Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/42

 oracle of Miisaeus, for which Hipparchus banished him. He seems to have gone into Persia, where the Peisistratids, after their expulsion from Athens, took him again into favour, and employed him to persuade Xerxes to engage in his expedition against Greece, by reciting to him all the ancient oracles which seemed to favour the attempt, and suppress- ing those of a contrary tendency. (Herod, vii. 6.) It has been amply proved by Lobeck {Aglaoph. p. 332) and Nitzsch {Hist. Horn. p. 163), that the words of Herodotus, quoted above, mean that Ono- macritus was an utterer of ancient oracles, however preserved, and that he had made a collection and arrangement of the oracles ascribed to Musaeus. And this is quite in keeping with the literary cha- racter of the age of the Peisistratidae, and with other traditions respecting Onomacritus himself, as, for example, that he made interpolations in Homer as well as in Musaeus {SchoL in Horn. Od. xi. 604*), and that he was the real author of some of the poems which went under the name of Orpheus. The account of Herodotus fixes the date of Ono- macritus to about B. c. 520 — 485, and shows the error of those ancient writers who placed him as early as the fiftieth Olympiad, b. c. 580. (Clem. Alex. Strotn. i. p. 143, Sylb. ; Tatian. adv. Graec. 62, p. 38, Worth.) The account of Herodotus, respecting the forgeries of Onomacritus, is confirmed by Pausanias, who speaks of certain verses (cttt?), which were ascribed to Musaeus, but which, in his opinion, were composed by Onomacritus, for that there was nothing which could be ascribed with certainty to Musaeus, except the hymn to Demeter which he composed for the Lycomidae. (Paus. i. 22. § 7 ; conip. iv. 1. § 6.) In three other pas- sages Pausanias cites the poems of Onomacritus (iu Tots €7re(n), but without any intimation that they were or pretended to be any others than his own (viii. 31. § 3, 37. § 4. s. 5, ix. 35. § 1. s. 5). That Pausanias does not refer in these last pas- sages to poems which went under the names of the old mythological bards, but were in reality composed by Onomacritus, is rendered probable by the manner in which he generally refers to such sup- posititious works, as in the passage first quoted (i. 22. § 7 ; comp. i. 14. §3, et 8?) Movcraiov Kal ravra, and i. 37. § 4, rd KaorjfjLeva*Op(j)iKd) : and, moreover, in two of the three passages he quotes Onomacritus in comparison with Homer and He- siod. But if, for these reasons, the poems so quoted must be regarded as having been ascribed to Onomacritus in the time of Pausanias, it does not follow that they were, in any proper sense, the original compositions of Onomacritus ; but it rather seems probable that they were remnants of ancient hymns, the authors of which were unknown, and that the labours of Onomacritus consisted simply in editing them, no doubt with interpolations of his own. The last of the three passages quoted from Pau- sanias gives rise to a curious question. Pausanias quotes Hesiod as saying that the Graces were the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, and that their names were Euphrosyne and Aglai'a and Thalia, and then adds that the same account is given in the poems of Onomacritus. Now we find in the Onomacritus to the literary history of the Homeric poems, see Nitzsch, Erkl'drende Anmerkungen zu Homer^s Odyssee, vol. iii. pp. 336, &c. fifty-ninth Orphic Hymn the Graces addressed thus : — @vyar4pes Ztji/Js re koI Evpo/ulIvs $a6vK6irov, 'A'yaiT} re, @deia, Kal Eucppocrvvtj Troo§€. Some writers have hastily taken this as a proof that the true author of the still extant Orphic hymns was Onomacritus, or else, as others more cautiously put it, that Onomacritus Avas one of the authors of them, and that this hymn at least is to be ascribed to him. It proves, if anything, the direct contrary of this ; for, had the hymn in ques- tion borne the name of Orpheus in the time of Pausanias, he would have so quoted it, to say nothing of the difference between the name Eury- nome in Pausanias and Eunomia in the hymn. The truth is that the date of the extant Orphic hymns is centuries later than the time of Onoma- critus [Orpheus]. That Onomacritus, however, did publish poems under the name of Orpheus, as well as of Musaeus, is probable from several testimonies, among which is that of Aristotle, who held that there never was such a poet as Orpheus, and that the poems known under his name were fabricated partly by Cercops, and partly by Ono- macritus. (Cic. de Nat. Dear. i. 38 ; Philopon. ad Aristot. de Anim. i. 5 ; Suid. s. v. 'Op(/)eJs ; ScJiol. ad Aristeid. Panaih. p. 165 ; Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hypotyp. iii. 4 ; Euseb. Praep. Evan. x. 4 ; Tatian. adv. Graec. 62.) From these statements it appears that the literary character of Onomacritus must be regarded as quite subordinate to his religious position ; that he was not a poet who cultivated the art for its own sake, but a priest, who availed himself of the ancient religious poems for the support of the worship to which he was attached. Of what character that worship was, may be seen from the statement of Pausanias, that " Onomacritus, taking from Homer the name of the Titans, composed (or, established, (TvveOriKev) orgies to Dionysus, and represented in his poems (eirotyjarev) the Titans as the authors of the sufferings of Dionysus." (Paus. viii. 37. § 4. s. 5.) Here we have, in fact, the great Orphic myth of Dionysus Zagreus, whose worship it thus seems was either established or re-arranged by Onomacritus, who must therefore be regarded as one of the chief leaders of the Orphic theology, and the Orphic societies. [Orpheus.] Some mo- dern writers, as Ulrici, think it probable that Onomacritus was the real author of the Orphic Theogonyt to which others again assign a still earlier date. (Grote, History of Greece., vol. i. pp. 25, 29.) There is an obscure reference in Aristotle {Polit. ii. 9) to " Onomacritus, a Locrian," the first dis- tinguished legislator, who practised gymnastic exercises in Crete, and travelled abroad on account of the art of divination, and who was a contemporary of Thales. (See Hoeckh, Greta, vol. iii. pp. 318, &c.)
 * For an elaborate discussion of the relation of

For further remarks on the literary and religious position of Onomacritus, see the Histories of Greek Literature by Mliller, Bernhardy, Ulrici, and Bode; Miiller, Proleg. zu einer Wissenschaftlichen Mythologie ; Lobeck, Aglaophamtis, and Ritschl, in Ersch and Gruber's Encyklopddie. [P. S.]

ONOMARCHUS {'Ovofxapxos), general of the Phocians in the Sacred War, was brother of Philomelus and son of Theotimus (Diod. xvi. 56, 61 ; Pau3. X. 2. § 2 ; but see Arist Pol. v. 4, and