Note 287 — Chapter III · THE ORIGIN OF GNOSTICISM

Thus an Orphic verse, preserved by a commentator on Plato, says that Dionysos “releases whom he wills from travail and suffering.” See Abel’s Orphica, Fr. 208, p. 237. Servius in his commentary on Virgil’s First Georgic, after declaring that Dionysos or “Liber Pater” is identical with the Osiris torn in pieces by Typhon, says that he is called Liber because he liberates. Cf. fragment and page quoted.