§ 3
This combination of religion and quasi-philosophical speculation was a distinguishing feature of the Orphics and of Orphic literature. Religion only entered into their Theogonical poetry in so far as the ethical personalities of the divinities therein described had not entirely faded away into transparent allegories.[26] It was abstract speculation alone which really prevailed there, little respect being paid to religion; and as a result a much greater licence was given to speculative construction.
This abstract speculation, however, reached its climax in a religious narrative of the first importance for the beliefs and cult of the sect. At the end of the series of genealogically connected deities came the son of Zeus and Persephone, Dionysos, who was also given the name of the underworld deity Zagreus.[27] To him, even in infancy, was entrusted the rule of the world by Zeus. But the wicked Titans, urged on by Hera, approached him by a stratagem. They were the enemies of Zeus, and had already been overthrown by Ouranos,[28] but had, it seems, been let loose again by Zeus from Tartaros. They made Dionysos trust them by giving him presents, and while he was looking at his own image in a mirror[29] that they had given him, they fell upon him. He tried to escape them by repeated transformations of shape; finally, in the form of a bull,[30] he was at last overcome and his body torn to pieces which his savage foes thereupon devoured. The heart alone [341] was rescued by Athene, and she brought it to Zeus who swallowed it. From Zeus there sprang the “new Dionysos”, the son of Zeus and Semele, in whom Zagreus came to life again.
The myth of the dismemberment of Zagreus by the Titans was already put into verse by Onomakritos;[31] it continued to be the culminating point of the doctrinal poetry of the Orphics. It occurred not only in the Rhapsodies,[32] but in other versions of the Orphic legend composed in complete independence of these.[33] It is a religious myth in the stricter sense; its ætioloqical character is most marked;[34] its purpose is to explain the religious implication of the ritual dismemberment of the bull-god at the Bacchic nocturnal festivals, and to derive that feature from the legendary sufferings of Dionysos-Zagreus.
But though the legend thus has its roots in the primitive sacrificial ritual of ancient Thrace,[35] in its extended form it belongs entirely to the region of Hellenic thought; and in this combination of the two elements it becomes truly Orphic. The wicked Titans belong entirely to strictly Greek mythology.[36] In this case, as the murderers of the god, they represent the primeval power of evil.[37] They dismember the One into Many parts; by their impiety the One divine being is dispersed into the multiplicity of the things of this world.[38] It is reborn as One in the new Dionysos sprung from Zeus. The Titans—so the legend goes on to relate—who had devoured the limbs of the god were destroyed by Zeus with his lightning flash. From their ashes sprang the race of men in whom, in conformity with their origin, the good derived from Dionysos-Zagreus is mixed with a wicked Titanic element.[39]
With the rule of the new-born Dionysos and the origin of mankind, the series of mythological events in the Orphic poetry came to an end.[40] With the entry of mankind into Creation[41] the existing period of the world begins; the period of world-revolutions is over. The poems now turn to the subject of man and the revelation of his fate, his duty and his purpose in the world.