Clemens Alexandrin. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 11, 12, Sylb. The story was treated both by Callimachus and by Euphoriôn, Etymolog. Magn. v. Ζαγρεὺς, Schol. Lycophr. 208. In the old epic poem Alkmæônis or Epigoni, Zagreus is a surname of Hadês. See Fragm. 4, p. 7, ed. Düntzer. Respecting the Orphic Theogony generally, Brandis (Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch-Römisch. Philosophie, c. xvii., xviii.), K. O. Müller (Prolegg. Mythol. pp. 379-396), and Zoega (Abhandlungen, v. pp. 211-263) may be consulted with much advantage. Brandis regards this Theogony as considerably older than the first Ionic philosophy, which is a higher antiquity than appears probable: some of the ideas which it contains, such, for example, as that of the Orphic egg, indicate a departure from the string of purely personal generations which both Homer and Hesiod exclusively recount, and a resort to something like physical analogies. On the whole, we cannot reasonably claim for it more than half a century above the age of Onomakritus. The Theogony of Pherekydês of Syros seems to have borne some analogy to the Orphic. See Diogen. Laërt. i. 119, Sturz. Fragment. Pherekyd. § 5-6, Brandis, Handbuch, ut sup. c. xxii. Pherekydês partially deviated from the mythical track or personal successions set forth by Hesiod. ἐπεὶ οἵ γε μεμιγμένοι αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ μὴ μυθικῶς ἅπαντα λέγειν, οἷον Φερεκύδης καὶ ἑτεροί τινες, etc. (Aristot. Metaphys. N. p. 301, ed. Brandis). Porphyrias, de Antro Nymphar. c. 31, καὶ τοῦ Συρίου Φερεκύδου μυχοὺς καὶ βόθρους καὶ ἄντρα καὶ θύρας καὶ πύλας λέγοντος, καὶ διὰ τούτων αἰνιττομένου τὰς τῶν ψυχῶν γενέσεις καὶ ἀπογενέσεις, etc. Eudêmus the Peripatetic, pupil of Aristotle, had drawn up an account of the Orphic Theogony as well as of the doctrines of Pherekydês, Akusilaus and others, which was still in the hands of the Platonists of the fourth century, though it is now lost. The extracts which we find seem all to countenance the belief that the Hesiodic Theogony formed the basis upon which they worked. See about Akusilaus, Plato, Sympos. p. 178. Clem. Alex. Strom. p. 629.
[42] The Orphic Theogony is never cited in the ample Scholia on Homer, though Hesiod is often alluded to. (See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 540). Nor can it have been present to the minds of Xenophanês and Herakleitus, as representing any widely diffused Grecian belief: the former, who so severely condemned Homer and Hesiod, would have found Orpheus much more deserving of his censure: and the latter could hardly have omitted Orpheus from his memorable denunciation:—Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει· Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε καὶ Πυθαγόρην, αὖτις δὲ Ξενοφάνεά τε καὶ Ἑκαταῖον. Diog. Laër. ix. 1. Isokratês treats Orpheus as the most censurable of all the poets. See Busiris, p. 229; ii. p. 309, Bekk. The Theogony of Orpheus, as conceived by Apollônius Rhodius (i. 504) in the third century B. C., and by Nigidius in the first century B. C. (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. iv. 10), seems to have been on a more contracted scale than that which is given in the text. But neither of them notice the tale of Zagreus, which we know to be as old as Onomakritus.
[43] This opinion of Herodotus is implied in the remarkable passage about Homer and Hesiod, ii. 53, though he never once names Orpheus—only alluding once to “Orphic ceremonies,” ii. 81. He speaks more than once of the prophecies of Musæus. Aristotle denied the past existence and reality of Orpheus. See Cicero de Nat. Deor. i. 38.
[44] Pindar Pyth. iv. 177. Plato seems to consider Orpheus as more ancient than Homer. Compare Theætêt. p. 179; Cratylus, p. 402; De Republ. ii. p. 364. The order in which Aristophanês (and Hippias of Elis, ap. Clem. Alex. Str. vi. p. 624) mentions them indicates the same view, Ranæ, 1030. It is unnecessary to cite the later chronologers, among whom the belief in the antiquity of Orpheus was universal; he was commonly described as son of the Muse Calliopê. Androtiôn seems to have denied that he was a Thracian, regarding the Thracians as incurably stupid and illiterate. Androtiôn, Fragm. 36, ed. Didot. Ephorus treated him as having been a pupil of the Idæan Dactyls of Phrygia (see Diodôr. v. 64), and as having learnt from them his τελετὰς and μυστήρια, which he was the first to introduce into Greece. The earliest mention which we find of Orpheus, is that of the poet Ibycus (about B. C. 530), ὀνομάκλυτον Ὀρφῆν. Ibyci Fragm. 9, p. 341, ed. Schneidewin.
[45] Pausan. viii. 37, 3. Τιτᾶνας δὲ πρῶτον ἐς ποίησιν ἐσήγαγεν Ὅμηρος, θεοὺς εἶναι σφᾶς ὑπὸ τῷ καλουμένῳ Ταρτάρῳ· καὶ ἔστιν ἐν Ἡρᾶς ὅρκῳ τὰ ἔπη· παρὰ δὲ Ὁμήρου Ὀνομάκριτος, παραλαβὼν τῶν Τιτάνων τὸ ὄνομα, Διονύσῳ τε συνέθηκεν ὄργια, καὶ εἶναι τοὺς Τιτᾶνας τῷ Διονύσῳ τῶν παθημάτων ἐποίησεν αὐτουργούς. Both the date, the character and the function of Onomakritus are distinctly marked by Herodotus, vii. 6.
[46] Herodotus believed in the derivation both of the Orphic and Pythagorean regulations from Egypt—ὁμολογέουσι δὲ ταῦτα τοῖσι Ὀρφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι καὶ Βακχικοῖσι, ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι (ii. 81). He knows the names of those Greeks who have borrowed from Egypt the doctrine of the metempsychosis, but he will not mention them (ii. 123): he can hardly allude to any one but the Pythagoreans, many of whom he probably knew in Italy. See the curious extract from Xenophanês respecting the doctrine of Pythagoras, Diogen. Laërt. viii. 37; and the quotation from the Silli of Timôn, Πυθαγόραν δὲ γοήτος ἀποκλίναντ᾽ ἐπὶ δόξαν, etc. Compare Porphyr. in Vit. Pythag. c. 41.
[47] Aristophan. Ran. 1030.—
Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ᾽ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε, φόνων τ᾽ ἀπέχεσθαι·
Μουσαῖος τ᾽, ἐξακέσεις τε νόσων καὶ χρησμούς· Ἡσίοδος δὲ,
Γῆς ἐργασίας, καρπῶν ὥρας, ἀρότους· ὁ δὲ θεῖος Ὅμηρος