Tearing Apart the Zagreus Myth - Bryn Mawr College

EDMONDS: Tearing Apart the Zagreus Myth 43
according to this argument as an Orphic priest, one of the chief formulators of
Orphic dogma and even the one responsible for the so-called Orphic interpolations
in the Odyssey of Homer during the Pisistratid recension. 22 If Pausanias is to be
trusted, the date of some tale of the Titans murdering Dionysos could be fixed
to the sixth century BCE. However, as Linforth argues, scholars in the Hellenistic
era and later, who were trying to determine the real authorship of various poems
attributed to Orpheus, often attributed them to Onomakritos, who was already
famous as a forger:
No one else throughout antiquity quotes from works of Onomacritus
or makes any allusion to them. It is an extremely probable inference
from these considerations that when Pausanias says Onomacritus he
means Ps.-Orpheus, that all his quotations from Onomacritus are really
quotations from Orphic poems, and that there were actually no poems
by Onomacritus and never had been. His words cannot be taken as a
statement of fact, but only as an echo of speculations concerning the
authorship of Orphic poetry. 23
Pausanias therefore only attributes the introduction of the Titans into the story
of the murder of Dionysos to some poem claiming to be by Orpheus and gives
the name of the famous forger Onomakritos as the author of the forgery. His
testimony can hardly be used to set the date much earlier than his own time, in the
second century CE. Moreover, while it does establish the presence of the Titans
in the story of the murder before the sixth century CE, i.e., a link between the
first two elements of the Zagreus myth, it still furnishes no evidence that the third
element, the creation of mankind from the Titans’ remains, was related before
the Neoplatonists.
Many scholars argue that the evidence of a reference in Plato’s Laws to a
Titanic nature, Titanik˜n fÔsin, places the doctrine of an inherited original sin
(and thus, necessarily, an anthropogony) back into the Classical era:
Next on this path to liberty would be the wish not to submit to the rulers;
and, following this, to flee the service and authority of father and mother
and the elders; and, near the end, to seek not to obey the laws, and, at
the end itself, to pay no mind to oaths and promises and the entirety of the
gods, displaying and imitating the fabled ancient Titanic nature, wherein
they return to the same things, experiencing a savage time, never to cease
from evils. 24
22. Guthrie emphasizes the role of Onomakritos, e.g., Guthrie 1952:13–14. Macchioro holds
that the Orphics of Pisistratean Athens were responsible for interpolations in Homer as part of their
“conquest of Greece” (Macchioro 1930:151–56).
23. Linforth 1941:353. Cf. Pausanias’ attribution of poems to Onomakritos: 1.22.7; 8.31.3;
9.35.5. In each case, it seems likely that he is referring to a poem attributed to Orpheus that he
believes is not actually by Orpheus.
24. âfec¨j d˜ taÔthù t¨ù âleuqerÐaø toÜ m˜ âqèlein toØj Šrxousi douleÔein gÐgnoit' Šn,
kaÈ ápomènh taÔthù feÔgein paträj kaÈ mhträj kaÈ presbutèrwn douleÐan kaÈ nomoqèthsin,