W. W. How, J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus

BOOK II

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Commentary on Herodotus, Histories. book 2, chapter 81:section 2.

LXXXI.[2] The Orphic rites spread widely in sixth century Greece; their popular character, as opposed to the exclusiveness of the old worships, led to them being patronized by the tyrants; Onomacritus, ‘the Orphic apostle’ (Busolt, ii. 364), was a friend of the Pisistratidae (vii. 6. 3 n.); so too Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, encouraged the worship of Dionysus (v. 67. 5), with which the Orphic rites were closely connected. (Cf. Gomperz, Gk. Thinkers, ii, p. 137.) For the Orphic doctrines and their relation to those of Pythagoras cf. Gomperz (ib. caps. 2 and 5; Busolt, ii. 362 seq.): a shorter account is given by Bury (pp. 311-18). The teaching was at once cosmological and religious; the latter is the more important. The Orphic sect taught the doctrine of metempsychosis (cf. 123. 2 n.); they laid stress on the worship of Chthonian deities, and on initiation into mysteries, and on other methods of purifying the soul from sin. Gruppe, however, in Roscher, Lexicon, iii. 1105, s. v. ‘Orpheus’, denies that an ‘Orphic sect’ can be proved; there were, he thinks, numerous associations, the members of which looked on Orpheus as their founder, and followed similar practices, but these were disconnected and were no ‘more united as a sect than modern vegetarians or wearers of Jäger clothing’ (pp. 1107-8).

Orphikoisi: neuter here, ‘Orphic Rites’; there is an antithesis between kaleomenoisi and eousi, they were ‘called Orphic’ but ‘were really Egyptian, brought by Pythagoras from Egypt’ (cf. 53. 3 for disbelief in a primitive Orpheus). There is no contradiction between this passage and the statement as to ta peri ton Dionuson in 49. 2; H. means that Melampus brought Dionysiac mysteries from Egypt, Pythagoras copied rules of life.

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