[173] The Orphic hymns in the form in which we have them all belong as it seems to one period, and that can hardly have been earlier than the third century A.D. They are all composed for practical use in the cult, and that presupposes the existence of Orphic communities (see Schöll, Commun. et coll. quib. Graec. [Sat. Saupp.], p. 14 ff.; Dieterich, de H. Orph.).—It must be admitted that they were not purely and exclusively Orphic communities for which the poems were written. These hymns, called “Orphic” a potiori, make use in parts of older Orphic poetry (cf. H. 62, 2 f., with [Dem.] 25, 11).
[174] Probably all these cults promised immortality to their mystai. This is certain in the worship of Isis (cf. Burckhardt, Zeit Constantins d. G.2, p. 195 ff.). Apul., M. xi, 21–3, alludes to symbolic death and reawakening to everlasting life as the subject of the δρώμενα in the Isis mysteries. The initiated is thus renatus (21). In the same way the mystai of Mithras are said to be in aeternum renati: CIL. vi, 510; 736. Immortality must certainly have been promised. Acc. to Tert., Pr. Haer. 40, the mysteries of Mithras [580] included an imago resurrectionis. By this the Christian author can only understand a real ἀνάστασις τῆς σαρκός. Did these mysteries promise to their ὅσιοι a resurrection of the body and everlasting life? This belief in the ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν (always a difficulty for the Greeks: Act Ap. xvii, 18; 32; Plotin. 3, 6, 6 fin.) is in fact ancient Persian (Theopomp. fr. 71–2; Hübschmann, Jb. Prot. Theol. v, p. 222 ff.), and probably came to the Jews from Persia. It is possible then that it may have been the essential idea of the Mithras mysteries.—Hopes of immortality as they appeared to the mystai of Sabazios are illustrated by the sculptures of the monument of Vibia (in the Catac. of Praetextatus), and of Vincentius: numinis antistes Sabazis Vincentius hic est. Qui sacra sancta deum mente pia coluit (Garrucci, Tre Sepolcri, etc., tab. i–iii, Nap. 1852).—It is difficult to see why Christian archeologists should regard this Vincentius as a Christian. He calls himself a worshipper of “the gods” and an antistes Sabazii (there cannot be the slightest objection to giving this meaning to numinis antistes Sabazis. The difficulties raised by Schultze, Katakomben, 44, are groundless: Sabazis = Sabazii is no more objectionable or doubtful than the genitives Clodis, Helis: see Ritschl, Opusc. iv, 454–6. The arrangement of words, n. a. Sab., is due to the exigencies of metre).
[175] ἡ ὄρεξις τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ εἰς ἓν ὄντως ἄγει καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦτο σπεύδει πᾶσα φύσις, Plot. 6, 5, 1. πάντα ὀρέγεται ἐκείνου καὶ ἐφίεται αὐτοῦ φύσεως ἀνάγκῃ . . . ὡς ἄνευ αὐτοῦ οὐ δύναται εἶναι, 5, 5, 12; 1, 8, 2. ποθεῖ δὲ πᾶν τὸ γεννῆσαν (the νοῦς desires the πρῶτον, the ψυχή the νοῦς): 5, 1, 6.
[176] αἱ ἔξω τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ γενόμεναι (ψυχαί), Plot. 3, 4, 6. In death ἀνάγειν τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν θεῖον πρὸς τὸ ἐν τῷ πάντι θεῖον, Porph., V. Plot. 2. Return εἰς πατρίδα, Plot., 5, 9, 1.
[177] 2, 9, esp. § 16 ff.
[178] τὸ μὲν γὰρ αἰσχρὸν ἐναντίον καὶ τῇ φύσει καὶ τῷ θεῷ, 3, 5, 1.
[179] Flight from the ἐν σώματι κάλλος to the τῆς ψυχῆς κάλλη, etc., 5, 9, 2. And again in the fine treatise, π. τοῦ καλοῦ, 1, 6, 8. Though even here it is in a different sense from that in which Plato speaks in the Symp. of the ascent from καλὰ σώματα to καλὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα, etc. Plotinos protests energetically against the idea that his own sense of beauty makes him any the less φεύγειν τὸ σῶμα than the hatred of beauty cultivated by the Gnostics: 2, 9, 18. He too waits here below, only a little less impatiently, for the time when he will be able to say farewell to every earthly habitation: ib.
[180] . . . καὶ οὕτω θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων θείων καὶ εὐδαιμόνων βίος ἀπαλλαγὴ τῶν τῇδε, βίος ἀνήδονος τῶν τῇδε, φυγὴ μόνου πρὸς μόνον, 6, 9, 11 fin.