Note 77 — Chapter X · THE ORPHICS

Orphic poetry must have varied in its account of what happened to the dismembered limbs of Zagreus-Dionysos. That the Titans tore the god limb from limb seems to have been common to all versions of the Theogonic poem (see nn. 28, 41; p. 341). But whereas according to one account the Titans then devoured the god (except the heart) and from the mixed Titanic and Dionysiac elements of their bodies after they had been destroyed by lightning the race of men had its origin (p. 341); according to others the mangled limbs of the god were brought by Zeus to Apollo who buried them taking them “on to Parnasos”, i.e. at Delphi: see Orph. fr. 200 (Clem. Al.) and so, too, Callim. fr. 374. The Rhapsodiai gave the first version in detail, but also preserved an account resembling the second (see frr. 203, 204: the ἑνίζειν τὰ μερισθέντα τοῦ Διονύσου μέλη there refers probably to the reunion of the collected limbs for the purpose of burial and not for the restoration of the dead god to life. This is also possibly the meaning of the Διονύσου μελῶν κολλήσεις in Jul., Chr., p. 167, 7 Neum. But Or., Cels. 4, 17, p. 21 Lom., speaks of the reanimation of Dionysos συντιθεμένου after the dismemberment). This second account, where it occurs alone, of course excludes the Anthropogony from the Titans’ ashes. The second version unmistakably connects itself with the Delphic legend of the grave of Dionysos at the foot of Apollo’s tripod (see above, pp. 97 f.) as K. O. Müller observed, Introd. Scient. Myth. 242. It does, in fact, accord in this instance, but apart from this it has no connexion whatever with the real Delphic legend about the disappearance of Dionysos into the underworld and his periodic return to this world. (See above, chap. viii, n. 28. The Orphic and Delphic legends are elaborately compared and worked in together as though they were separate fragments of a single whole in Lübbert’s book, de Pindaro theologiae Orph. censore: Ind. Sch. Bonn. Lib. 1888, p. xiii f.—with shocking results and no intrinsic justification.) Whether this second version was the one put forward by Onomakritos is uncertain. In any case, both accounts are much older than the Rhapsodiai, in which, it appears, they were included side by side and superficially harmonized (—only the limbs of the god not devoured by the Titans being buried acc. to this version). Besides these two versions there may have been another Anthropogony differing from that given in the first account: the existence of something of the kind is perhaps to be deduced from what the Rhapsodiai themselves have to tell about the golden and silver generations of mankind (see above, n. 41).