Note 41 — Chapter I · LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

About the tale of Zagreus, see Lobeck, p. 552, sqq. Nonnus in his Dionysiaca has given many details about it:—

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.