[55] Prohibition to bury corpses in woollen garments: Hdt. ii, 81 (in each case in order that nothing θνησείδιον might cling to the departed). Prohibition against eating eggs: Lob. 251 (eggs are part of the offering to the dead and the food of the χθόνιοι, and so forbidden: so rightly explained by Lob. 477). It was forbidden in Orphic poetry, as well as Pythagorean, to eat beans: Lob. 251; Nauck on Iamb., VP., p. 231 f.: the reason here, too, being that beans as part of the offerings to the dead, putantur ad mortuos pertinere (Fest.); see Lob. 254 and Crusius, Rh. Mus. 39, 165. The same or similar reasons are everywhere at work to cause the eating of certain foods to be forbidden [358] both by the Pythagorean ordinances and in the mystical cult of the χθόνιοι: it is because they are used as offerings to the beings of the lower world, πρὸς τὰ περίδειπνα καὶ τὰς προκλήσεις τῶν νεκρῶν, or even because they have names which, like ἐρέβινθος or λάθυρος, recall ἔρεβος and λήθη: Plu., QR. 95, p. 286 E. The purified state requires above all complete separation from anything connected with the realm of the dead and the divinities of the dead.
[56] Cf. fr. 208.
[57] The soul is confined within the body (according to those ἀμφὶ Ὀρφέἀ), ὡς δίκην διδούσης τῆς ψυχῆς ὧν δὴ ἕνεκα δίδωσιν, Pl., Crat. 400 C. The exact nature of this “guilt” of the soul is not explained in our remains of Orphic literature. The point, however, is chiefly that the life within the body is according to their doctrine not in accordance with but contrary to the proper nature of the soul.
[58] συμπόσιον τῶν ὁσίων, Pl., Rp. 363 C. ὁσίους μύστας, Orph., H. 84, 3; see above, chap. vi, [n. 18].
[59] ψυχὰς ἀθανάτας κατάγει Κυλλήνιος Ἑρμῆς γαίης ἐς κευθμῶνα πελώριον fr. 224 (it would be vain to look for an example of ἀθάνατος used as adjective to ψυχή in Homer). Hermes χθόνιος leads the souls down into Hades and also upwards again (to fresh ἐνσωματώσεις): Orph., H. 57, 6 ff. (For the Pythagorean Hermes see D.L. viii, 31.)
[60] Especially in the κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου (Lob. 373; cf. above, chap. vii, [n. 3]). The descent lay through the chasm at Tainaron: see above, chap. v, [n. 23], and cf. Orph., Arg. 41.—Other Orphic poems may also have dealt with such matters: πολλὰ μεμυθολόγηται περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου πραγμάτων τῷ τῆς Καλλιόπης, Jul., Or. vii, p. 281, 3 Hertl. [216 D].
[61] λύσεις καὶ καθαρμοί of the living and even the dead carried out by Orphic priests: Pl., Rp. 364 E. Reward of the initiated in Hades: cf. the anecdote of Leotychidas II in Plu., Apophth. Lac., p. 224 E; and of Antisthenes in D.L. vi, 4. Those who feared the bite of Kerberos or the water-carrying to the leaky cask (see [App. iii]) sought protection against such things in τελεταὶ καὶ καθαρμοί: Plu. N.P.Q. Suav. Epic. 27, p. 1105 B. Hope of immortality for the soul rests on the Dionysiac mysteries acc. to Plu., Cons. ad Ux. 10, p. 611 D.
[62] It is significant that the belief in a judgment and punishment of ψυχαί is based in [Pl.] Ep. vii, 335 A not on popular acceptance or the statements of poets but on παλαιοί τε καὶ ἱεροὶ λόγοι; cf. above, chap. vii, [n. 13].
[63] fr. 154 (punishment in Hades of those guilty of crimes against their own parents? fr. 281).