Note 42 — Chapter I · LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

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.