Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/254

232 232 HISTORY OP THE opinion of a particular sect* ;) and upon whom the Orphic theologers founded their hopes of the purification and ultimate immortality of the soul. But their mode of celebrating 1 this worship was very different from the popular rites of Bacchus. The Orphic worshippers of Bac- chus did not indulge in unrestrained pleasure and frantic enthusiasm, but rather aimed at an ascetic purity of life and mannersf. The fol- lowers of Orpheus, when they had tasted the mystic sacrificial feast of raw flesh torn from the ox of Dionysus (w^xo^aym), partook of no other animal food. They wore white linen garments, like Oriental and Egyp- tian priests, from whom, as Herodotus remarks, much may have been borrowed in the ritual of the Orphic worship. § 3. It is difficult to determine the time when the Orphic association was formed in Greece, and when hymns and other religious songs were first composed in the Orphic spirit. But, if we content ourselves with seeking to ascertain the beginning of higher and more hopeful views of death than those presented by Homer, we find them in the poetry of Hesiod. In Hesiod's Works and Days, at least, all the heroes are described as collected by Zeus in the Islands of the Blessed near the ocean ; according indeed to one verse (which, however, is not recog- nised by all critics), they are subject to the dominion of CronusJ. In this we may see the marks of a great change in opinion. It became re- pugnant to men's feelings to conceive divine beings, like the gods of Olympus and the Titans, in a state of eternal dissension ; the former selfishly enjoying undisturbed felicity, and the latter abandoned to all the horrors of Tartarus. A humaner spirit required a reign of peace after the rupture of the divine dynasties. Hence^the belief, entertained by Pindar, that Zeus had released the Titans from their chains§ ; and that Cronus, the god of the golden age, reconciled with his son Zeus, still continued to reign, in the islands of the ocean, over the blessed of a former generation. In Orphic poems, Zeus calls on Cronus, re- leased from his chains, to assist him in laying the foundation of the world. There is also, in other epic poets after Homer, a similar ten- dency to lofty and tranquillizing notions. Eugammon, the author of the Telegonia||, is supposed to have borrowed the part of his poem which treated of Thesprotia, from Musaeus, the poet of the mysteries. Thesprotia was a country in which the worship of the gods of death was peculiarly cultivated. In the AlcmceoniSy which celebrated Alc- mseon, the son of Amphiaraus, Zagreus was invoked as the highest of all the gods^]. The deity meant in this passage was the god of the in- f On this and other points mentioned in the text seeLobeck Ag^'topha!™!*, p. 2-14. J According to v. 169 : t»Xou «<t' a^xvarav roTtriv K^ova; ip/iairiXiuii, (concerning this reading see Goettling's edition ;) which verse is wanting in some manuscripts. § Ziv; 'iXvfft "Virata;.
 * Ap. Clem. Alex. Protr. p. 30, Potter.
 * See above, cb. vi. § 6.
 * ] XJirvix I'SJ, Zv.yoiv ti (iuv vawTiorari vdi/r&iv. Etym. Gud. in V. Zaypivs.