Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/257

235 LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 235 members, by the popular party (about Olymp. 69. 1. B.C. 504). It was natural that many Pythagoreans, having contracted a fondness for exclusive associations, should seek a refuge in these Orphic conven- ticles, sanctified, as they were, by religion. Several persons, who are called Pythagoreans, and who were known as the authors of Orphic poems, belong to this period ; as Cercops, Brontinus, and Arignote. To Cercops was attributed the great poem called the " Sacred Legends " (lepol Xo'yoi), a complete system of Orphic theology, in twenty-four rhapsodies ; probably the work of several persons, as a certain Diog- netus was also called the author of it. Brontinus, likewise a Pytha- gorean, was said to be the author of an Orphic poem upon nature ((j)V(TiKa), and of a poem called " The Mantle and the Net" (7rtVoc Kal Stirvov), Orphic expressions symbolical of the creation. Arignote, who is called a pupil, and even a daughter, of Pythagoras, wrote a poem called Bacchica. Other Orphic poets were Persinus of Miletus, Timocles of Syracuse, Zopyrus of Heraclea, or Tarentum. The Orphic poet of whom wc know the most is Onomacritus, who, however, was not connected with the Pythagoreans, having lived with Pisistratus and the Pisistratids, and been held in high estimation by them, before the dissolution of the Pythagorean league. He collected the oracles of Musaeus for the Pisistratids ; in which work, the poet Lasus is said (according to Herodotus) to have detected him in a forgery. He also composed songs for Bacchic initiations ; in which he connected the Titans with the mythology of Dionysus, by de- scribing them as the intended murderers of the young god* ; which shows how far the Orphic mythology departed from the theogony of Hesiod. In the time of Plato, a considerable number of poems, under the names of Orpheus and Musaeus, had been composed by these per- sons, and were recited by rhapsodists at the public games, like the epics of Homer and Hesiod f. The Orpheotelests, likewise, an obscure set of mystagogues derived from the Orphic associations, used to come before the doors of the rich, and promise to release them from their own sins, and those of their forefathers, by sacrifices and expiatory songs ; and they produced at this ceremony a heap of books of Orpheus and Musecus, upon which they founded theu; promises J. § 6. In treating of the subjects of this early Orphic poetry, we may remark, first, that there is much difficulty in distinguishing it from Orphic productions of the decline of paganism ; and, secondly, that a detailed explanation of it would involve us in the mazes of ancient mythology and religion. We will, therefore, only mention the prin- cipal contents of these compositions ; which will suffice to give an idea of their spirit and character. We shall take them chiefly from the Orphic cosmogony, which later writers designate as the common one f Plato, Ion. p. 536 B. X Plato, Rep. ii. p. 364.
 * This is the meaning of the important passage of* Pausan. viii. 37. 3.