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The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus - Platonic Philosophy

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ISTRODUCTION. xl i<br />

jection <strong>of</strong> the Doric dialect ought to be<br />

<strong>of</strong> no more weight against the antiquity <strong>of</strong><br />

the present works than the Pelasgic letters 29,<br />

which <strong>Orpheus</strong>, according to Diodorous Sicu-<br />

lus, used.<br />

In this extract, Gesner is certainly right in<br />

asserting that Onomacritus would not dare<br />

to invent all that he wrote, and afterwards<br />

publish it as Orphic; but I add, that it is<br />

unreasonable in the extreme to suppose that<br />

he in the least interpolated or altered the<br />

wenuine works <strong>of</strong> <strong>Orpheus</strong>, though he might<br />

b<br />

change the dialect in which they were origi-<br />

nally written. For is it to be supposed that<br />

the Orphic <strong>Hymns</strong> would have been used in<br />

the Eleusinian mysteries, as we have demon-<br />

strated they were, if they had been spurious<br />

productions; or that the fraud would not<br />

have been long ago discovered by some <strong>of</strong><br />

the many learned and wise men that flourished<br />

after Onomacritus ; and that the detection <strong>of</strong><br />

this fraud would not have been transmitted<br />

so as to reach even the present times? Or<br />

indeed, is it probable that such a forgery<br />

29 <strong>The</strong>se letters are the old Etrurian or Eolian, and are<br />

perhaps more ancient than the Cadmian or Ionic.

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