Note 54 — Chapter X · THE ORPHICS

ἄψυχος βορά of the Orphics: E., Hp. 952, Pl., Lg. 782 CD; Lob., p. 246. This, too, is the meaning of Ar., Ra. 1032, Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ’ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε φόνων τ’ ἀπέχεσθαι, i.e. using slain animals for food. Hor., AP. 391 f.: silvestris homines . . . caedibus et victu foedo deterruit Orpheus means to speak not of the ritual vegetarianism of “Orpheus”, but of the previous cannibalism of men which Orpheus had put an end to. As this is nowhere else mentioned of Orpheus we might perhaps regard it as mistaken allusion on the part of Horace to the passage of Aristoph. quoted above. It is not, however, impossible that Horace did in fact have in mind some Orphic verse which really reported something like what he himself says of Orpheus. The Orphic fragment [247] ap. S.E., M. ii, 31; ix, 15 (Lob., p. 246), may have arisen in the same way; see Maass, Orpheus, 77. (The well-known lines of Kritias [S.E., M. ix, 54 fr. 25 Di.] and Moschion, p. 813 Nauck, can hardly have anything to do with Orphism and should rather be connected with the theories of the Sophists and Demokritos—followed later by the Epicureans—about the gradual evolution of human civilization from miserable and savage origins; and not from a “golden age” of which the Orphics too spoke.)