Such is the tissue of violent fancies comprehended under the title of the Orphic Theogony, and read as such, it appears, by Plato, Isokratês and Aristotle. It will be seen that it is based upon the Hesiodic Theogony, but according to the general expansive tendency of Grecian legend, much new matter is added: Zeus has in Homer one predecessor, in Hesiod two, and in Orpheus four.
The Hesiodic Theogony, though later in date than the Iliad and Odyssey, was coeval with the earliest pariod of what may be called Grecian history, and certainly of an age earlier than 700 b. c. It appears to have been widely circulated in Greece, and being at once ancient and short, the general public consulted it as their principal source of information respecting divine antiquity. The Orphic Theogony belongs to a later date, and contains the Hesiodic ideas and persons, enlarged and mystically disguised: its vein of invention was less popular, adapted more to the contemplation of a sect specially prepared than to the taste of a casual audience, and it appears accordingly to have obtained currency chiefly among purely speculative men.[1] Among the major-
- ↑ The Orphic Theogony is never cited in the ample Scholia on Homer, though Hesiod is often alluded to. (See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 540). Nor can it have been present to the minds of Xenophanês and Herakleitus, as representing any widely diffused Grecian belief: the former, who so severely condemned Homer and Hesiod, would have found Orpheus much more deserving of his censure: and the latter could hardly have omitted Orpheus from his memorable denunciation:—Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει· Ἡσίοδον γάρ ἀν ἐδίδαξε καὶ Πυθαγόρην, αὔτις δὲ Ξενοφάνεά τε καὶ Ἑκαταῖον. Diog. Laër. ix. 1. Isokratês treats Orpheus as the most censurable of all the poets.
borne some analogy to the Orphic. See Diogen. Laërt. i. 119, Sturz. Fragment. Pherekyd. § 5-6, Brandis, Handbuch, ut sup. c. xxii. Pherckydês partially deviated from the mythical track or personal successions set forth by Hesiod. ἐπεὶ οἱ γε μεμιγμένοι αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ μὴ μυθικὼς ἅπαντα λέγειν, οἷον Φερεκύδης καὶ ἕτεροι τινες, etc. (Aristot. Metaphys. N. p. 301, ed. Brandis). Porphyrius, de Antro Nymphar. c. 31, καὶ τοῦ Συρίου Φερεκύδου μυχοὺς καὶ βόθρους καὶ ἄντρα καὶ θύρας καὶ πύλας λέγοντος, καὶ διὰ τούτων αἰνιττομενου τὰς τῶν ψυχῶν γενέσεις καὶ ἀπογενέσεις, etc. Eudêcmus the Peripatetic, pupil of Aristotle, had drawn up an account of the Orphic Theogony as well as of the doctrines of Pherckydês, Akusilaus and others, which was still in the hands of the Platonists of the fourth century, though it is now lost. The extracts which we find seem all to countenance the belief that the Hesiodic Theogony formed the basis upon which they worked. See about Akusilaus, Plato, Sympos. p. 178. Clem. Alex. Strom, p. 629.
