Historically the cult most nearly related to that of Dionysus was the
philosophico-religious system bearing the name of Orpheus. It is not
possible to pronounce with certainty whether such a man as Orpheus ever
really existed or not. He may have been a purely mythical figure. If he
was a real man he was a religious leader of mark and deserving of
admiration: a prophet, reformer, and martyr. Whether mythical or real,
Orpheus was the antitype of the flushed and maddening wine-god Dionysus.
He was a sober and gentle musician who charmed savage men and beasts
with his music, an exact theologian, the prophet of reform in religion,
who was martyred for his efforts.The difference between Dionysus and Orpheus was the difference
between the two religious systems which bore their names. The cult of
Dionysus was more simple, primitive, elemental, spontaneous, and
emotional. That of Orpheus was more elaborate, developed, controlled,
and intellectualistic. Still, when all is said, the two systems had much
in common. Both centered in the same god, Dionysus. Both aimed at the
same goal, immortality through divinity. Both sought to attain that goal
by prescribed rites and ceremonies. Both made a strictly
individualistic appeal and were highly developed along the lines of
personal experience. But Orphism fostered an ascetic rule of life that
was the exact opposite of Dionysian license, and developed an elaborate
theology of a highly speculative character. In brief, Orphism
represented a reformed Dionysianism, and the practices it could not or
did not reform it sought to explain and justify by its mythology.
Our sources of information concerning the Orphic movement are
unusually authoritative and accessible. They include chiefly a reputable
group of classical writers together with a singular collection of
Orphic tablets found in south Italy and Crete. The list of classical
witnesses to the Orphic cult is headed by the name of Pindar. In his
"Dirges," or choral lyrics intended to be chanted at funerals, he
offered consolation to mourners by telling them of the Orplic promise of
immortality. He further detailed the Orphic doctrine of reincarnation
which he represented as a scheme of preliminary purgation by means of
triple earthly lives, preceding the final bliss. Again he described with
pleasing detail the delights of the Elysian land where the final
beatification was to be realized, and in the second Olympian Ode he told
of the future of the wicked as well as of the pure. Another important
classical witness to Orphism was Plato. Though affecting to despise the
system, he was actually much influenced by it. In Cratylus, for example,
he made use of the characteristic Orphic idea of the body as a prison
house of the soul (soma-sema). In the Republic he described the
missionary methods of the Orphics in terms that were not complimentary,
yet revealed the vigor of the movement. He told of zealous propagandists
who besieged the doors of the rich and persuaded them by a parade of
Orphic scriptures that they could provide deliverance and purgation from
sin, both for the living and the dead, by means of initiation. Plato
also made reference to the idea of the transmigration of souls and to
the Orphie rule of life. The dramatist Euripides included an
all-important Orphic confessional in his Cretans, and in his admirable
Hippolytus he drew a character sketch of a typical and consistent
Orphic. Even the comedian Aristophanes bore favorable testimony to the
influence of the Orphic mysteries. He had the glorified Aeschylus, the
"grand old man" of Attic tragedy, commend Orpheus for teaching mystic
rites to mortal men. This torch of reverence, however, did not prevent
Aristophanes from giving a lively parody of Orphanic initiation in
telling of old Strepsiades' visit to Socrates' "thinking shop." These
four names, Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, and Pindar, include the bulk
of classical testimonia to the Orphic mysteries.
Quite as revealing as these literary refernces, however, are the
so-called Orphic tablets from tombs in southern Italy and Crete. They
are eight in number and are all of very thin gold. According to a
consensus of scholarly opinion, they contain the mutilated fragments of a
ritual hymn composed for members of the Orphic sect is early as the
fifth century B.C. In their present form they may be dated roughly from
the fourth century B.C. to the second century of our era. Their purpose
is self-evident. Buried with the dead they were intended to give
instructions concerning conduct in the next world, formularies and
confessionals to be repeated, and directions as to postmortem ceremonial
observances. Their ritualistic character and the tone of conviction
that pervades them give them peculiar value as sources of information
concerning Orphic experience and practice. These remarkable tablets,
though they are few in number, constitute our most valuable source
materials for the Orphic cult.For an expansive expression of Orphic theology, however, one must
turn to the corpus of so-called Orphic literature. We know that as early
as the time of the Pisistratidae there were in existence at Athens
various poems attributed to Orpheus. They were quoted by Plato and later
writers, but their genuineness was challenged by Aristotle and
Herodotus. Under the hands of the Orphics a vast literature grew up
around this nucleus, but for our purpose the hymns only are of special
importance. They are of late compilation and uncertain date, although
Professor Dieterich would locate their original composition between 200
B.C. and the beginning of the Christian era. In their present form they
represent the developed state of Orphic theology, their general tone
being that of mystical monotheism. Of the eighty and more extant hymns,
all but nine carry in their headings specifications concerning the
particullar perfume to be burned while they were being stung. Most of
them also conclude with an invocation to the deity addressed to bless
the mystics in the fulfilment of their rites:
The sacred rites benevolent attend
And grant a blameless life, a blessed end.
Propitious to thy mystics' works incline
Rejoicing come, for holy rites are thine.
So runs the slightly varied refrain at the conclusion of almost every
hymn. These formulas make it practically certain that this collection
of hymns was made for liturgical use in Orphic brotherhoods.In comparison with these major sources of information, classical
writers, Orphic tablets, and Orphic hymns, other sources are distinctly
of less significance. For the sake of completeness, however, there
should be mentioned the "Apulian" vase paintings which depict the
blessed dead in the society of the gods. These paintings are
particularly significant in that they show the influence of Orphic ideas
in Magna Graecia, south Italy especially, during the Hellenic era.
Similarly, Greek sepulchral art and grave inscriptions of the
Hellenistic and Roman periods are important. There are also casual
references to Orphism in later pagan writers, Strabo, Pausanias, and
Plutarch, which prove the vigorous persistence of Orphic ideas and
practices through the early imperial period. Later Christian notices of
Orphism are distinctly secondary to these pagan sources and are chiefly
valuable in showing the later persistence of Orphism in its active
competition with Christianity.
One of these Christian sources, however, deserves specific citation
because it preserves in convenient mythological form a bit of
fundamental Orphic theology. The passage in question is found in the
"Exhortation to the Greeks" by Clement of Alexandria, and it includes a
detailed narration of the myth of Dionysus Zagreus. Undoubtedly
Clement's rendering of the legend was based upon a lost Orphic poem or
poems--at least in the passage itself Clement made two quotations from
Orphic literature. According to his version of the myth, Persephone bore
to Zeus a son "who had the form of a bull." To quote "a certain
mythological poet":
The bull begets a snake, the snake a bull.
This divine son was Dionysus Zagreus, or "the hunter." He was the
favorite of his father, and Zeus destined him to become the ruler of the
universe. Even while he was a child, the father of gods and men
entrusted him with thunderbolts and allowed him to sit on his throne.
But the malignant Titans, stung by jealousy and urged on by the vengeful
Hera, sought the young child's life. Though he was carefully guarded by
the warlike Curetes, the Titans succeeded in luring him away with
childish toys, which were carefully enumerated in a quotation from
"Orpheus of Thrace, the poet of the initiation." Having gained
possession of the divine child, the Titans savagely tore him to pieces,
and cooked and ate the pieces. Athena, however, preserved the heart of
Zagreus and carried it away to Zeus who, in his anger, blasted the
savage Titans with his thunderbolts. Clement omitted one item of the
myth which formed an interesting connection with the Theban legend of
Dionysus. Zeus, having received the heart of Zagreus from Athena,
swallowed it. So when Semele bore Dionysus to Zeus the new god was but
Zagreus reborn.The Cretan provenance of the Zagreus legend was expressly stated by
Diodorus. In his account of the various forms assumed by Dionysus, he
said: "They allege that the god (Zagreus) was born of Zeus and
Persephone in Crete, and Orpheus in the mysteries represents him as torn
to pieces by the Titans." The relationship of this legend to the Cretan
rite of eating raw flesh already described in connection with the
Dionysus cult is obvious. It was an aetiological myth through and
through. The worshippers of Dionysus were familiar with the ritual fact
that a sacrificial animal, which in a sense embodied the god, was torn
to pieces and eaten. They sought the sanction of antiquity and divinity
for their ritual and posited the dismemberment of their god by the
ancient Titans. Shocked at the thought of the brutal murder of a god,
they had the bad Titans blasted by Zeus for their wickedness. Thus from
the ritual fact of a feast of raw flesh, there grew up the myth of
Dionysus Zagreus, the god on whom the Orphic cult was focused.
The importance of this myth lies in the fact that in Orphic thought
it was connected with a peculiar theory concerning the origin and nature
of man, and so ultimately with the thought of man's eternal destiny.
From the ashes of the blasted Titans, the Orphic said, man was created.
But these Titans had already consumed the god Dionysus, and their ashes
contained the vitality of a divine being. Hence man by his very
constitution was believed to be a compound of two natures, one Dionysian
and immortal, the other Titanic and mortal. His soul was divine, but
while in the body it was confined in a charnel house. Plato made full
use of this Orphic conception, and in his Gorgias he quoted "a certain
philosopher," who said, "We are dead and the body is a tomb." Pindar
earlier stressed the divine origin and nature of the human soul in
contradistinction to the mortality of the human body. "While the body of
all men is subject to over-mastering death, an image of life remains
alive, for it alone comes from the gods," he affirmed. This sharp
dualism of soul and body appears again and again in the Orphic tablets,
though it is not always clear that the myth of the origin of man from
the ashes of the Titans was in mind. On the Petelian tablet (south
Italy, third century B.C.) the soul is represented as asserting its
divine nature thus:
I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven;
But my race is of Heaven.
Similarly, on three Cretan tablets the soul answers the challenge
"Whence are you?" with a reiterated declaration of its dual origin, "I
am son of Earth and of Starry Heaven." On the Compagno tablets found
near Sybaris the soul makes a like affirmation to the "Pure Queen of
Them Below . . . .," "I avow me that I am of your blessed race." The
dualism thus fixed between body and soul was fundamental in Orphic
theology. Though the body was an evil thing, the soul was divine and
immortal.In its first analysis, therefore, the Orphic process of salvation was
a process of purification from bodily taint. The problem, however, was
not such a simple one as these words would indicate. It was not merely
from the evils of a single existence that the Orphic sought deliverance,
but from the evils of a long series of bodily existences. The Orphic
first, and the Pythagorean later, believed in the transmigration of
souls from body to body. On leaving the corpse at death, the soul was
normally doomed to inhabit the bodies of other men or of animals even,
passing on through a chain of physical existences until finally
purified. An Orphic fragment preserved by Proclus reads: "Therefore the
soul of man changing in the cycles of time enters into various
creatures; now it enters a horse, again it becomes a sheep . . . . or as
one of the tribe of chill serpents creeps on the sacred ground."
Reincarnation, like dualism, was an important item in Orphic theology.
What the Orphic did with the idea of transmigration was to moralize
it into a cycle of purgations intended to free the soul from bodily
taint and leave it in the end a pure heavenly essence. According to
Pindar, the soul had to undergo three such periods of purification in as
many different incarnations before the process would be complete. Only
those who "thrice had been courageous in keeping their souls pure from
all deeds of wrong" could pass by the highway of Zeus into the tower of
Cronus where the ocean breezes blow around the Islands of the Blest." In
Plato the series of three incarnations was magnified to three periods
of a thousand years each, during which the process of purgation might be
completed. At the close of each thousand-year period, the souls drew
lots, thus choosing the manner of their next incarnation. One of the
most striking scenes depicted in any of Plato's writings was the
eschatological vision of Er, son of Armenius, recounted in the tenth
book of the Republic. At the place of judgment, Er saw mortal souls
allotted to a new cycle of life choosing their several destinies.
"He saw the soul which had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a
swan out of enmity to the race of woman . . . . He beheld also the soul
of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale. Birds on the other hand,
like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men . . . . After
making choice and drinking of the waters of Lethe, these souls shoot
away like stars, to birth."
Empedocles announced three transmigration periods of ten thousand
years each ere the soul could be considered eligible for heavenly bliss.The technical Orphic expression for the transmigration of souls and
their reappearance in human bodies was "rebirth" (palingenesia). These
physical rebirths, however, were what the Orphic least desired, and to
escape this weary round of reincarnation was the goal of all his
endeavor. According to Proclus, the salvation offered by this system was
the freeing of the spirit from the wheel of physical rebirths. In his
commentary on Plato's Timaeus, he said, "This is what those who are
initiated by Orpheus to Dionysus and Kore pray that they may attain:
'To cease from the wheel and breathe again from ill.'"
Undoubtedly this was an Orphic formula for the salvation process. By
Simplicius it was attributed to Orpheus himself. Appropriately,
therefore, the purified Orphic soul was represented on the Campagno
tablets as having escaped from the cycle of necessity and attained to
the seats of the hallowed. Its joyful affirmation to the "Pure Queen of
Them Below" was:
I have flown out of the sorrowful weary Wheel;
I have passed with eager feet to the Circle desired.
Thus, while the view of human existence fostered by Orphism was
essentially pessimistic in its dualism and its theory of successive
reincarnations, it did hold out the possibility of escape to weary
mortals. It posited one great spiritual rebirth at the time of death
which should put an end once for all to the series of physical rebirths
that were so much dreaded. The question remains, How was this great
deliverance from the cycle of physical existences to be accomplished?
The Orphic answer to this problem was, in the first instance, by
participation in certain prescribed rites of initiation. Orphism came to
the seekers for salvation in the Greek world not merely as a philosophy
of life but as a religious cult with divinely authenticated rites which
must be fulfilled, else there, could be no guaranty of deliverance. To
those only who had "by happy fortune culled the fruit of the rite that
releases from toil," was there assurance of salvation, the rite in this
instance being initiation into the Orphic mysteries. The mendicants who,
according to Plato, harassed the rich, exhibiting scriptures by
Orpheus, sought to persuade people that they might obtain purification
in life and release from suffering after death by the observance of
their ritual. Initiation into an Orphic cult was the first step toward
deliverance.In general the prescribed Orphic ritual was a modification of the
rude Bacchic rites we have already examined. The persistent
representation of Orpheus in antiquity was that of a reformer of
Dionysiac rites. Diodorus affirmed that "Orpheus being a man highly
gifted by nature and highly trained above all others, made many
modifications in the orgiastic rites; hence they call Orphic those rites
that took their rise from Dionysus." From the standpoint of ritualistic
observance, therefore, there was much in common between Dionysian and
Orphic practices. On the very threshold to the Orphic cult stood the
omophagy, or feast of raw flesh, which was so prominent a Dionysian
rite. In the remaining fragment of Euripides' Cretans an initiate tells
of certain ritual acts which he performed in the process of becoming a
"Bacchus" and the one he stresses particularly is the eating of raw
flesh.For the Orphic this "red and bleeding feast" had two important
meanings. It was, first of all, a communion service. Already he had
within himself the spark of divinity which came from the ashes of the
Titans. This divine life within him, however, was weak, very weak. It
needed nourishment. In the sacrificial bull his god Zagreus was
ritualistically incarnate; hence, in eating the raw flesh of the torn
bull, be partook of a divine substance that nourished and strengthened
the immortal life within himself. Just as the life of Zagreus entered
the devotee physically when he partook of the flesh of the bull, so the
man's soul entered more fully into the spiritual life of Zagreus by this
very physical process. In a mystical sense God and man became one by
the communion.
But the feast of raw flesh was also a memorial service to the
Orphics. With the legend of the divine child Zagreus in mind, they
looked upon their own ritual as a re-enactment of the ancient tragedy in
which their god was done to death by the Titans. Just as they tore to
pieces the flesh of the sacrificial bull and ate it, so the Titans of
old had dismembered the child Zagreus. According to Nonnus, it was
customary for Orphic initiates to daub themselves with white clay or
gypsum as the Titans did in order to conceal their identity. One of the
technical expressions for the ritual act of bedaubing with clay was
apomattein (literally, "to smear off"). Harpocration has the following
note on this word:
"Others use it in a more special sense, as for example when they
speak of putting a coat of clay or pitch on those who are being
initiated. In this ceremony they were mimetically enacting the myth told
by some persons, in which the Titans, when they mutilated Dionysus,
wore a coating of gypsum in order not to be identified."
In this comment the mimetic character of the Orphic ritual is definately asserted.
The real inwardness of this act of daubing with gypsum, however, lay
in another direction. It was an act of purification--strange as it may
seem. The terms perimattein and apomattein ("to besmear" and "to smear
off") were used interchangeably to mean "to purify." In the Orphic rite
of initiation, just as in the Sabazian rite at which Aeschines assisted,
the candidates for initiation were "purified and wiped clean with mud
and pitch." They were not purified from mud and pitch but rather with
mud and pitch. Since it was not a physical cleansing that was sought but
rather a spiritual cleansing, clay and pitch served the purpose quite
as well as water. Yet Plutarch, with all his sympathy for Orphism,
protested vigorously against purifications in this manner, calling them
"unclean purifications, filthy cleansings and bemirings." Orphic
initiation, then, in addition to the rite of communion, featured a
strange ceremonial of cleansing intended to rid the candidate of the
stains inherent in his physical nature.
For the Orphic, however, mere initiation with its prescribed rites,
its mysticizing of crude Dionysian ritual, its communion service, and
its purifications, was not sufficient as a guaranty of salvation.
Initiation, while it was the beginning of a process that eventuated in
complete salvation, was but the beginning. The salvation process itself
continued as an arduous self-discipline and it lasted a lifetime. The
initial sacraments of communion and purgation were supplemented by the
austerities of the "Orphic life"--an expression that became proverbial.
So the "Bacchus of the Mailed Priests" in Euripides' Cretans ends his
confession thus:
Robed in pure white I have borne me clean
From man's vile birth and coffined clay,
And exiled from my lips alway
Touch of all meat where life has been.
In general the disciplinary prescriptions of Orphism were almost
identical with those of Pythagoreanism. Herodotus characterized the
Orphic way of life as at once Egyptian and Pythagorean. Diogenes
Laertius, in his life of Pythagoras, has given a convenient and
comprehensive statement of the main items in the Pythagorean ascesis.
His list of prescriptions is as follows:
"Purification is by means of cleansings, and baths and aspersions. A
man must also keep himself from funerals and marriages and every kind of
physical pollution, and abstain from all food that is dead or has been
killed, and from mullet, and from the fish melanurus, and from eggs, and
from animals that lay eggs, and from beans, and from the other things
that are forbidden for those who accomplish the holy rites of
initiation."
The Orphic, like the Pythagorean, lived a life of ceremonial
cleanliness and holiness. By washing and aspersions, at once symbolic
and sacramental in character, he sought to purge away the taint of his
bodily nature, the "ancient woe" inherited from the Titans. He kept
himself rigorously from all defilement of physical contacts with human
or animal bodies, from human births especially, and from dead bodies;
for in a corpse the evil Titanic matter was left without any vital
Dionysian element. Both in life and in death certain clothing
regulations were strictly observed. In life the Orphic wore garments of
pure white. In death the initiated were never buried in woolen
wrappings.
Not only were rules concerning cleanliness and clothing strictly
adhered to, but certain food regulations were also carefully followed.
Having once partaken of the sacrament of raw flesh, the Orphic fasted
forever thereafter from animal food. This was the most familiar of all
the prohibitions observed by the Orphics, and Plato defined the Orphic
manner of living in terms of this observance. "Orphic lives, as they are
caIled," he said, "were led by those of our race who adhered to the use
of all inanimate things, but abstained from every thing wherein is
life." This abstinence from animal food was a main item in the
discipline of the tragic Orphic Hippolytus, whose asceticism was the
object of Theseus' bitter invective in Euripides' drama. In his rage the
old king cried out against his own son:
Now vaunt, ay now!--set out your paltry wares
Of lifeless food: ....
.... I warn all men to shun
Such hypocrits as you.
These words, from the mouth of a sadly mistaken father, should not be
taken as proof of priggishness on the part of the Orphics, but at least
they serve to emphasize the rigor of the Orphic discipline in the
matter of abstinence from animal foods. By fasting and purifications,
the disciple of Orpheus sought to purge away the evil which he had
inherited with his physical nature. Only after a whole lifetime of such
purgation could he affirm, in the terminology of the Compagno and
Caecilia Secundina tablets,
Out of the pure I come, Pure Queen of Them Below.
The question naturally suggests itself, whether or not the Orphic
ideal made any moral demands on these who were initiated. Since personal
purity, even though it was of a ceremonial and ritualistic character,
stood at the very center of Orphism, the way was open for the
development of morality. The very will to observe its rigid
prescriptions was itself a moral attitude. Moreover, there is valuable
testimony among ancient writers to show that Orphism did have an
elevating effect on the moral life. Pindar, for example, based his
Orphic eschatology on moral conditions and assumed that knowledge of the
lore of Orphism would help men lead good lives. Aristophanes, who did
not hesitate to poke fun at Orphism, paid a serious tribute to in The
Frogs when the tragedian Aeschylus said of the poet Orpheus: "He made
known to us mystic rites, and to abstain from slaughter." Certainly this
last statement had reference to something more than mere abstinence
from animal food. At the very least it meant that Orpbic ritual laid
stress on the necessity of purification from blood, and at most it meant
that Orphism came with a gospel of abstention from murder and of peace
on earth. Horace doubtless had much the same thought in mind when he
declared that Orpheus not only tamed fierce animals but savage men as
well. The author of the speech against Aristogeiton also spoke
reverentially of Orpheus "who instituted for us the most holy mysteries
and declared that Justice is seated on the throne of God watching all
the actions of mankind."
At one point especially the moral influence of Orphism was clear and
indubitable: that was in its protest against suicide. Since the body was
the soul's place of penance a man had no right to take his own life. If
he did he was a fugitive prisoner trying to escape before God had
released him. Here Plato found Orphic thought peculiarly congenial to
his own. In the Phaedo he represented Socrates as saying, shortly before
his death, "There is a doctrine whispered in secret that a man is a
prisoner who has no right to open the door and run away; this is a great
mystery which I do not quite understand. Yet I too believe that the
gods are our guardians and that we are a possession of theirs." In view
of all this array of literary evidence, certain moral obligations must
be added to the ritualistic requirements which characterized the Orphic
life.But participation in rites of initiation and a life of ascetic
observance, even, were not sufficient to guarantee full and final
salvation for the Orphic. There were certain postmortem rules of conduct
to be observed as well. The Orphic tablets bring this out most clearly.
They chart the geography of the next world for the initiate, acquaint
him with the divine beings who have the determination of future weal or
woe, prescribe certain ritual acts to be observed, and instruct him in
formularies and confessions to be repeated under certain circumstances.
The Petelia tablet told of a nameless well-spring situated at the
left of the House of Hades. This the soul must avoid. Since it was
contrasted specifically with the Well of Memory in the following verses,
the forbidden spring was probably Lethe, or Forgetfulness. Because the
Orphic had spent a lifetime in purification he had no need of
forgetfulness. The well-spring of which he must drink was the one
flowing from the Lake of Memory. This was the Orphic counterpart of the
"well of water springing up unto everlasting life." The Petelia tablet
also served to inform the soul what formula to use in asking for a drink
from the Well of Memory. It was an avowal of divine origin: "I am a
child of Earth and Starry Heaven." According to the tablet, this
declaration would be sufficient to gain the boon desired from the
guardians of the Lake of Memory.
Of themselves they will give you to drink,
From the holy Well-spring,
And thereafter among the other Heroes,
You shall have lordship.
The Eleuthernae tablets represented much the same situation in the
lively form of a dialogue between the soul and the well itself.On the Compagno tablets, certain additional declarations were placed
in the mouth of the initiate. Here the soul came as a suppliant to the
holy Persephone herself, and the prescribed words were addressed to her
as the "Pure Queen of Them Below." As in the other tablets, there was
the assertion of divine origin. "I avow me that I am of your blessed
race." In addition, however, there was the further declaration of purity
attained by the observance of Orphic practices.
Out of the pure I come . . . . .
I have flown out of the sorrowful weary wheel,
I have passed with eager feet to the circle desired.
These, affirmations on the part of the soul were an "open sesame" to
immortal bliss for they brought the final assurance, "Happy and Blessed
One, you shall be God instead of mortal." In this climactic fashion the
postmortem ritual as recorded on the Orphic tablets was completed.On the basis of Dionysian practice and experience, therefore, Orphism
built up an elaborate theological construction with refined and
extended ritualistic observances. Faced by the problem of the dual
constitution of man, his soul Dionysian, divine and immortal, and his
body Titanic, evil and mortal, Orphism found the solution of the
antimony in two very different directions. On the one hand there was the
prospect of a natural process of purification through a series of
physical rebirths in animal or human form. This was a gloomy prospect,
however--a remedy that was worse than the disease. On the other hand
there was a way of salvation provided by the Orphic cult itself, an
extended process of self-discipline ending in a spiritual regeneration
that would break, once for all, the chain of successive physical births.
It was a long and arduous process beginning with a rite of initiation
which marked the formal entrance upon a new way of living. There were
prayers to be repeated and sacrifices to be fulfilled. There were
sacraments of communion and purification. Following the initiatory rites
was the rigid discipline of a life-long asceticism that included
purgations, fastings, and freedom from bodily contamination, as well as
certain elementary moral requirements. All this, even, was not deemed
sufficient. It had to be supplemented by a postmortem ritual. The Orphic
imagination pictured the future, charted the next world, and prescribed
the formulas and confessions to be repeated under given circumstances.
Thus the final goal of ultimate assimilation to deity was to be
attained. Thus the initiated, having lived a life of Orphic purity,
finally became "God from man."
Admittedly Orphic practice did not offer a new birth experience as a
single catastrophic event to be realized in one's lifetime, unless
initiation itself is considered that event in a proleptic way. But
Orphism did furnish the possibility for a long regenerative process,
beginning at initiation and ending after the death of the physical
body--a development that eventuated in happy immortality. As an extended
process, therefore, rather than as a single event, Orphism fostered the
experience of regeneration.It is certainly pertinent to inquire whether or not the Orphic type
of religious experience had real significance in the Graeco-Roman world
at the beginning of the Christian era. Of the influence of Orphism in
the Greek world during classical times, we have found ample testimony by
writers of the highest repute. It is more difficult to trace the
influence of Orphism as a distinct religious movement during the
Hellenistic and later periods. Still the discovery of the important
private Orpheum in the recently excavated Villa Item at Pompeii, leads
one to anticipate similar finds elsewhere that may illustrate the
distinctive functioning of the Orphic cult in first-century life. If
when Pompeii was overwhelmed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. an
Orphic brotherhood was operating under private patronage in this
charming villa, similar groups were certainly to be found elsewhere in
the Roman world maintaining their peculiar cult practices. Aside from
such independent functioning, however, Orphism continued to influence
the world through systems other than its own. Like Pythagoreanism in
this as in much else, it merged readily with other movements. Its ideas
were adopted by popular philosophies and its practices were taken over
by popular religions. Orphism became very influential at ancient Eleusis
particularly, and with the influx of foreign gods and goddesses into
the Greek world it captivated them also. In these secondary forms the
Orphic view of life and the Orphic way of living continued to influence
thought and action even where Orphic brotherhoods as such had ceased to
exist.
There is plenty of direct literary evidence as to the power of Orphic
ideas and practices, however institutionalized, during the Hellenistic
and Graeco-Roman periods. One of the characteres of Theophrastus, for
example, was a man who every month repaired to the priests of the Orphic
mysteries to partake of their rites. Usually he was accompanied by his
wife. But if she was too busy, his children and their nurse went along
with him. Perhaps the most notable example of a prominent man who shared
the Orphic hope in the first Christian century was Plutarch. Both he
and his wife were initiated into an Orphic thiasus. Though he strongly
criticized certain Orphic practices, and refused to be frightened by the
terrors of their Hell, and depreciated the morbid type of
self-examination fostered by their manner of life, yet he and his wife
found the Orphic hope a real consolation to themselves in the time of
trouble. Strabo and Pausanias, as well as Plutarch, made casual
reference to Orphism as a feature of contemporary religion, while
Lucian, in his irresponsible manner, reflected Orphic ideas here and
there. The Latin poet Statius praised the widow of a certain Lucan for
not deifying him as Bacchus and consecrating to him "a deceitful
thiasus"--a testimony that the Orphic practice of deifying the dead was
not infrequent in the Graeco-Roman world.Of more concrete significance is the archaeological evidence
furnished by sepulchral art and grave inscriptions. According to the
Orphic scheme of things, the soul entered upon the status of divinity
after death. Among the monuments there are a number--quite apart from
royal or imperial memorials--which actually represented the dead as
gods. At Guthaeum, for example, a first-century (A.D.) statue
representing a youth was found near a sarcophagus. It was obviously
intended to be a portrait statue; but a panther stands by the side of
the youth, a grape cluster is in his hand, and a vine crown is on his
head. Here is a clear memorial of the process of apotheosizing a youth
after death and of representing him as the god Dionysus.
Among the grave inscriptions there are parallels to this sculptural
representation of a deceased youth as a god. A priest of Thasos
dedicated an inscription to his dead wife as "an incarnate goddess," and
a man by the name of Lucius consecrated a monument to his child of four
years with these words: "To my sweetest child and personal God who
hearkens to my prayers." More clearly reminiscent of certain
characteristic Orphic ideas is a second-century (A.D.) inscription found
in a Sabine village. "The soul is immortal for it came from God. The
body is the garment of the soul. Honor the God in me." This was good
Orphic doctrine throughout.Here and there also among grave inscriptions are to be heard the
echoes of Orphic ritual. On a tombstone in Cnidus was engraved this
affirmation, "I have not drunk of the water of Lethe that ends all
things." Immediately one is reminded of the Petelia tablet with its
description of a nameless well-spring at the left of the House of Hades
with a white cypress standing near--a well-spring by all means to be
avoided. There are other inscriptions which recall the cool waters of
Memory flowing from the well-spring on the right, from which the parched
soul may drink and find new life for itself. Two epitaphs of the third
century (A.D.) found at Rome contain prayers that are reminiscent of the
Orphic tablets. "May Aidoneus, the king of the dead, give you the cold
water" is the petition of one, while the second inscription repeats the
same request in the first person, "May he give the cold water to my
thirsting soul." Most peculiar of the Orphic inscriptions is one from
Abydos, dated roughly at the beginning of our era. It stood originally
on the grave of a Lycian Greek buried near the reputed tomb of Osiris.
The inscription expressed the conviction that since the tomb of the god
was near, the soul of the dead would escape Hades: "Hermes gathers me
with the sons of the gods, and I have not drunk the water of
Forgetfulness." Here the Arcadian Hermes makes his appearance in the
role of Psychopompos, as in classical mythology and the Hermetic
literature, and the inscription as a whole memorializes the blending on
Egyptian soil of Orphism, Hermetism, the Osiris cult, and local
tradition.
Altogether, therefore, the grave monuments of Graeco-Roman times
strongly reinforce the literary evidences that Orphic ideas were still
very influential in the life of paganism when Christianity first
emerged. Hence, among the new-birth experiences of paganism contemporary
with early Christianity the extended Orphic process of regeneration
must not be ignored.
