all evidence not explicitly associated with the name of Orpheus, Edmonds is prepared to consider ideas not so designated but comparable to others that are: lacking rigorous definition, the label Orphic is one that a given author might or not apply in a given case. Thus he acknowledges the Gold Leaves as Orphic not on the basis of supposed allusions in them to specific Orphic doctrines (which he denies), but because they display quirky ‘Orphic’ claims to especial purity and kinship with the gods. He also makes use of this licence in relation to Plato Cratylus 400b-c, the famous passage on soul-body relations where ‘some’ are said to derive σῶμα from σῆμα whereas Orpheus1 relates it to σῴζω, as a receptacle that either guards or protects the soul: for Edmonds even the view of ‘some’ is so unorthodox that a different writer on a different day might well have ascribed it to Orpheus.

Part 1 (three chapters) treats ‘Definitions old and new’. Particularly instructive here, for one not familiar with the Christian and (above all) neo-Platonic authors so central and so problematic for our knowledge of Orphism, is the highlighting of the important recent work in this area by Brisson, Jourdan and Herrero. Edmonds inclines to a much later date (4 th c. AD) for the Orphic ‘Rhapsodies in 24 books’ than does West (2 nd c. AD), and distances himself from the brilliant gymnastics of West’s very precise reconstructions of various earlier Orphic theogonies.

Part 2 treats ‘Orphic scriptures’, and develops several unorthodox arguments. In chapter 4, ‘ Orphic textuality. A hubbub of books’, he quotes the two much-quoted early testimonia which speak of Orphic (or Musaean) books contemptuously in association with rites (Eur. Hipp. 953-4, Pl. Resp. 364b-365a), and argues that they reveal nothing specific about Orphism: the suspicion of books here displayed is just part of a more general 5 th /4 th c. suspicion of the emerging medium of the book. I doubt that there was such a general suspicion — some references to books in the period are neutral, and in some developing sciences such as medicine there was no visible conflict between between orality and textuality ; however that may be, what is at issue in the Orphic references is not book technology per se but the claim to authority implied in the use of supposedly inspired books. A better point to press home against those such as the reviewer who have spoken of Orphism as almost a ‘religion of the book’ is the insistence in the sources on a multiplicity of books. Edmonds’ real target is the idea of a fixed canon of Orphic ideas accepted by all participants in Orphic rites. While insisting on the distinctive character of Orphic textuality, I would concede that the views proposed in Orphic poems about religious matters were not ordered or canonized or policed. This religion of many books was not a religion of the book.

Edmonds also tries a new approach to the difficult problem of the stance of the author of the Derveni papyrus.2 He reads the papyrus as a sophistic display, like the exegesis of Simonides’ poem in Plato’s Protagoras, an attempt by the author to outbid his rivals in the Orpheus industry; for the remarks on sacrifices and purification show this author too to be a ritual practitioner: ‘his treatise is aimed at winning clients in the public marketplace, not at showing a select group of sectarians the secret of salvation’ (129). Yet the Derveni author also seeks to establish a distance between himself and those ‘who make a profession out of rites’; it is not clear that he speaks as one such himself.

In chapter 5, ‘Orphic hieroi logoi. Sacred texts for the rites’, Edmonds points out that hymns were regularly performed in ritual contexts, and that Orpheus was famous as a composer of Hymns : the relation of Orphic poetry to ritual was not then so exceptional as is generally supposed. (Arguments against what he calls ‘the Orphic exception’ run through the book.) But there is no evidence that Orphic poems were sung chorally, and all known Orphic poetry is in hexameters, not a sung or communal metre. The point that Orpheus was credited with Hymns is correct, but is weakened if Betegh is right, as Edmonds himself thinks, that the poem quoted in the Derveni papyrus was itself a hexameter ‘hymn’. He goes on to dispute the standard notion that the ‘Rhapsodies in 24 books’ assembled previous Orphic writings into a coherent form; this could rather have been a medley like the collection of Sibylline oracles. I do not venture to enter this territory, beyond noting that the lack of complete consistency within the attested fragments does not prove that coherence was not the aim.

Chapter 6, ‘ Orphic mythology. The content of Orphic poems’, surveys the wide variety of themes and rituals associated with Orpheus, particularly those concerning Demeter;3 the point is to wean us from a fixation on the myth of the dismemberment of Dionysus as supposedly the key Orphic myth. This is salutary, though a more rigorous distinction between rites said to have been founded by Orpheus and themes supposedly treated in actual Orphic poems would have been helpful. He stresses the diversity of the topics supposedly sung about by Orpheus as described by Apollonius Rhodius and in the late Orphic Argonautica; the dismemberment of Dionysus is not among them, but that argument is double-edged given that undeniable Orphic themes such as the cosmic egg and the swallowing of the world by Zeus are absent as well.

Part 3 ’Orphic doctrines, or the pure from the pure?’, brings us to specific beliefs, though its conclusion has already been announced in the last sentence of Part 2: ‘There was no fixed set of Orphic myths or doctrines, no Orphic mythology, just a bewildering array of rituals and myths to which different ancient authors and audiences, at different times and for different reasons, gave the magical name of Orpheus (191)’. Chapter 7, ‘Orphic purity, piety or superstition?’ allows an obsessive concern with purity to be characteristic of Orphism, but insists that it is ordinary concern (about one’s own or one’s ancestors’ transgressions) taken to an extreme, not a concern with a pollution of quite different origin in the crime of the Titans. Edmonds denies en passant that the Olbia bones attest persons self-designated as ’Ορφικοί, and that the vegetarian ‘Orphic life’ mentioned by Plato was ever led by any historical Greek. Chapter 8, ‘Life in the afterlife’, plays down Orphism’s supposed obsession with that phase of existence; he has to try (p. 268) to limit the scope of Diodorus’ statement (1.96.4-5) that Orpheus introduced ‘mythmaking about Hades’ from Egypt. Such a concern was not, he argues, exclusive to Orphism nor particularly emphasised within it. He exploits here Sourvinou-Inwood’s argument that the inert condition of the souls in Odyssey 11 is untypical even within the text of Homer; it was not left to Orphism to introduce the possibility of a ‘lively afterlife’. But how ‘lively’ is ‘lively’? There is a considerable gap between the possibility of the dead having some awareness of events happening in the world of the living, and an eager hope of good times to come, ‘the symposium of the blessed’ and eternal drunkenness associated with Musaeus or Orpheus by Plato and Plutarch. Edmonds allows quite a range of atypical views about the soul to be labelled Orphic, on the basis inter alia of the ‘family resemblance’ view of Cratylus 400 B-C noted above, but argues that they show concern about the soul’s status in the here and now, not the afterlife. But one can scarcely divide the two things so sharply.

With chapter 9, ‘Original sin or ancestral crimes: Zagreus and the concern with purification’, we come to the heart of the matter, or rather to what Edmonds strongly denies to be the heart of the matter: the supposed birth of mankind from the remains of the Titans thunderbolted in punishment for the dismemberment of Dionysus. Edmonds argues that the narrative sequence in question occurs only in the neo-Platonist Olympiodoros in the sixth century AD ( In Phaed. 1. 3-6), though the individual elements are attested earlier; when Proclus speaks of ‘the mythical punishment of the Titans and the birth of mortals from them’ ( In Rempubl. II. 338) he will be speaking rather of a different tradition (discussed on pp. 369-70) that humans emerged from the defeated Titans after the Titanomachy. Edmonds stresses that even Olympiodoros does not make the point that, as descendants of the guilty Titans, we humans are also guilty. Olympiodoros does, by contrast, argue that a portion of divinity is present in us, via that fragment of Dionysus ingested by the guilty Titans, but several scholars have wondered whether that detail may be his own elaboration. Edmonds goes further and argues that the dismemberment-thunderbolting of Titans-anthropogony sequence is itself a fabrication by Olympiodoros. For one not well versed in Olympiodoros this claim is not easy to judge; I merely note that in speaking of a fragment of Dionysus within mankind, Olympiodoros was drawing out an implication of an existing story, not constructing a new narrative sequence in the way postulated by Edmonds for the anthropogony.

If Edmonds is right about Olympiodoros, the whole understanding of Orphism in terms of a primal offence against Dionysus is rendered void and there is no need to debate whether or not earlier texts allude to it. But he tackles such supposed allusions none the less, and shows that several are non-probative. Some remain more obstinate. Edmonds does not counter Dodds’ point ( The Greeks and the Irrational, 176 n. 132) that in Laws 701b-c Plato speaks of men reverting to ‘the so-called old Titanic nature’, as if it were originally theirs; Cicero’s view ( Leg. 3.2.5) that the reference is to the Titanomachy, not to a myth of our descent from the Titans, cannot, pace p. 329, determine what Plato intended. Again, H.J. Rose argued (after Tannery ) that the myth of human descent from the Titans who dismembered Dionysus son of Persephone is implied by Pindar’s reference (fr. 133 Snell) to the blessed lot in the afterlife of those ‘from whom Persephone accepts ποινά for ancient grief’, the grief caused by the murder of her son — a grief otherwise unattested, as Edmonds stresses, but which she can be assumed to have felt. Edmonds argues that the more obvious ancient grief associated with Persephone is that caused by her rape by Plouton (though even in this case the grief that is most stressed is her mother’s). But mortals do not owe Persephone compensation for an offence committed by one god with the connivance of another. Edmonds’ counter is twofold. He argues that Pindar elsewhere uses ποινά and related words not in its original sense of ‘compensation paid by an offender’ but more loosely as reward, payment. In the particular fragment, however, the verb ‘accept’ (δέχεσθαι) strongly suggests a relation between an offender and an offended party, who may or may not accept the proffered ποινά. He also argues that Kore’s myth is comparable to other myths about girls whose path to normal marriage is obstructed by death, and who receive cult as appeasement/compensation from persons not responsible for their sufferings. But we do not know such rites (some of which can probably be differently interpreted) from contemporary sources. The crucial idea of vicarious compensation is created by modern interpretation, not directly attested; the bizarre notion of trans-species compensation (mortals paying for a god’s crime) does not find a parallel.

Another stubborn text is the second line of the Gold Leaf from Pelinna ( OF 485-6 Bernabé), which instructs the newly dead person : ‘tell Persephone that Bacchos himself has released you’. For Edmonds the juxtaposition of the two gods here (and in OF 598 T Bernabé, ‘those being initiated to Dionysus and Kore in Orpheus’) is a chance product of Persephone’s role as goddess of the underworld and Dionysus’ as the god who provides ritual release.4 But the line has much more bite if the indirect victim of an ancient crime is being told that the speaker has been set free by the direct victim of that crime himself.

A reconstruction based on three words of Pindar, five of Plato, one line of one Gold Leaf and a text written a millennium or so later is manifestly fragile. But an Orphic notion of a primal fall would not be as isolated as Edmonds implies: Empedocles tells in his own words how his journey through a cycle of incarnations was caused by a crime in his past life. The important parallel figure of Empedocles is strangely absent, except on points of detail, from Edmonds’ account. A further point may strike the reader only when stepping back from Edmonds’ powerful negative arguments: even for him, mankind is born from the guilty Titans, at least in the neo-Platonic reading of Orpheus; all that he has done is to change the crime leading to the punishment and our creation from the crime against Dionysus to that against the gods at large (see above on Proclus In Rempubl. II. 338). Edmonds will counter that the myth in question is one of many designed to explain the origin of mankind, that it is not exclusive to Orphism, and that its primary purpose is aetiological, not soteriological. But he himself quotes the gloomy and clearly orphically-tinged conclusions drawn from it by a pessimist imagined by Dio Chrysostom ( Or. 30.10-11): whatever its origin, it invited re-interpretation in such terms.

Suppose one follows Edmonds in removing mankind’s descent from the slayers of Dionysus from our picture of Orphism: what then? We are still left with the extraordinary wild Orphic variants on theogonic myth to try to understand; in particular, the point of the Titans’ crime against the baby Dionysus has become obscure. We are still left with Orphic doctrines of the soul that imply a drastic rejection of accepted Greek views about life in the body. There is still an association with vegetarianism. There is still a descent from Titans which may have left us polluted. There are still ‘so-called Orphic and Bacchic’ burial rites that are seen by Herodotus (2. 81) as being in fact ‘Pythagorean and Egyptian’, i.e. outside Greek norms; an inscription from Cumae which reserves burial in a particular plot to βεβαχχευμένοι (cited by Edmonds on p. 224) confirms, remarkably, that religious practice could shape the individual in a way that remained practically relevant after the rite was over. Orphism surely is exceptional within Greek religion — or perhaps one should rather say ‘early Orphism’, with M.P. Nilsson. The link between books and rites so marked in the early testimonia fades away in the hellenistic period, and Orphism virtually disappears as a distinct and dynamic force in lived religion , until it re-emerges in late antiquity in a quite new form.

As will have become clear, I cling — habit or obstinacy perhaps — to several aspects of a pre-Edmonds vision of Orphism. But let me stress that this is a lucid, powerful and thoroughly instructive work, a major contribution.

Notes

1. Plato’s expression οἱ ἀμφὶ Ὀρφέα probably means no more than this (cf. S.L. Radt, ZPE 38, 1980, 47-58).

2. He accepts the author as Orphic, partly on the basis of his broad ‘family resemblance’ definition of the phenomenon: ‘It is his claims to special knowledge about purification, sacrifice, divination and other ritual matters, as well as his attribution of religious authority to Orpheus, that mark the Derveni author as Orphic’ (137).

3. He accepts (174-5) that P. Berol. 13044 attests an Orphic hymn to Demeter. But the verses quoted in the papyrus all derive from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Orphic elements only intrude in the prose commentary. This is rather a case of appropriation to the name of Orpheus of a work of different origin.

4. Edmonds seems to me to underplay the specific connection between Orphika and Bakchika. Though it is true that Orpheus is sometimes said to have founded rites of Demeter, we never find a textual juxtaposition comparable to Herodotus’ ‘Orphic and Bacchic’ (2.81)."

Robert Parker is British historian, specializing in ancient Greek religion and epigraphy

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“Hours of Étienne Chevalier”, Tours c. 1452-1460

NY, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1975.1.2490

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Radcliffe G. Edmonds (editor) The 'Orphic' Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further along the Path, Cambridge University Press 2011

"Overview

The 'Orphic' gold tablets, tiny scraps of gold foil found in graves throughout the ancient Greek world, are some of the most fascinating and baffling pieces of evidence for ancient Greek religion. This collection brings together a number of previously published and unpublished studies from scholars around the world, making accessible to a wider audience some of the new methodologies being applied to the study of these tablets. The volume also contains an updated edition of the tablet texts, reflecting the most recent discoveries and accompanied by English translations and critical apparatus. This survey of trends in the scholarship, with an up-to-date bibliography, not only provides an introduction to the serious study of the tablets, but also illuminates their place within scholarship on ancient Greek religion."

I reproduce also the review of this volume by Alexis Pinchard, CNRS, France (https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011.10.54/):

"Edmonds has produced a coherent volume of six previously published and five new papers about what were once called “Orphic” gold tablets, authored by both prominent and less established scholars (Alberto Bernabé, Hans Dieter Betz, Claude Calame, Thomas M. Dousa, Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Chistopher A. Faraone, Fritz Graf, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Ana I. Jiménez Cristóbal, Dirk Obbink, Christoph Riedweg, Yannis Z. Tzifopoulos). These inscribed tablets, which have been discovered since 1879 in graves throughout South Italy, Crete, and Thessaly, have no parallel in the manuscript tradition, and they are now essential sources for the knowledge of Greek religion, especially concerning personal eschatology and mystery cults. Edmonds has added in this volume a new critical edition and original translations of the Greek texts of every known gold leaf (part I), along with a synoptic description of the graves in which each tablet has been discovered. What follows is a useful history of scholarship, a list of the principal editions and a concordance with other reference editions. The whole book is endowed with an index nominum (English words), an index locorum and an exhaustive bibliography (800 references). Papers previously published in other languages are translated into English, and all papers have been updated in order to make cross-references possible as well as to correlate with the reference system of Edmonds’ new edition.

The papers faithfully reflect the broad diversity of the problems, views, and methods that the study of the gold tablets have raised. They are organized according to a polemical — but still argumentative — dialogue concerning the question of whether the tablets are really Orphic or not, and, more fundamentally, whether Orphism really was a unified religious and literary tradition or not. Orpheo-skeptics (Edmonds) coexist along with Pan-Orphists (Bernabé, Graf); advocates for an Orphic epic hieros logos as archetype for the tablets text (Riedweg) are placed side- by-side with those who emphasize the autonomous characteristics of the ritual dionysiaca (Calame). The reader is invited to draw his or her own conclusions.

Compared with the recent editions of gold tablets by F. Graf, S. I. Johnston and A. Bernabé,1 Edmonds’ work does not introduce new texts (the tablet from Lesbos, mentioned in GJ 28, is still missing). But Edmonds sometimes suggests important new readings. A positive and negative critical apparatus allows the reader to evaluate these interpretations. For example, concerning B1.11 = GJ 2 = OF 476, Edmonds proposes to read καὶ τότ’ ἔπειτα [τέλη σὺ μεθ’] ἡρώεσσιν ἀνάξει[ς] instead of the generally accepted καὶ τότ’ ἔπειτ’ ἄ[λλοισι σὺ μεθ’] ἡρώεσσιν ἀνάξει[ς], which is based on parallel formulae in Homeric epics and hymns. Actually, one may interpret the verb ἀνάξει[ς] as a future from ἀνάσσω, “to rule”, or from ανάγω, “to celebrate”. Edmonds’ reading draws an interesting correlation with D1 and D5 (GJ 26a and 28 = OF 485 and 493a) where there is an allusion to some τέλη for the initiate. But, quite inconsistently, following here the Greek text as established by Bernabé, he translates D1 as “And you will go beneath the earth, having celebrated rites just as the other blessed ones”, instead of “And below the earth there are ready for you the same prizes [ or rites] as for the other blessed ones”.2 However, it should be noted that the idea that there are rites even in the afterlife, which constitute the archetype of the terrestrial initiation ritual and the community in which the deceased become happy, is evidenced elsewhere in texts related to Greek mystery religion (e.g. Ps.-Plato, Axiochos 37d).

Only the new essays are discussed below.

In his own paper, Edmonds sharply criticizes both Bernabé and Jiménez’s assertion that each of the gold tablets is similarly Orphic and Riedweg’s reconstruction of an Orphic didactic hieros logos in which Orpheus would narrate his personal katabasis eis Aidou. Edmonds aims to show that the existence of such a unified sacred scripture, derived from an original source, is an unnecessary hypothesis because the gold leaf texts might constitute mere responses excerpted from hexametric oracles about the personal afterlife. One may admit that these oracles were thought to have been revealed by Orpheus, but Orpheus is only one of the possible voices of oracular authority, whose paradigm is to be found in the Trophonius oracle at Lebadeia, where Mnemosyne’s spring guarantees the attainment of sacred knowledge. By attacking the unity of the “Orphic” eschatological corpus, Edmonds casts doubt on Orphism as a unified religious movement: there was no Orphic community as defined by the access to a single secret hieros logos, and the gold tablets do not preserve traces of an initiatory ritual that happened during the life of the deceased. But even if Edmonds is right in refuting a unified Orphic scripture resembling the Christian Bible (but today, who wants that?), is he right to conclude that Orphism, even if it is a modern construction, has absolutely no reality? This extreme nominalism overlooks the spiritual dimension of Orphism: to connect the substantial immortality of an individual with the internalization of epic heroism and with poetic kleos, as we see in the gold leaves (see Obbink and Jáuregui below), is not a general attitude in Greek religion. It would not be absurd to label this attitude “Orphic”, even retrospectively. Moreover, the obvious diversity of the gold leaf texts might not be the proof that our grouping of the gold leaves is a mere artifact, but rather the sign of a living tradition that deals with something deeply important in human life, i.e., the consciousness of the permanent eventuality of death and the consequent hope. Orphism would thus be positively affirmed as a unity and would no longer be defined by what it is not, i.e., not a polis-sponsored religion.

Dousa’s paper is the first serious published study about the possible connection between the gold tablets and neighboring Egypt, famous for its old afterlife rituals and its funerary texts since Zuntz mentioned this hypothesis in 1971.3 Dousa wonders whether the common motifs in the B tablets and in the Egyptian Book of the Dead (a tree close to a pool of water, the critical dialogue with the guardians of the Netherworld) are due to an influence of the Egyptian religion in Greece or to a spontaneous convergence. He concludes that, if any influence took place, the Orphics at least re-organized the motifs and gave a new meaning to old patterns, as Diodorus already suggested in antiquity. Although such a pioneering approach is absolutely necessary, other important comparative perspectives for analysis of the gold tablets, which would deal with other cultures and test methodologically more refined hypotheses, are missing in this volume. To compare isolated motifs, as Dousa does, might obscure the fact that the main difference between the gold tablets and Egyptian sources is concerned not with the place or the nature of the netherworldly tree or spring, but the roles played by Memory as an immortalizing power and the nature of immortality itself, which, in Orphism, marks a divergence from terrestrial existence. In Greece (see Obbink below), initiatory Memory draws parallels with poetic memory, which establishes an imperishable glory, so that the claim to a divine origin is not a “kratophanic” assertion similar to what we see in Egypt (p. 156), but rather the realization of the eternal essence of the soul. Egyptian texts, as presented by Dousa, do not reflect on the poetic tradition and its import on the nature of the individual soul. Finally, in the case of textual similarities, the methodological binary convergence/influence is not sufficient. A common inheritance ought to be considered, especially if one attempts a comparison with Iran and India.4 A similar view and wording about immortality could be found in this direction.

According to Jáuregui, the heroic soul of the Orphic initiate derives its main features from the epic terrestrial hero, but these features are transformed in the realm of afterlife. The epic tale was changed into a soteriological program, so that the personal immortality obtained in the world beyond by remembering the divine origin itself reflects the imperishable kleos granted by the professional memory of the epic rhapsodes. This is proven by the stylistic similarities between the claim of the poetic hero to belong to a superior genos and, in the gold tablets, the claim of the deceased’s soul to its genos ouranion, i.e., its essential nature transcending every temporal incarnation. In accordance with this ontological shift, the social elitism of the Homeric epic has been changed into a spiritual elitism, but the words remain generally the same. Such an inheritance ensures the unity of the various types of Orphic gold tablets. The stylistic conservatism of the itinerant initiators may have been an excellent strategy to legitimate their radical novelty at the theological level. But does Jáuregui furnish the best interpretation of the undeniable correspondences he brings out? May we not understand both of these kinds of genos and immortality as being related through a structural difference rather by any historical process? In the larger context of the Indo-European poetic inheritance, as it is evidenced in Vedic culture, we could recognize that the heroic kleos worked from the beginning as a symbol of a more substantial immortality granted by special rituals and mental exercises.

Obbink’s article would agree with such a synchronic perspective. The recitation or the inscription of the gold tablet texts, by recapitulating Homeric formulae, constituted a ritual act that made the addressee worthy of heroic cult status. As Obbink recognizes, the soteriological content of the gold leaves should not be separated from their poetic form. The stylistic similarity between the gold leaves and Homeric epic does not simply reveal ideological appropriation obscured by literary continuity, but rather the religious function of the leaves. Obbink refers to certain odes by Pindar in which the poet compares his poetry with an immortalizing libation to the Heroes; similarly, the water of Memory in the gold tablets could be understood as an allegory of the power through which poetic speech brings life to an individual soul. Thus Orphism may be seen as a religious practice that results from reflection on the ritual value of a Pan-Hellenic poetic tradition, rather than a special tradition with new theological and stylistic features.

Faraone reminds us that the prosaic synthema “Bull, you jumped in the milk” (A group) reflects Dionysiac religion as reconstructed from other early evidence. By uttering this statement, the initiate re-enacts the sudden motion of the god from life to death and back, as it is told in the Homeric episode of Lycurgus: the foam of the sea there had a milky aspect. It deals with a personal internalization of Dionysus’ mythology, leading to an identification with Dionysus himself. Thus Dionysus would not only have been the mystic goal, but also the dynamic paradigm of every initiatic process.5 We might add that the means of salvation, necessarily at hand, does not stand outside its goal because salvation is not a matter of conquest through magic. In a way, every human being is already redeemed. As implied by another tablet family (group B, with Mnemosyne), salvation is granted by the recollection of the true nature of soul. To conclude, this book recaps 130 years of philological and theoretical research concerning the gold tablets. As a whole, it is an essential tool for the scholars interested in Classics and ancient religions. By raising difficult questions and exciting hypotheses, it brings us further along the path of Orphic studies.

Notes

1. See A. Bernabé Pajarès, Poetae epici graeci. Testimonia et fragmenta. Pars II, fas. 2, Leipzig, 2005 (here abbreviated here OF), and Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife. Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold tablets, London and New York, 2007 (here abbrievated GJ).

2. As GJ do, op. cit., p. 39.

3. See Zuntz, Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and Thought in Magna Graecia, Oxford, 1971, p. 370- 371.

4. See Mendoza, J. : “Un itinerario hacio el más allá. Laminillas órficas de oro y Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa 1.46- 50”, in Orfeo y la tradición órfica. Un reecuentro, vol. II, A. Bernabé et F. Cassadesús (ed.), Madrid, 2008, p. 933-961; see also A. Pinchard, Les langues de sagesse dans la Grèce et l’Inde anciennes, Genève, 2009, p. 534-544. But comparison with Iran doesn’t prevent to maintain some connection between Egypt and Orphism: in an unpublished talk (“The ‘Orphic’ Gold tablets: Near Eastern and Egyptian resonances”, in 2006 at the Association of the Ancient Historians Annual Meeting at Stanford University), P.S. Horky argues that Egypt, while under the rule of the Achaemenid kings, might have constituted the intermediary through which Iran indirectly influenced Orphic eschatology.

5. A. Pinchard ( op. cit., p. 461 and 469) had already proposed the same interpretation, but he is not cited here."

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The Ring of Polycrates- from Herodotus to Friedrich Schiller and Erich Wolfgang Korngold

"Rachel Wong on oceanic resonances in Schiller's 'Ring Des Polykrates' (1797)

In this final talk from the Winter 2024 edition of the Herodotus Helpline series, Dr Rachel Wong (Chicago) explores Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the story of Polycrates' ring from Book 3 of Herodotus' 'Histories' in his lyrical ballad 'Ring Des Polykrates' (1797). Dr Wong examines the poem's oceanic resonances before turning to Erich Wolfgang Korngold's opera 'Der Ring des Polykrates', which includes a libretto based on a comic parody of Schiller's ballad."

From the youtube channel of Herodotus Helpline.

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"Herodotus Strikes Back: The Return of Storytelling, or Premodernity in a New Guise?"

"But there is a further trait in Herodotus that should recommend him as an ideal historian in the postmodern age and beyond: his celebrated poikilia, multi-facetedness, or elusiveness if you will. Herodotus is a universalist and a particularist at the same time. He is not only ethnocentric but also ‘culturally aware’, so much so as to be dubbed philobarbaros. 69 He believes (like most other classical historians) in individual agency as much as in unconscious or collective or environmental or metaphysical compulsions. He is a detached antiquarian and a passionate ideologue in one. 70 His morals contain a lot of practical wisdom that however impose no ultimate solutions. He offers both grand narratives as a historian and ‘little stories’ as a storyteller. In other words, he stands for everything that postmodernism likes, and dislikes. In a mysterious way I still cannot gauge, he transcends all these supposed dichotomies without being too eclectic or stiflingly politically correct. 71 This quality in his work, together with its sheer sweep of space, time and themes, has always made the Father of History the guiding light, as a cliché goes, whenever a new widening of men’s intellectual horizons has demanded a new understanding of the world. 72 So today’s postmodernist and anti-postmodernist camps could do worse than consult him, should they ever wish to settle their futile disputes. And tomorrow’s storyteller-historian might as well take his cue from him."

From the paper of Toshibumi Matsubara "Herodotus Strikes Back: The Return of Storytelling, or Premodernity in a New Guise?", Bulletin of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies 5, March 2007.

The whole paper can be found on:

Toshibumi Matsubara is Faculty member of Waseda University

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Title: The Bay of Naples

Artist: Ivan Aivazovsky

Date: 1841

Style: Romanticism

Genre: Marina

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Hello there! Great blog, as always. Thank you for posting such fascinating stuff. I have lately felt a draw towards Orphism and just finished reading A. Uzdavinys “Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism”. I figured you may find Uzdavinys interesting as he seems to provide a great deal of insight re. Orphism, Platonism, and Pythagoreanism — and how they were tied into the Mysteries practiced in ancient Greece. However, I was wondering about your take on his position that Platonism was descendant of Orphism and the ancient Egyptian mortuary cults, via Pythagoreanism. Although he states that it is difficult to say what the “original” Orphics authentically believed, as most of what was preserved of them are later Hellenic texts by and about Platonists and Pythagoreans, he goes on to say that this shouldn’t matter too much because there is essentially a single, continuous tradition brought into Greece from Egypt, albeit with possibly different offshoots along the way. Ultimately, he concludes that Plato and Pythagoras were both initiated into the Mysteries, and while they could never explicitly state it, there is no reason to suspect their philosophical thoughts, eg on immortality and transmigration of the soul, were at odds with the oath-bound mystery-religion connected to Orpheus and Egyptian funeral custom. In this regard, I am also wondering about the exact historical line on Herodotus’ relation to the initiatory cults, as well as the claims made by many Greek and Roman authors that the ritual concepts of the Mysteries of Orpheus, Dionysus, and Demeter/ Persephone can be traced from the funerary rituals of the Mysteries of Osiris and Isis. I am not sure I am convinced of such a direct line of influence, but the similarities are notable…

Thank you for your kind words and your appreciation for my blog, but also for your very interesting questions, and sorry for my delayed answer.

I have not read the book of Algis Uzdavinys on Orphism and Platonism. Uzdavinys was a legit philosopher and scholar, but he was also associated with the Perennialist School, which essentially believes that a common core of esoteric truth exists in all the great religious and philosophical traditions of humanity. This school is controversial (some critics even see in it just a reactionary sect), although it is undeniable that some of its members are important scholars in their fields (I have especially in mind Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who is politically and socially very conservative, but it is sure that he is one of the most eminent scholars of Islamic philosophy and mysticism in the world). Anyway, what is important for our topic is that I suspect that perhaps as Perennialist Uzdavinys tended to exaggerate the continuity between the religious traditions of Egypt and those of ancient Greece, but also the continuity between Orphism and Platonism. This does not mean of course that I see a priori his book as not valuable.

Orphism in Late Archaic and Classical Greece is a difficult subject with many uncertainties, about which scholars debate a lot for almost a century now, since the great books of Guthrie and Linforth on the Orphic movement. See among the most important publications of the last decades on Orphism Radcliffe G. Edmonds (editor) The "Orphic" Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path, Cambridge University Press, 2010, and its review by Alexis Pinchard on https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011.10.54/, Radcliffe G. Edmonds Redefining Ancient Orphism. A Study in Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, 2013, and its review by Robert Parker on https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014.07.13/, Anthi Chrysanthou Defining Orphism. The Beliefs, the ›teletae‹ and the Writings, De Gruyter, 2020, and its (for me too negative) review by Radcliffe G. Edmonds on https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2021/2021.03.13/.

Now, the truth is that I am not a scholar of ancient Greek religion and my ideas on Orphism are shaped by older books, especially Walter Burkert's great work Greek Religion. Therefore, I cannot have any certain knowledge on a topic about which there is so much uncertainty and disagreement among scholars. I remind here that Burkert believed that Bacchica, Orphica and Pythagoreia are circles with distinct centers, which partially overlap, but they are not identical. Burkert also believed that the Orphic myths of the late Hellenistic Rhapsodic Theogony, as they are preserved in texts of even later writers, existed already in the early Orphism of the Late Archaic and Classical times.

Anyway, it is beyond doubt that there are striking similarities between the myth of Osiris and that of Dionysus (a god is killed, dismembered, and later resurrected) and between the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the "Orphic" gold tablets ("passports for the dead") from S. Italy (see on these similarities Thomas M. Dousa "Common motifs in the “Orphic” B tablets and Egyptian funerary texts. Continuity or convergence?", in The "Orphic" Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path, and the presentation of Dousa's contribution in a paragraph of the review of this volume by A. Pinchard on https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011.10.54/).

I would also venture to say that, if an important Egyptian influence on the myth and rites of Dionysus and on Orphism is very plausible and in fact almost certain (it seems that Herodotus was at least partially right here), there are also some obvious crucial differences between myths and rites of Osiris and Dionysus/ Orphism: the ancient Egyptians did not believe in the transmigration of the soul in successive lives (although it seems that they believed, at least in the late period, in some sort of transmigration in the afterlife), the rites of Osiris were not "mysteries" in the Greek sense of the term, above all it does not seem that the Egyptian myth of Osiris had the major anthropological importance of the Greek myth of Dionysus (for the latter the humans were created from the ashes of the Titans, who were burned by Zeus' lightning as punishment for their crime against the child Dionysus, so that we humans partake both of the divine nature of the devoured and later resurrected Dionysus and of the criminal nature of the Titans- if of course, as Burkert accepts, this fundamental aspect of the myth existed already in the Late Archaic and Classial periods and underlied much of the ancient Greek rites of initiation, as well as Orphism and Pythagoreanism).

Concerning initiations of historical figures, there are reports of some late sources about an initiation of Pythagoras into the Cretan mysteries, but I suspect that the reliability of these reports is doubtful. What is more important for the relationship between Pythagoreanism and Orphism is that, as it seems, some texts attributed to Orpheus were in fact works of Pythagoreans of S. Italy, if not of Pythagoras himself, so that a version of Orphism was the creation of Pythagoreans: Burkert stresses the fact that the most important Orphic gold tablets with "instructions" to the dead have been found in S. Italy, exactly where Herodotus, who reports about the dependence of the Orphica on Pythagoreanism and ultimately on Egypt, finished the writing of his Histories, and come from a time close to his. But Pythagoreanism is not just Orphism, especially if one takes into account the Pythagorean emphasis on mathematics as the foundation of the structure of the cosmos, the scientific contributions of many members of the Pythagorean school, and the particularities of the way of life of the Pythagorean communities, especially their "communism", but also their political role in several Greek city-states of S. Italy. Conversely, Orphism is not just Pythagoreanism, as it seems that there were also other "Orphic" traditions besides the S. Italian/'Pythagorean" one (Burkert writes about the existence also of an Athenian-Eleusinian tradition of Orphism, although he attributes to the Pythagorean/S. Italian Orphic tradition the pioneering role concerning the theory of metempsychosis). Herodotus himself was, as it results from a passage of Histories (2.51), initiated into the mysteries of Samothrace, but, as Burkert says, these mysteries did not promise a better afterlife, only protection from the dangers of seafaring. Plato was almost certainly initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis, as, although initiation was not mandatory, almost all Athenians were initiated into Eleusis (the relationship between the mysteries of Eleusis, Dionysus, and Orphism is another very interesting and much debated question).

More particularly concerning Plato, I think that it is sure that he was much influenced by the revolutionary "Orphic" religious beliefs about the immortality of the soul and the kinship of a part of the human soul with the divine, things unknown to the traditional Homeric religion. Of course Plato's references to the Orphics are not always positive, as he treats some of their beliefs on the afterlife as naive and even ridicules some groups of them as charlatans (Republic 363-365). But the influence on him of more "sophisticated" versions of Orphism and above all of Pythagoreanism is I think beyond doubt. On the other hand, as it is already the case with the Pythagoreans, I believe that it would be wrong to see in Plato just or mainly an Orphic, because Plato is above all a philosopher, who takes positions in philosophical debates which had started more than a century before his birth, but also the founder of a new and great philosophical tradition of major significance in the history of thought. To refer to just one important topic, namely the immortality of the soul, for Plato this immortality could not be accepted just on the basis of the authority of the Orphic or other religious texts, but it needed a rational proof, and the search for it is exactly the subject of Phaedo, one of Plato's masterpieces (even if the required proof cannot be definitive- I think, moreover, that it is noteworthy and thought provoking that two persons in Phaedo who are sceptical about the immortality of the soul, Keves and Simmias, are in fact... Pythagoreans). And of course there is more generally so much in Plato (in his ontology, epistemology, ethics, politics or even philosophical mysticism) that is far beyond the scope of the Orphic tradition.

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Ink stone in the form of a turtle, China, 6th-7th century

from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Herodotus and 'The Edges of the World' in the Nineteenth Century

"Suzanne Marchand on Herodotus and 'The Edges of the World' in the Nineteenth Century

In this final talk from the 2024 edition of the Herodotus Helpline series, Professor Suzanne Marchand (Louisiana State University) introduces material from one of the chapters of her forthcoming book on the reception of Herodotus since the fifteenth century. Professor Marchand considers the uses of Herodotus' Egyptian and Scythian material by readers from a range of national contexts to ascertain the truth value of certain underlying ideas."

From the youtube channel of Herodotus Helpline.

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Sans retour possible(1983) dir. Jacques Kebadian, Serge Avédikian

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Participating the ecstatic ritual. Dinos painter Maenad stamnos (vase). Late 5th c.

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Marble fragment of a hero relief. late 5th century BCE. Credit line: Fletcher Fund, 1924 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/251526

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Gorgo of Sparta in Herodotus' Histories

"Herodotus goes out of his way to sketch-in some of the laudable accomplishments of a number of women—including Gorgo. Of course, they are someone’s daughter, and admittedly it is their elite station in life that makes these deeds even possible. But once granted the autonomy, authority, and agency trident in hand—Herodotus shows that Gorgo waits on no man, neither her father nor her husband, let alone any of the ephors. Of course, Herodotus also describes the less laudable deeds of several other similarly trident-armed women—notably Nyssia and Amestris... One of Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts favorite commands, ‚Off with her head!‛ comes to mind... But what Herodotus’ contrast really shows is that the trident can be used for good or ill and that possession of great power is not enough—the holder has to know how and when to use it wisely—the difference between mētis (μῆτις) and bie (βία) becomes critical when resort to a Herculean display of strength is not an option."

Oliver R. Baker "Gorgo: Sparta’s Woman of Autonomy, Authority, and Agency", Athens Journal of Humanities & Arts, 2022

The whole paper can be found on:

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Herodotus, Empire, and Ancient Near Eastern Monuments

"In the Histories, anthropogenic monuments of “Asianic” origin are part of a larger discourse about empire and its arrogant claim to rule the entire world. This discourse is mainly conceptualized by Herodotus himself, since “his” monuments are an integral part of his work. Herodotus is well aware that the Great Kings of the Persian-Achaemenid empire, the superpower of his own time, made use of monuments and inscriptions to celebrate and proclaim their specific views of the world, as well as to disseminate their imperial claims... He recurrently challenges this view in a critical and ironic way. On the one hand, his Histories are a demonstration that there is a world of considerable extension beyond the Achaemenid-Persian empire that is not ruled by the Great Kings. In this context the failure of the Achaemenid-Persian kings to expand successfully towards these regions is a key topic of Herodotus’ work. On the other hand, he persistently highlights that, in the distant past, there was one (from a modern perspective fictitious) superpower that eclipsed and out-shone the aspirations of the Great Kings, i.e., Sesostris’ Egypt. In this discourse anthropogenic monuments play an essential role in disclosing haughtiness and failure, over-ambition and arrogant claims. Within this framework, “real” monuments are important markers in creating authentication and meaning. But this is not the whole story. Since Herodotus is primarily interested in historical analysis and exemplification on human nature and political aspiration, these monuments are recycled and reconfigured to become integral parts of his narrative. This is even true for such famous monumental clusters as Bisitun and Nahr el-Kalb, whose “real” shape and structure are barely recognizable anymore in this masterpiece of world literature."

Robert Rollinger "Herodotus and Empire: Ancient Near Eastern Monuments and Their Cultural Recycling in Herodotus’ Histories", in: Jonathan Ben-Dov and Felipe Rojas (eds.), Afterlives of Ancient Rock-Cut Monuments in the Near East. Carvings In and Out Of Time, Leiden: Brill 2021, 186-220

Robert Rollinger is Austrian Assyriologist and ancient historian, professor at the University of Innsbruck and member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

As it seems, Herodotus visited Nahr el-Kalb and attributed the inscriptions of Ramses II there to Sesostris, who was for the Egyptian tradition of his age the archetype of the conqueror Pharaoh. But a visit of Herodotus to Bisitun (W. Iran) seems highly improbable. It is however probable that Herodotus saw some of the inscriptions of Darius I in Asia Minor that reproduced the narrative of Bisitun about Darius' accession to (or perhaps usurpation of) the Persian throne and in fact there are important similarities between this narrative and what Herodotus writes in Book III of Histories.

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Jerboa figurine

Ancient Egyptian Middle Kingdom ca. 1850–1640 B.C.E. Faience. (source)