(126)
(The goddess) clothing them with a strange garment of flesh.[1]
(127)
Among beasts they[2] become lions that make their lair on the hills and their couch on the ground; and laurels among trees with goodly foliage. R. P. 181 b.
(128)
Nor had they[3] any Ares for a god nor Kydoimos, no nor King Zeus nor Kronos nor Poseidon, but Kypris the Queen. . . . Her did they propitiate with holy gifts, with painted figures[4] and perfumes of cunning fragrancy, with offerings of pure myrrh and sweet-smelling frankincense, 5casting on the ground libations of brown honey. And the altar did not reek with pure bull's blood, but this was held in the greatest abomination among men, to eat the goodly limbs after tearing out the life. R. P. 184.
(129)
And there was among them a man of rare knowledge, most skilled in all manner of wise works, a man who had won the utmost wealth of wisdom; for whensoever he strained with all his mind, he easily saw everything of all the things that are, in ten, 5yea, twenty lifetimes of men.[5]
- ↑ I have retained ἀλλόγνωτι though it is a little hard to interpret. On the history of the Orphic chiton in gnostic imagery see Bernays, Theophr. Schr. n. 9. It was identified with the coat of skins made by God for Adam. Cf. also Shakespeare's "muddy vesture of decay."
- ↑ This is the best μετοίκησις (Ael. Nat. an. xii. 7).
- ↑ The dwellers in the Golden Age.
- ↑ The MSS. of Porphyry have γραπτοῖς τε ζώοισι The emendation of Bernays (adopted in R. P.) does not convince me. I venture to suggest μακτοῖς on the strength of the story related by Favorinus (ap. Diog. viii. 53) as to the bloodless sacrifice offered by Empedokles at Olympia.
- ↑ These lines were already referred to Pythagoras by Timaios (Diog. viii. 54). As we are told (Diog. ib.) that some referred the verses to Parmenides, it is clear that no name was given.
