ity of these latter, however, it acquired greater veneration, and above all was supposed to be of greater antiquity, than the Hesiodic. The belief in its superior antiquity (disallowed by Herodotus, and seemingly also by Aristotle[1]), as well as the respect for its contents, increased during the Alexandrine age and through the declining centuries of Paganism, reaching its maximum among the New-Platonists of the third and fourth century after Christ: both the Christian assailants, as well as the defenders, of paganism, tieated it as the most ancient and venerable summary of the Grecian faith. Orpheus is celebrated by Pindar as the harper and companion of the Argonautic maritime heroes: Orpheus and Musæus, as well as Pamphôs and Olên, the great supposed authors of theogonic, mystical, oracular, and prophetic verses and hymns, were generally considered by literary Greeks as older than either Hesiod or Homer:[2] and such was also the common opinion of modern scholars until a period comparatively recent. It has now been shown, on sufficient ground, that the
- ↑ This opinion of Herodotus is implied in the remarkable passage about Homer and Hesiod, ii. 53, though he never once names Orpheus—only alluding once to "Orphic ceremonies," ii. 81. He speaks more than once of the prophecies of Musæus. Aristotle denied the past existence and reality of Orpheus. See Cicero de Nat. Deor. i. 38.
- ↑ Pindar Pyth. iv. 177. Plato seems to consider Orpheus as more ancient than Homer. Compare Theastet. p. 179; Cratylus, p. 402; De Republ. ii. p. 364. The order in which Aristophanês (and Hippias of Elis, ap. Clem. Alex. Str. vi. p. 624) mentions them indicates the same view, Kanae, 1030. It is unnecessary to cite the later chronologers, among whom the belief if the antiquity of Orpheus was universal; he was commonly described as son of the Muse Calliopê. Androtiôn seems to have denied that he was a Thracian, regarding the Thracians as incurably stupid and illiterate. Androtiôn, Fragm. 36, ed. Didot. Ephorus treated him as having been a pupil of the Idæan Dactyls of Phrygia (see Diodor. v. 64), and as having learnt from them his τελετὰς and μυστήρια, which he was the first to introduce into Greece. The earliest mention which we find of Orpheus, is that of the poet Ibycus (about b. c. 530), ὀνομάκλυτον Ὀρφῆν. Ibyci Fragm. 9, p. 341 ed Schneidewin.
See Busiris, p. 229; ii. p. 309, Bekk. The Theogony of Orpheus, as conceived by Apollonius Rhodius (i. 504) in the third century b. c., and by Nigidius in the first century b. c. (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. iv. 10), seems to have been on a more contracted scale than that which is given in the text. But neither of them notice the talc of Zngreus, which we know to be as old as Onomakritus
