After death the soul was fated to pass to Hades and then from its sojourn there into another body, and so on. This doom was the result of sin. To hasten the process and escape from evil, “to end the cycle and have respite from sin,” a course of life was necessary, which was defined by the Orphic teaching. The requirements of the Orphic life seem to us trivial and absurd for the most part. Apparently abstinence from flesh was required, except perhaps at certain sacramental festivals; this prohibition was of course due to the doctrine of metempsychosis. No bloody sacrifices were allowed for the same reason. The use of eggs and beans was forbidden, for these articles were associated with the worship of the dead; and burial in woolen garments was likewise wrong. Besides these taboos certain rites existed of which we get only hints. There were liturgies, initiations, magic incantations which seem to show that in time at least an elaborate ritual was developed. All these things were the means by which the soul might be purified from its sin which condemned it to the prison of the body, and which pursued it through incarnation after incarnation.
After death, as I have said, the soul awaited in Hades its rebirth, but its stay in Hades, like its life on earth, was a period of reward or punishment: “They who are righteous beneath the rays of the sun, when they die have a gentler lot in a fair meadow by deep-flowing Acheron.... But they who have worked wrong and insolence beneath the rays of the sun are led down beneath Cocytus’s watery plain into chill Tartarus.”[78] So this stay in Hades was a period of punishment and of purification, as life itself was a period of penance. The duration of this intermediate stay in Hades was conceived perhaps as a thousand years. In any case, after due season the soul entered upon a new incarnation, which apparently was determined by the innocence or guilt of its former life. Rebirth was not always into human form, as the Orphic verses show: “Wherefore the changing soul of man, in the cycles of time, passes into various creatures: sometimes it enters a horse, ... again it is a sheep, then a bird dread to see; again it has the form of a dog with heavy voice, or as a chill snake creeps along the ground.”[79] The poet-philosopher Empedocles declared that before his present existence he had been “a youth, a maiden, a bush, a bird, and a fish of the sea.”[80] So the soul was buffeted from birth to death and back to birth again. Of those who had been guilty of most grievous sins Empedocles says: “There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient, eternal decree of the gods sealed with strong oaths: when one in sin stains his hands with murder, or when another joining in strife swears falsely, they become the spirits who have long life as their portion, who are doomed to wander thrice ten thousand seasons far from the blessed, being born in the course of time into all forms of mortal creatures, shifting along life’s hard paths. For the might of the air drives them to the sea and the sea spews them on the ground, and the land bares them to the rays of the bright sun, and the sun throws them in whirls of ether. One receives them from another, but all hate them. Of this number am even I now, an exile from god and a wanderer, for I put my trust in mad strife.”[81] The number of reincarnations was not fixed so far as we know, though apparently ten thousand years was thought to be the limit of the process for the ordinary soul. Probably it was believed that there was no end of rebirths for the wicked, but that they were condemned to their repeated fate forever; or that they were doomed to endless punishment without rebirths.
But you may ask, what was the ultimate fate of the purified soul? To this, too, we can give no complete answer. Apparently the soul, stripped at last of all that was earthly and defiling, was then thought to be first truly free and alive. On Orphic tablets of the fourth century before our era found in southern Italy we read these words of the triumphant soul: “I have escaped from the sorrowful, weary round, I have entered with eager feet the ring desired. I have passed to the bosom of the mistress queen of the lower world.” And it is greeted in answer: “O happy and blessed one, thou shalt be god instead of mortal.”[82] Apparently the purified soul left earth and Hades behind. There is no hint of absorption into god; no idea of Nirvana. The spirit of Greek thought required that the individuality of the soul should be retained. No doubt the Orphics conceived of every kind of heaven that was possible, many of them of most materialistic nature. Indeed, Plato reproaches some of them for believing future happiness to be a perpetual drunken round.
For the sinful, torments of a most fearful sort were reserved: not only did they lie in mud and filth, but they were exposed to most terrible creatures who rent their vitals. In short, the Orphic hell was not less awful physically than that of the medieval and later Christian, which in no small part was inherited from the Orphics.
Before we go on to consider other movements of the sixth century, let us summarize briefly the contributions of the Orphics to Greek religious thought. In the first place they definitely shifted man’s look from this world to the world beyond. In Homer, as we have seen, this world offered all for which man could hope; but to the Orphic, as to the devoted sectaries of all redemptive religions, this world was unimportant compared with the next in which he was to realize his fondest desires. Again the Orphics emphasized the duality of man, regarding him as a divine soul imprisoned in a sinful body. They made the divinity of the soul a motive for the religious life, the aim of which was to free the spirit of man from the sin which visits him in the prison-house of the flesh. Thereby they started the tendency to religious asceticism which was to be sharply emphasized by Christianity when a thousand years had past. Their doctrine of the divine nature of the soul they also made the basis of their belief in the soul’s immortality; for if the soul is divine, it must be eternally so. Furthermore, so far as we can know, they introduced the idea of pre-natal sin for which the individual soul must pay the penalty. It needs no argument to show the intrinsic importance of these ideas; as we go on, we shall have occasion to observe their significance in Greek religious thought.
Less valuable in itself, but not less persistent, as we can still see in our own Christian church, was the notion that only the initiates, who by purificatory rites had been received into the sacred association, could hope for salvation. Union with the divine nature and future blessedness were thus made to depend on sacraments rather than on virtue. Indeed, we need not suppose that here any more than in the mysteries at Eleusis there was originally any requirement of a virtuous life. But reason and an awakened ethical sense among the Greeks began early to demand of the initiates compliance with the recognized standards of morality, as the passages already quoted show; and there can be no doubt that in due time most of the various mysteries contributed to the ethical life. Yet the inevitable tendency in the opposite direction made itself felt and there were many Orphic charlatans and quacks who promised salvation to all who would undergo the cheap rites of their initiations.
We must now glance at a contemporaneous and related movement—I mean Pythagoreanism, which will have sprung into the thoughts of many of you already.
Whether Orphism learned from Pythagoras or Pythagoras from Orphism cannot be determined; but it seems probable that Croton was already an Orphic center when about 530 b.c. Pythagoras of Samos after long travels established there an association which combined in a way hitherto unknown religious and philosophic aims. Pythagoras may have attached himself to some group of Orphics already in existence and have inspired it with his political and philosophic interests. In any case his society, which was opposed to the democratic temper of Croton, became in time important enough to be regarded with suspicion and forced to move to Metapontum; ultimately the members were dispersed carrying their doctrines with them throughout the Greek world.
Our knowledge of the philosophic ideas of Pythagoras himself amounts to little. It is clear that in contrast to the emotional Orphics he was interested in intellectual pursuits, especially in mathematics; more than that we cannot say; our present concern lies rather in the ethical and religious views and practices of the society which he established. This set high store on ethical discipline, following a strict course of life, for the ultimate aim was identical with that of the Orphics—salvation and release from sin. Like them the Pythagoreans also held to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Their rules enjoined simplicity of food, rare use of meat, and abstention from the eating of beans and eggs. But more important was the discipline which was prescribed for the mind and soul. The applicant for admission to the brotherhood was first tested to determine his fitness. The neophyte was bound to silence and obedience. “The master said it” was argument enough for him. The members devoted themselves to reflection, to self-examination, to the pursuit of the truth. Their highest aim was “to follow god.” Although the Pythagoreans fixed their gaze more on this world than the Orphics did, they also were of great religious significance. They emphasized the duality of man, the moral obligation of the individual, and especially the possibility of training and purifying the soul, and so helped to establish a spiritual heritage for later centuries.