In that period of extreme excitement the Greeks must have had frequent experience of the abnormal but by no means unusual psychical state in which a division of consciousness takes place and becomes apparent. The single personality splits up into two (or more) distinct centres of consciousness; and these give rise to two personalities (succeeding each other, or contemporaneous), with a double will and a double intellect appearing in one man. Even unprejudiced psychological observers of our own time are unable to describe such phenomena, which appear (spontaneously or produced experimentally) in certain neuropathic conditions, except as a reduplication or multiplication of personality. A second self comes into being, a second centre of consciousness following or by the side of the first and normal personality, which is generally unaware of the existence of its rival. (Probably the most complete and cautious account of these matters is that given by Pierre Janet in L’automatisme psychologique, Paris, 1889.) When such phenomena appear in conjunction with marked religious or spiritualistic tendencies they are naturally explained in accordance with these intellectual preconceptions. The appearance in a man or woman of an intelligent will, unguided or unperceived by the normally dominant personality, is conceived as the entrance of a foreign personality into the individual; or as the expulsion of the real soul of the individual by such a demonic or spiritual visitor. Nothing, however, is commoner, in all ages, than the religious or spiritualist preconceptions that lead to such an explanation; and so [596] what the Greeks called ἔκστασις or κατέχεσθαι ἐκ θεοῦ has been a very frequent explanation of such mysterious occurrences from the earliest times (and in the present day). It has appealed just as much to the person affected by such “reduplication of personality” as to those round about him (unless they have been scientifically educated). The actual experience of such phenomena is generally a fact; fancy begins only with the explanation offered. For the Greeks the Pythia was always the best known example of such “possession” of a human being by a foreign will or spirit which seemed to enter violently and from outside into the human individual, having little correspondence (as it usually happened) with the character or the intellect of the “medium” in his or her normal state of consciousness. The Sibyls, Bakides, Βάκχοι, the seers and priests of purification, Epimenides, Aristeas, and so many others, were further cases of the ascent of the soul to the divine or the entrance of a god into the soul. It was inevitable that the idea of an immediate relation between the soul and the divine, and of the divine nature of the soul itself, should grow up in connexion with such cases as these, and seem to be authenticated in them more than in any other way. Greece is not the only place where this has happened.
APPENDIX IX
THE GREAT ORPHIC THEOGONY
The information about a coherent Orphic Theogony and Anthropogony which has come down to us from the statements of Neoplatonic philosophers and their contemporaries, is derived, as Lobeck very rightly concluded, from the ἐν ταῖς ῥαψῳδίαις Ὀρφικαῖς θεολογία, ἣν καὶ οἱ φιλόσοφοι διερμηνεύουσιν (Damasc., Princ., p. 380 K.). This last statement means that they were explained in lectures given by the heads of the Platonic school since the time of Syrianos (Ὀρφικαὶ συνουσίαι of Syrian.: Procl., in Tim. 96 B; Scholia of Proclus on Orpheus, εἰ καὶ μὴ εἰς πάσας τὰς ῥαψῳδίας: Marin., V. Procl. 27). Written commentaries were also published, more particularly in order to prove the συμφωνίαν Ὀρφέως, Πυθαγόρου καὶ Πλάτωνος (Syrianos wrote a book with this title, wrongly ascribed to Proclus by Suidas: see R. Schöll on Procl. in Rp., p. 5. Probably the work of Syr. εἰς τὴν Ὀρφέως θεολογίαν is the source of Orph., frr. 123–4, which are traced back in the Θεοσοφία, § 50, to Συριανὸς ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πονήμασιν. From Syr. also probably comes the citation from Orpheus ἐν τῇ τετάρτῃ ῥαψῳδίᾳ, ib., § 61). The older Neoplatonists before Syrianos took little notice of the Orphica. Plotinos gives no quotation at all (though perhaps an allusion in 4, 3, 12; see Lob., p. 555), Iamblichos quotes nothing from immediate acquaintance, Porphyrios, who read everything, gives a little (frr. 114; 123 Euseb. from Porph.; 211) and what he does give certainly comes from the Rhapsodiai. In fact, [597] the Neoplatonics as a whole when they quote Orpheus from their own knowledge (and do not, for example, simply write “Orpheus” instead of “Pythagoras”: see above, chap. x, [n. 9]) use the Rhapsodiai only, as Lobeck rightly maintains, p. 466 (Abel did not realize this, to the detriment of his collection of the frr.). The title of the poem they used can hardly have been Θεογονία. (This seems to occur as a title in fr. 188 [Clem. Al. from auct. π. κλοπῆς]. In fr. 108 it is only a description of contents; fr. 310 is spurious. In Suidas, Gaisford’s MSS., we do indeed read of a θεογονία, ἔπη ͵ασʹ: but the figure indicating the number of lines corresponds most suspiciously with that of the previous ὀνομαστικόν, and in any case would be insufficient for the great length of the ῥαψῳδίαι.) It seems extremely probable (as Lobeck already suspected, p. 716, 726) that the simple description: an Orphic poem divided into several Rhapsodiai, ἱεροὶ λόγοι ἐν ῥαψῳδίαις κδʹ (Suid.), was the real title of the poem, which consisted of several ῥαψῳδίαι. This ἱερὸς λόγος (the plural only means that there were several books) is, however a different one (Lobeck missed this, p. 716) from the ἱερὸς λόγος which Epigenes (ap. Clem. Al., Str. i, 21, p. 144 P.) attributed to the Pythagorean Kerkops. (And again when Suid. attributes the 24 Rhaps. to the Thessalian Theognetos or to Kerkops he also means the old ἱερὸς λόγος not divided into Rhaps., and confuses this with the later and much extended ἱερὸς λόγος.) The older ἱερὸς λόγος is that alluded to by Cic., ND. i, 107, and prob. also by Plu., Smp. 2, 3, 2, p. 636 D (fr. 42); the quotation in EM. (fr. 44) from the 8th Bk. refers to the later ἱερὸς λόγος. But it is certain that the ἱερὸς λόγος in 24 Bks., the poem possessed by the Neoplatonists, from which by far the greater number of our fragments are taken, was not a work of the sixth century, written for instance (as Lobeck was inclined to think, 683 f.) by Onomakritos. It is even untrue—regrettably enough we might add—that as the Neoplatonists presumed (and Lobeck believed in consequence: p. 508, 529 f., 602, 613) Plato knew and made use of the “Rhapsodies”. (This emerges with particular plainness from Gruppe’s study of the question in Jb. Philol. Supp. xvii, 689 ff.). And when this is gone no other evidence for the earlier date of the Orphic Theogony in this form is left. And in the very few passages in which a real coincidence (and not a doubtfully assumed one) exists between the Rhapsodies and Pherekydes, Herakleitos, Parmenides (see Lob., p. 532; Kern, Theogon., p. 52; Gruppe, p. 708) or Empedokles, the poet of the Rhapsodies is the borrower not the creditor. The age in which he lived cannot be precisely determined; the fact that Neoplatonic writers are the first to quote him does not settle the question; it is uncertain whether he lived after (as I think) or before the (otherwise unknown) Hieronymos whose statement about an Orphic Theogony is quoted by Damasc., Princ. 381 f. K. In any case Gruppe (p. 742) has correctly appreciated the character of the bulky poem (equalling or even surpassing the length of the Iliad), when he says that it consists in the main of a loosely connected patchwork of older Orphic tradition. [598] There are many points in which agreement between the Rhapsodies and older Orphic teaching and poetry is still demonstrable; lines from older Orphic poems were taken over unaltered; subjects from older Orphic Theogonies were combined, sometimes without regard for their divergent character; different versions of the same motif occur together. Thus we have the κατάποσις (modelled eventually upon Hesiod) twice over: in the first version Zeus swallows Phanes, in the second the heart of Zagreus. Both mean the same thing; the devouring of the heart of Zagreus may perhaps belong to the older Orphic legendary material, the devouring of Phanes to the later. The personality of Φάνης, however, cannot have been unknown even to the older stratum of Orphic poetry. D.S. 1, 11, 3, quotes a line of “Orpheus”, which certainly was not taken from the Rhaps., in which Φάνης is mentioned (and identified with Dionysos). And in a gold tablet, folded up with the tablet bearing an inscription of Orphic character, I. Sic. et It. 642, and found in the same grave near Sybaris, there occurs in addition to other (illegible) matter a list of divine names which includes that of Φάνης (and also Πρωτόγονους here apparently distinguished from Φάνης with whom this figure of Orphic theology is generally identified): see Comparetti, Notizie degli scavi di antichità, 1879, p. 157; 1880, p. 156. This establishes the existence of this figure of Orphic mythology as early as the third cent. B.C. (the prob. date of these tablets).—We may therefore employ the facts derived from the Rhapsodies with some confidence for the reconstruction of Orphic poetry and doctrine at those points at least in which coincidence with older Orphic teaching and the fantastic creatures of Orphic theology can still be proved. [I leave these remarks exactly as they stood in the first edition of this book, for they still fully correspond to my own opinion. Others in the meanwhile have expressed divergent views, esp. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, i, p. 539. But that Gruppe’s proof of the fact that Plato did not know the Rhapsodist Theogony is “wholly unsuccessful”, is something which no one has yet sought to show upon intelligible grounds. Until such a disproof is forthcoming the belief in the early date of the Rhapsodies has no real ground on which to stand.]
APPENDIX X
PREVIOUS LIVES OF PYTHAGORAS. HIS DESCENT TO HADES
Pythagoras’ miraculous power of remembering what had happened long ago in previous lives seems to be already alluded to in the lines of Empedokles, 430 ff. M. = fr. 129 D. The legend in which it was related how Pythag. showed that he had once been Euphorbos the son of Panthous who had been slain by Menelaos in the Trojan war, must, at any rate, have been put forward at an early period. The story is often told or alluded to: D.S. 10, 6, 1–3; Sch. V. [599] on Ρ 28: Max. Tyr. 16 (i, 287 f. R.); Porph., VP. 26–7; Iambl., VP. 63; Philostr., V. AP. 1, 1, 1; 8, 7, 4; Her. 17, p. 192, 23 ff. Ks.; Tatian, Gr. 25; Hor., C. 1, 28, 10; Ov., M. 15, 160 ff.; Hygin. 112; Lact., Inst. 3, 18, 15; cf. also Call., fr. 83a (completely misunderstood by Schneider) who even calls Pythag. “Euphorbos”, as Hor. does and Luc., DM. 20, 3. The story is always told in such a way as to imply that no intermediate ἐνσωματώσις of his soul had taken place between Pythag. himself and Euphorbos (they are definitely excluded in Luc., Gall. 17).—Why was Euphorbos in particular selected? The fact that through his father Panthous he had a special connexion with Apollo, like Pythagoras (a true ψυχὴ Ἀπολλωνιακή: cf. also Luc., Gall. 16), can hardly have been sufficient reason (as Göttling, Opusc. 210; Krische, Soc. Pythag. 67 f. suggest).—Euphorbos was taken up and made one of a whole series of previous incarnations (Aithalides—Euphorbos—Hermotimos—Pyrrhos the Delian fisherman—Pythagoras) by Herakleides Pont.: D.L. viii, 4–5 (with which agree Hippol., RH. 1, 2, p. 12, 54 f. D.-S.; Porph., VP. 45; Tert., An. 28, 31; Sch. Soph., El. 62). Starting with Aithalides (to whom Herakleides was perhaps the first to ascribe the gift of miraculous memory in addition to other miraculous powers) the power of ἀνάμνησις in life and death was transmitted through all the links in the chain down to Pythag. himself. (The story of the shield of Euphorbos was now transferred to Hermotimos for obvious reasons.) According to D.L. Herakleides φησὶν περὶ αὑτοῦ τάδε λέγειν (τὸν Πυθαγόραν). It is very possible that the language is here inexact and Herakleides did not (as the words of D.L. would strictly suggest) appeal to a statement of Pythagoras (in a book) but represented him as saying all this (in a dialogue). If this is correct, apart from the incarnation as Euphorbos which he took over from the tradition, Herakleides invented all the rest, according to his own fancy. The fable was then taken up with variations by others: in Sch. A.R. i, 645, two versions derived from the fiction of Herakl. but diverging in some points are mentioned (one being supported by οἱ Πυθαγορικοί, the other by Pythagoras himself—in a book? Πυθαγόρας φησίν are the actual words). What Gellius 4, 11, 14, has to say on the authority of Klearchos and Dikaiarchos differs (except in the matter of Euphorbos) entirely from Herakleides (and the names given should not be altered). But it may, nevertheless, be essentially the same fable over again, this time in the form of a parody of Herakl. (which is not very likely in the case of Klearchos but suits Dikaiarch. very well). Encouraged by these predecessors Lucian in the Cock (19-20) carried still further the parody of the fabulous tale. The story of Herakleides seems to be seriously used in the γραφή in which Pythagoras αὐτός φησι δι’ ἑπτὰ καὶ διηκοσίων ἐτῶν ἐξ ἀίδεω παραγεγενῆσθαι ἐς ἀνθρώπους, D.L. viii, 14. As Diels, Archiv. f. Gesch. Philos. iii, 468 f., shows to be very probable, this was in the ps.-Pythagorean book written in the Ionic dialect, not before the third century and divided into three parts, which D.L. quotes and makes use of (viii, 6; 9; 14; cf. also Sch. Pl., Rp. 600 B). [600] Pyth. here states that he appears on earth from the underworld “every 207 years”, and the calculation may possibly be based on the series of lives invented by Herakleides and the Chronology of Apollodoros (in which case it could not be before the last century B.C.), thus: Pythag. born 572, Pyrrhos 779, Hermotimos 986, Euphorbos 1193 (in the first year of the Τρωικά acc. to Eratosthenes and Apollodor.), Aithalides 1490. It must indeed be admitted that this method of reckoning makes the gross error of calculating from birth to birth instead of from the death of A to the birth of B. (Other intervals are given in Theologum. Arithm., p. 40 Ast [216 = 63: D.L. viii, 14, should not be altered to suit this as I once proposed]; Sch. Bern. Lucan, ix, 1, p. 289, 12 Us. [462, ? an error for 432 = 2 × 216; cf. Theol. Arith., p. 40, 30])—The existence of a Pythagorean writing belonging to the period before Herakleides, in which these previous lives of Pythag. were mentioned cannot be certainly proved. It might be supposed (as I once supposed: Rh. Mus. 26, 558) that the conjunction of the legend of Pythagoras’ previous lives with the descent of P. to Hades, which appears in Sch. Soph., El. 62, and Tert., An. 28, is ancient and original; in which case the previous lives would have been described in a Pythagorean κατάβασις εἰς ᾅδου. But the conjunction is quite arbitrary and is not such as would be likely in a Pythagorean book on the descent: the descent is, in fact, told as a parody, the form which had been given to it by Hermippos, and with the implication that it is untrue. Nor is it very likely that the previous lives would be described in connexion with a descent to Hades, considering that Pyth. remembered them while alive on earth and not in a condition of ecstasy, and did not learn of them in Hades. It would be more natural that, vice versa, an account of the previous lives should also include something about τὰ ἐν ᾅδου—the ἀνάμνησις included that also: cf. D.L. viii, 4 fin. (see the decisive objections to my previous view raised by G. Ettig, Acheruntica, Leipz. Stud. 13, 289 f.). This applies equally to the view of Diels[1] (Archiv, p. 469) that Herakleides (in his work π. τῶν ἐν ᾅδου) told of the previous lives of P. in connexion with the descent of P. to Hades and that Herakl. was the first to make P. go down to Hades. There is nothing to prove that Herakl. did this or to make it even probable. Without any [601] grounds for doing so Diels supposes that what Pythagoras (acc. to Sch. Ambros. on α 371) “φησίν”· ἔξω γενόμενος τοῦ σώματος ἀκήκοα ἐμμέλους ἁρμονίας, was said by Pythag., not in a book going under his name, but in a dialogue by Herakleides (who is not even mentioned in that Schol.). There is no reason at all to doubt that these words (as Lobeck supposed, 944) came from a book ascribed to Pythagoras himself, in which he described his ekstasis and ecstatic visions (cf. Sch. Arist. 496b, 1 f., 13 ff. Br.). There is no further definite evidence for the existence of such a Pythagorean Κατάβασις εἰς ᾅδου (for the γραφή of D.L. viii, 21, has another and better interpretation, as already remarked). But a fairly early date for the origin of at least a legend about a descent of P. to Hades (and of quite definite statements about it with a propagandist aim) is attested by Hieronymos of Rhodos ap. D.L. viii, 21. (But we should not without more definite reason ascribe the invention of the fable itself to Hieron., as is done by Hiller, Hier. Rh. frag., p. 25. What reason could Hieron. have had for inventing anything of the kind?) Further, the lines of the comic poet Aristophon ap. D.L. viii, 38 [fr. 12 K.], already suggest that such legends were in existence in the third century B.C. Whether the work on the subject of Pythagoras’ descent to Hades called forth the legend or whether the legend was already current and called forth the book, must remain undecided. But in any case the book included no account of the previous lives of Pythagoras: these (apart from the older legend of P. and Euphorbos) were first put forward by Herakleides Pont. (but not the Descent of P. to Hades).
[1] What Diels, Parmenides, p. 15 (1897) says in support of his view might stand if we were willing to ignore the fact that Pythag., as has already been remarked, remembered his previous lives while he was still alive, and not in the ecstatic condition—not ἔξω γενόμενος τοῦ σώματος. But this is a fact, so that Diels’ view remains untenable.—I cannot see what there is of a “rationalist” character (Diels) in the fact that Pyth. saw Hesiod and Homer in Hades undergoing punishment ἀνθ’ ὧν εἶπον περὶ θεῶν (D.L. viii, 21). This is, in fact, an anti-rationalist, priestly invention (and so I see Dieterich also understands it, Nekyia, 130). This fact certainly does not tell against the view that the Hades poem had its origin in the sixth (or the first half of the fifth) century B.C.
APPENDIX XI
INITIATION CONSIDERED AS ADOPTION BY THE GOD
The Mystes whose soul is speaking in the first of the gold tablets found at Sybaris (Diels, No. 18) says, l. 7–8: ἱμερτοῦ δ’ ἐπέβαν στεφανοῦ ποσὶ καρπαλίμοισι, δεσποίνας δ’ ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν χθονίας βασιλείας. This ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν . . . can hardly mean anything else than: I seek (as ἱκέτης) the protection of her maternal bosom (or lap). It would certainly be attractive to take this (with Dieterich, de hymn. Orph., p. 38) as referring to a symbolical act, corresponding to the ceremony in which in Greece and elsewhere, the adoption of a boy, his reception into a new γένος, was symbolically represented. (D.S. 4, 39, 2, in particular records the process: see Wesseling’s learned note there; cf. also Preller, Gr. Mythol.4 i, 702.) But such a symbolical proceeding if it was to bring about the association of the μύστης with the goddess must have taken place already in the ὄργια once held upon earth—here we are in Hades, and it is to say the least of it difficult to believe that this διέλκεσθαι τοῦ κόλπου can have been supposed to occur in Hades in the neighbourhood of the goddess herself (a fact which made a merely symbolical act of the kind supposed quite [602] unnecessary).—Apart from this the views of Dieterich are quite sound: the ceremony was essentially regarded as an adoption of the μύστης by the goddess or the god, as a reception of the initiated into the divine γένος. The δράκων (who represents the god himself) διελκόμενος τοῦ κόλπου in the Sabazia seems actually to have had this meaning. Further the μύστης is sometimes called renatus, or in aeternum renatus (Apul., M. xi, 21; CIL. vi, 510; 736); the day of his initiation is his natalis sacer (Apul., M. xi, 24, where natalem sacrum should be read): in these circumstances we may venture to recall that the above-mentioned solemn rites of adoption also represented a new birth of the θετὸς υἱός from the womb of his new mother (see D.S. l.c. Hence Hera is called the δευτέρα τεκοῦσα of Herakles whom she adopted: Lycophr. 39; and hence also the adopted is called δευτερόποτμος, i.e. reborn: Hsch. s.v. ad fin.) This conception also provides the simplest explanation of the fact that the μυῶν, who has received the νέος μύστης into the divine γένος to which he himself already belongs, can be called the pater or parens of the μύστης (Apul., M. xi, 25; Tert., Apol. 8; ad Nat. i, 7)—he effects the entrance of the new member into his own family. (In Greek the name for such a mystic “father” seems to have been πατρομύστης, CIG. 3173, 3195.)—This conception of a new birth by initiation reminds us of the Christian idea of rebirth by baptism (which in its turn is developed from older Jewish ideas: see Anrich, Ant. Mysterienwesen, p. 111, n.). It is nevertheless one which the Greeks themselves had at an early date. The μύσται of the Eleusinia seem to have been not far from regarding initiation as an adoption into the divine γένος.
In the ps.-Platonic Axiochus, p. 371 D, we read in the description of the χῶρος εὐσεβῶν: ἐνταῦθα τοῖς μεμυημένοις ἐστί τις προεδρία καὶ τὰς ὁσίους ἁγιστείας κἀκεῖσε συντελοῦσι· πῶς οὖν οὐ σοὶ πρώτῳ μέτεστι τῆς τιμῆς, ὄντι γεννήτῃ τῶν θεῶν; καὶ τοὺς περὶ Ἡρακλέα τε (perhaps δέ would be better) καὶ Διόνυσον κατιόντας εἰς Ἅιδου πρότερον λόγος ἐνθάδε (i.e. at Athens) μυηθῆναι καὶ τὸ θάρσος τῆς ἐκεῖσε πορείας παρὰ τῆς Ἐλευσινίας ἐναύσασθαι.—Here Axiochos (for it is to him that Sokrates is speaking) is plainly described as γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν simply and solely because he belongs to the μεμυημένοι. According to Wilamowitz (Gött. Gel. Anz., 1896, p. 984) he is called γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν only as a member of the γένος of the Εὐπατρίδαι to which he apparently belonged. But that anyone just on the strength of the by no means uncommon fact that he belonged to a γένος that happened to trace its earliest origin from a god (nor is it certain even that the Εὐπατρίδαι did this)—that anyone on this account should have dared to call himself a “member of the same family as the gods” is to say the least of it difficult to parallel. In this case at any rate nothing of the kind can be meant. From the general principle that the initiated have a προεδρία in Hades it is deduced, simply as conclusion from premiss, with a “surely then”—(πῶς οὖν οὐ—), that Axiochos too may hope to enjoy this same honour (τῆς τιμῆς—). It is then entirely impossible that, to account for this hope, a reason [603] should be implied and expressed which, like the supposed descent of Axiochos from the gods, had nothing to do with the mysteries and the privileges of the μύσται. If it was the (alleged) descent of Axiochos from the gods which secured him τιμή in Hades it would be quite meaningless to accompany the mention of the τιμή thus secured to Axiochos with an allusion to the τιμή obtained on quite different grounds by the μεμυημένοι (which yet is mysteriously equivalent to that obtained by right of birth). This allusion, moreover, is put in such a way that it quite unambiguously includes the special case of Axiochos in the common denomination of the μεμυημένοι of whom he is said to be one. The fact, indeed, that the privileges of the μεμυημένοι is the only subject alluded to throughout is shown also by the third and last sentence: the famous cases of the initiation of Herakles and Dionysos are only mentioned as emphasizing still further the importance of μυηθῆναι for those εἰς ᾅδου κατιόντας.
Here then Axiochos can only be called γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν in so far as he is μεμυημένος. Why, indeed, he πρῶτος, before other μεμυημένοι, should have a claim to the honour of προεδρία is something that our text does not say and that can hardly be extracted from it. It certainly appears that Axiochos has a special privilege beyond that of other Mystai. Had he reached a specially high stage of the τέλη which was not open to everyone and at which kinship with the gods was first fully assured? Did the family of the Εὐπατρίδαι undertake some active part in the μύησις which gave them a closer relation to the gods? In any case his claim to be regarded as γεννήτης τῶν θεῶν must have depended on his having been initiated at Eleusis.