Note 35 — Chapter I · LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

See the scanty fragments of the Orphic theogony in Hermann’s edition of the Orphica, pp. 448, 504, which it is difficult to understand and piece together, even with the aid of Lobeck’s elaborate examination (Aglaophamus, p. 470, etc.). The passages are chiefly preserved by Proclus and the later Platonists, who seem to entangle them almost inextricably with their own philosophical ideas.

The first few lines of the Orphic Argonautica contain a brief summary of the chief points of the theogony.