[122] Such a connexion must at least be intended when Aristeas is brought to Metapontum and Phormion to Kroton, both important centres of the Pythagorean society. Aristeas, too, as well as Abaris, Epimenides, etc., is one of the favourite figures of the Pythagoreans: see Iamb., VP. 138.
[123] It would certainly be necessary to deny to Epimenides the “Theogony” that the whole of antiquity read and quoted under the name of Epimenides without once expressing a doubt, if the figments of that Theogony really contained borrowings from the teaching of Anaximenes or, even worse, from the rhapsodical Theogony of Orpheus, as Kern, de Orphei Ep. Pher. Theog. 66 ff. maintains. But in the first place a few vague resemblances are not enough to show any connexion between Epimenides and those others. In the second, supposing the connexion proved, Epimenides need not necessarily have been the borrower. In any case, such alleged borrowings do not oblige us to advance the period when Ep. lived from the end of [334] the seventh to the end of the sixth century. If they really exist then we should rather have to conclude that the Theogony is itself a forgery of a much later date.
[124] The possibility of theoretical activity in the case of these men is often implied in the statements of later writers; e.g. when the name is given to Epimenides (D.S. 5, 80, 4) or Abaris (Apollon., Mir. 4); or when Aristeas is called an ἀνὴρ φιλόσοφος (Max. Tyr. 38, 3, p. 222 R.).
[125] Arist., Meta. 1, 3, p. 948b, 19 f.
[126] See [Append. viii].
[127] See above, chap. i, [n. 41]. Archiloch. fr. 12: κείνου κεφαλὴν καὶ χαρίεντα μέλη Ἥφαιστος καθαροῖσιν ἐν εἵμασιν ἀμφεπονήθη. E., Or. 40 f.: the slain Klytaimnestra πυρὶ καθήγνισται δέμας and Sch. πάντα γὰρ καθαιρεῖ τὸ πῦρ, καὶ ἁγνὰ δοκεῖ εἶναι τὰ καιόμενα, τὰ δὲ ἄταφα μεμιασμένα. E., Sup. 1211: . . . ἵν’ αὐτῶν (those who are being buried) σώμαθ’ ἡγνίσθη πυρί; cf. ἅγνισον πυρσῷ μέλαθρον, IT. 1216. On a grave inscr. from Attica (Epigr. Gr. 104): ἐνθάδε Διάλογος καθαρῷ πυρὶ γυῖα καθήρας . . . ᾤχετ’ ἐς ἀθάνατους—evidently modelled on ancient ideas; cf. also ib. 109, 5 (CIA. iii, 1325). Those, too, who are struck by lightning (see [Appendix i]) are purified from all earthly taint by the holiest sort of πῦρ καθάρσιον (E., IA. 1112; καθαρσίῳ φλογί, E., Hel. 869) and go straight πρὸς ἀθανάτους. Iamb., Myst. v, 12, also explains how fire τὰ προσαγόμενα καθαίρει καὶ ἀπολύει τῶν ἐν τῇ ὕλῃ δεσμῶν, ἀφομοιοῖ τοῖς θεοῖς, etc.
[128] Cf. also Pl., Lg. 677 DE; Plu., Fac. Orb. Lun. 25, p. 940 C.
CHAPTER X
THE ORPHICS
The earliest authority who mentions Orphic sects and their practices is Herodotos (ii, 81), who calls attention to the correspondence between certain sacerdotal and ascetic ordinances of the Egyptian priesthood, and the “Orphic and Bacchic” mysteries. The latter, he says, are really Egyptian and Pythagorean, or in other words they were founded by Pythagoras or Pythagoreans upon Egyptian models; and thus, in the opinion of the historian, they cannot have come into existence before the last decade of the sixth century. Herodotos then, either in Athens or elsewhere, had heard during his journeys of certain private societies who by calling themselves after the name of Orpheus, the prototype of Thracian song so well known to legend, recognized the origin of their peculiar cult and creed in the mountains of Thrace, and did honour to Bakchos the Thracian god. The fact that the Greek Orphics did indeed worship Dionysos, the lord of life and death, before all other gods, is clearly shown by the remains of the theological poems that originated in their midst. Orpheus himself, as founder of the Orphic sect, is actually said to have been the founder also of the Dionysiac initiation-mysteries.[1]