RECHERCHES

ET RENCONTRES

publications de la Faculte des lettres de Geneve

___________

3 ----------

'

~~PHISME ET ORPHEE/
en l'honneur de Jean Rudhardt

Textes reunis et edites

par
PHILIPPE

BORGEAUD

LIBRAIRIE DROZ SA
11, rue Massot

GENEVE
1991

Recherches et Rencontres - 1991 - n" 3, pp. 13-30

Orpheus: From Guru To Gay

When modern literature thinks of Orpheus, it invariably speaks of
his love-story. Contemporary female poets even make Eurydice the
protagonist of the myth (Segal 1988: 118-154, 171-198).It was not like
that in ancient Greece. The early Greeks primarily considered
Orpheus to be a musician and a poet, and the background of his myth
has to be looked for in rituals of men's associations, as Fritz Graf
(1987) has shown in a highly innovative study. It is the intention of
this paper not only to add further support to his thesis by discussing
Orpheus' age and wanderings ( 2) but also to question one of Graf's
arguments, that relating to Orpheus' homosexuality ( 3), and,
finally, to study the why and when of Orpheus' development from a
singer into a guru of an alternative life-style ( 4). Ladies first,
however: we start with the problem of the name of Orpheus' wife
( I).
I. THE NAME EURYDICE

Given the popularity of the myth of Orpheus, it is highly surprising that the name of Eurydice appears only late in Greek mythology.
The first reference to her occurs in Euripides' Alcestis (357-362) in
which Admetus expresses his love by saying that if he had the words
and music of Orpheus, he would go down to Hades in order to
beseech its rulers to give him back his wife, and neither Cerberus nor
Charon could keep him back before I would bring you back alive
to light. The passage clearly presupposes Orpheus' descent on
behalf of his wife, but Eurydice herself is not mentioned. In the
fourth century, Plato (Symp. 179DE) and Isocrates (Bus. 8) also leave
the name of Orpheus' wife unnamed, and Eratosthenes (Cat. 24),
Diodorus Siculus (4, 25) and Plutarch (M. 566C) are apparently still
indebted to this tradition, as they also limit themselves to saying the
wife in their descriptions of Orpheus' descent. The fact that only
late antique mythographers, such as Servius (Verg. G. 4, 460) and the

15
14

JAN BREMMER

Mytnographus Vaticanus (I 76) k

.
origin confirms indeed h'
I' now anything about Eurydice's
Th
'
,er ear y anonymity
ere could be two exce ti
.
.
the altar of the twelve G PdIOnsto this rule. In the late fifth century
,os
m the Ath '
A
'
with four reliefs The 0 "
I
eman gora was decorated
,ngma
s are lost b
h
o f these reliefs carries th
'
,ut t e Roman copy of one
It is true that the particularsnellina Hermes, Orpheus and Eurydice,
on a contemporaneous vast b g ~f Hermes, HPMHE, does occur
captions are lacking on the ot y Poh~n (ARJ!2 1171, n 2), but the
other reliefs; moreover th
,her cO~les, as they are on those of the
the letters and the curio ere,ls nothing typically fifth-century about
har dlv
y iinspires confide' us mixture of norma I and retrograde writing
.
nee m the auth
"
enucity of the inscription',
U ntil recently it was also th
could be found on a fra
ought that the name of Orpheus' wife
gment
of an A pu I'Ian volute krater of the third
uarter
of
the
fourth
ce
t
q
head of a woman who ~s~ry, where Eurydice is written over the
the name Aiom; appears ~~n~~to, the left, and where, to her left,
another fragment, now lost but e ngh~ of the head of a male; on
kr~~er,we find ... pheus (_ gadltlOnally ascribed to the same
~e icula with Pher. (_ Ph rpheus) under a woman and an
delonged together _ ~hichersephone). If the two fragments
brati~ of the second one -=-a~no:.be determined on the basis of the
.e 00 mg to the edge of the . e igures of the first fragment would
nons
picture
- a diirection
, against the conven(LIMCofI GI reek vase-painting.
Conse
do not ' , 1984,s.v.Antigone n" 16)tuently, as Ingrid Krauskopf
is the ~~;~ t~ belong together 'and the :s ya~ued, the two fragments
may be a 0 Creon, as in Sophocles' ;:r . Ice of the first fragment
as the occ error for Creon's son Haim ntigone (1183 ff', and Aion
currence
of t hee vi
on' the m ore so, we may add,
testimonies
b
visualized Aion
y about three cent .
would antedate all other
unes (LIMC I, I, 1984, s.v, Aion)'.
I

Orpheus relief G

LlMC IV, 1 (1988

,raf (1987),102 n 5 '
~hrealte (1980), :~vd:iurYdice, no.' 5 (G' ;~~h recent bibliography' add now
rofe:sor David Lewisfor ~~~:c~o:e example~of
~pelling of ,(Hermes ,
S h id For,the whole questi
fn thISpoint (letter 30
I ahmmost grateful to
c ml t, thiS volume 3
on 0 these fra
arc 1989).

ORPHEUS: FROM GURU TO GAY

~he anonymity of Orpheus' wife evidently hurts our sensibility

but IS less surprising in archaic and classical Greece. Whereas the
name of the male protagonist in a myth was usually fixed, the names
of the females were not (Bremmer, 1987, 18). In the myth of CEdipus,
his foster-mother is variously called Merope, Periboia, Medusa or
Antiochis and even the name of his mother, who is so important to
us, alternates between Epikaste and Iokaste. Although the anonymity
is surprising, there is no reason, then, to assume that Orpheus' wife
had a fixed name in the tradition, the less so as the protagonist in the
archaic version of the myth was evidently Orpheus himself and not
his wife.
Eurydice is finally mentioned by the poet Hermesianax (about
300 Be), who calls her Agriope. Admittedly, in his enumeration of
love affairs he mixes the playful (Homerus and Penelope) with the
historical (Aristippus and Lais), but there always is some existing relationship between his lovers and there seems to be no reason to reject
his testimony'. Unlike Apollonius of Rhodes, other great Hellenistic
poets, like Callimachus and Theocritus, do not mention Orpheus at
all and it is only in the anonymous Epitaph jar the poet Bion (124),
probably at the end of the second century (Fantuzzi, 1985, 139-146),
that for the very first time the name Eurydice is found in a literary
text; the fact that Apollodorus (I, 3, 2) also mentions her name
seems to suggest that it here, like the Epitaph, goes back to a
Hellenistic idyllion (Soder, 1939, 21-5). Subsequently, Virgil's and
Ovid's accounts canonized Eurydice's name forever in Western tradition.If the name Eurydice, then, seems to have become popular only
in later Hellenistic times, where could it have come from? Of course,
there are quite a few Eurydices in Greek mythology, such as the wives
of Nestor (Od. 3, 452), Aeneas (Paus. 10,26, I = Cypria F 23 = Ilias
Parva F 22 Davies), and Kreon (above). We cannot, therefore, exclude
the possibility that a Hellenistic poet chose her name from the great
mythological name-pool. But there is also another possibility.

;;';~Zi~
M

:1:;'

uncaptioned.

also

ap~e;;n. 5. In the fourth g:~~ssee now

Zuntz (1990) and M

overlooked by LlMCo~:~~racolta relief fr~~ g;l:~eus and Eurydice, both

~~: ~~~:i~~:l~~~t:~~~~

J;t~:r~r~~r

century IS unconvincing.

:~~~~g:nt~~~~~?ii;~I~t~~~i~j~~~::;j:;
rp ellS and Eurydice in

, Hermesianax, fr, 7 powell, rejected by Ziegler, 1942, 1277. The name

Agriope is nearly identical with Argiope, the name of the mother of the Thracian
singer Thamyris (Apollod, I, 16; Paus. 4, 33, 3), but this is no reason to doubt
Hermesianax

ansone (I985) on ~ v~ ute krater (Trendall

13-15,

or to change his text into Argiope, as is advocated by Heurgon (1932).

17
JAN BREMMER

Hellenistic
.
onlyInone
area in times '. Eu ry diIce -:vasa name prominent
in one and
we know of
Gr~ece. Macedoma. The earliest historical Eurydice
Lynkestid roy:t:a t .~ mother of Philippus II, a princess from the
also called Euryd:: ~2~ndborn a?out 41~ (I). Philip's first wife was
daughter from his first' as was his last wife (3) and Adea, a grandwedding (4) D
. mar~lage, who received this name after her
. emetnus Pohorcetes
. d
.
who probably received thi
marne an Athenian Eurydice
the other Macedonia
ISname only after her wedding, considering
name Eurydice in ~t~xam~les and the rather late attestation of the
Antipater who became:s
.5/. Finally, we have the daughter of
Lysimachosafter whom Se WIe of Ptole~aeus I (6), the daughter of
(7), and the wife of the Illm~rna ~emporanly was renamed Eurydikeia
(8)'. And whereas the n yna~ k1O~Ge.nthius, the last royal Eurydice
of the non_Macedonl'anamel urydice IStotally absent in the indices
. .
vo urnes
of IG ' t h e corpus of Inschriften
griechischer
SIddle aus Kl,
.
Fraser's new Lexicon of ~nasien and the first volume of Peter
several examples can be fOu~e~ ~rsona/ .Names (Oxford, 1987),
Now in the mythol'
10
acedoma ,.
th e hiistoncal period hisogical
tradition 0. ~ph eu.s ISa
. Thracian, but in
real place
of M~ Olympus, was part of Ma~~~n~1O,Leibethra on the foothills
fore m the accounts of t
oma. ThIS reality comes to the
(FGrH.26 FI, 45) depicts ~o hc~ntempo~ries of Augustus. Conon
as
Odrysians, and Hyginus (~Slr. s2 ru~mg o~er.Macedonians and
momsmg myth and history I . , 7) m a similar attempt at harween Macedonia and Th~ oc~es Mt Olympus on the border bet~~tlmOnies. every Hellenist~~' o~t even if we did not have these
. racian homeland of Orp~ t would know that the so-called
mans.If he had to chose a new eus was dominated by the Macedoname for Orpheus' b nid e or to chose
between

1909' Eurydice (I): Kaerst (1909

(
),1326, no. 15. (3)' H
),1326, no. 14' add
~983); Carney (1987). (5) ..~~el (1978); Prestian~i Gia~ow ;EG 33, 556. (2): Kaerst
ouilles de Delphes Ill, 2' 2 ~t. Dem. 14, 53 (not in R o~ ardo (1981). (4): Heckel
Cadoux (1938),103 f and
fG III, 2, 2500. (6)' WilT>' late Athenian examples,
In RE). tn general: Badian (1~~W951), 204 (EurYdikeia)lc(~)(I909), 137. (7): idem;

il.:b

Macedonia' I'

. LIVIUS, 44, 30, 2 (not

29, 580, 36,624; Feis;el7' XII, 1,501; SEG, 2, 396 cf

I, 44 (larISsa); Collitz (I~e (1988), 450, no. 2; no~e . RObert',1940, 70 fl, 27, 291,
Plutarch dedicated his P 99), 351, no. 1931(Am h' also Foullles de Delphes III
raecepta conjugalia.
P lssa) and the Eurydice to w'ho~

ORPHEUS: FROM GURU TO GAY

existing names, might he not have preferred a name which was highly
typical of Macedonian princesses 6?
A more remote possibility, but perhaps not completely to be
excluded, is that a poet wanted to honour one of these Eurydices
(ptolemaeus' wife?) by connecting her with a great singer. Similarly,
Callimachus seems to have ranged Arsinoe among the Muses. His text
was apparently not totally clear, but Pausanias saw a statue of
Arsinoe on the Helikon, the mountain of the Muses'.

2. ORPHEUS AS INITIATOR
Orpheus' love for Eurydice, then, belongs to a relatively late stage
of the myth. Originally, as Graf (1987) has shown, Orpheus was connected with rituals of initiation. We can, I think, add two more
arguments for this interpretation by focusing on Orpheus' age and
the wandering of his followers. As far as I can see, until now no
scholar seems to have been puzzled by the problem of Orpheus' age.
Yet there can be no doubt in this respect. Already the earliest certain
representation, a metope from the Sicyonian treasure-house at Delphi
on which the names are added, may represent Orpheus as a beardless
singer next to a bearded one. We cannot be so sure about this ascription, though, as earlier generations of scholars were, since De la
Coste-Messeliere has suggested that Orpheus is the bearded singer. It
is true that the name OrphaS actual1y is written rather to the left
of the beardless singer, but this hardly seems decisive. For the spectators the caption would have been crystal clear from the position of
the caption of the third person, which is unfortunately lost. In any
case, Orpheus always appears as an adolescent on the Attic and
Apulian vases'.
6
Conon: considering that Conon was a contemporary of Augustus, he
perhaps more likely derived the Macedonians from his source than from his own
historical knowledge; for the politicah> Orpheus see also Max.lYr. 3~.6. Sources
of Conon: Henrichs (1987), 244-247 and esp. 269, n. 17; note also Nlkomedes of
Akanthos (c. 41) who wrote both a Macedonica and an On Orpheus (FGrH772 F.
I and 3). Hyginus' life and work: I.e Boeuffle (1983), vii-xliii.
, Cf. Call. Aetia, fro 2a, 5 ff (Pfeifer 2. p. 102), Schol. Lond. 42 ff (Pfeiffer
I, p. 7); Paus. 9. 31, 1. Note also that Call. Ep., 51, called Berenice the fourth Charis.
, Metope of Sicyon: Fouil/es de Delphes, IV, I (1909),27-30 (description) and
IV (1926), plate 4 (Orpheus as Argonaut), but see De la Coste-Messeliere (1936),

19
JAN BREMMER

18

Is such a young
si
.
expectyoungsters
to bpoet an d singer
credible,
as we would hardly
arrival of pop music? ~ ~rea: a;d famous poets and singers before the
mythology supplies ~t le~~ :o;ow of any historical Greek cases, but
categories which alth
.e examples of young poets and seers,
all Orpheus t '
ough not identical, are sometimes related' after
,
, 00, was reputed to b
.
'
regards poets, we have the
e an oracle-giver and seer. As
of Thebes and becam k' extmple of Arnphion who built the walls
As regards seers
mgdaterwards, at least in Euripides' Antiope.
(mantis)TheOcly:nen:;~~b;~ fGrH 4 ,F liS) considered the seer
known example is Melam us w emachus contemporary, but the best
language of the animal nd I' ho as a young man already knew the
s an ater beca
ki .
pose it is important to note th . me mg in Argos; for our puradolescents who pursu d th da m Sicyon he was the leader of the
Unfortunately th e d e aughters of Proitos",
, ese ata do
t
reason, we will have to go 0 t .d no get us much further. For that
Can we find, preferably wit~i~ t~~;eek culture to look for parallels.
poet, who IS the leader of a
ndo-European cultures, a young
the countryside? In fa t group of (young) males who are roaming
b od y of traditions
. com
c we do
.
I' In ancient
Ireland, there is a whole
stories about Finn and hisrc y referred to as the Fenian cycle the
most .Important piece of ISroving
F'
. ba n,d t h e fi'Ian. As the title of' the
Boyh
o~d deeds of Finnernan
(Machterat
. ure, t h e twelfth-century The
primarily a youth (gilla). As such gnimartha Finn), shows, Finn is
a band of youths ([ian) whi h
he b.ecomes the chief (rigfennid) of
wand
. and hunting' WeIC spends Its tirne
. countryside
ermg
ime iin the Insh
wildern
'
.
.
can
see
a
gli
f
thei

ess In a mnth-century h
mpse 0 their existence in the
tamwandering and young wa c arm: wolves and deer and mouncentury
Iaw tract also includernors
I"
ki
" of th e jtan.
But an early eighthlts
ing's house the statement o~ ltnh description of the layout of the
seat, a man at arms to guard the d e other Sid
' t h eflan-champion's
.
. e, m
became the retinue of the king .thev EVidently,thefian sometimes
'" ey were ca IIed fi'lana because they

P:

193197, who is followed by

"
Margot
Voiatz; (1982), 40-45, V
, Schmidt,
Poets dthis vot ume,
ch. 3.
ases:' Panyagua (1972) 88-128'
an seers' Ch d '
'
'
(1977),207-210
a Wick
(1942) who overstar
28729
. Am PhiIon' LIMe
I
he
i
ki 7, 15, 225-242; A~ollOd
1 (1984), 718-723 (Fe~t er Identity, cf. Finnegan
t' ngshlp); Dowden (1989), 99-11'5 ,28 f, cf. Burkeri (l1: ). Melampus: Od, 11,
tons.
' With a detailed a I ' 3), 172 (ephebes and
na YSIS of the Melampus tradi-

ORPHEUS: FROM GURU TO GAY

were thefennidi (members of thefian) and the warriors of the king;

in this way, they could become a powerful political factor. Moreover,
Finn is a poet, but not the normal eulogizing one in the service of the
rich and famous. His poetry deals with nature and otherworldly persons or places or, just as in the case of Orpheus, consists of obscure
mantic verse.
Albeit dimly, through the short references and allusions in archaic
Irish literature we can see an age-set of the young which had to
wander around, living from hunting and brigandage, until it passed
to full membership of the tuath (the married landowners), usually at
the death of the father or other next of kin. If, however, the father
did not obligingly pass away at a decent age, the youth would have
to continue to live in thefian. Consequently, the membership of these
bands could comprise a mixture of youths and adults. In Finn and the
[ian, then, we have, I suggest, a suggestive parallel to the original
social circumstances creating the myth of Orpheus' leadership. The
more so as also on the Apulian vases Orpheus is connected with
youths, as Margot Schmidt shows in her contribution to this volume
(Ch. 3) _ a connection which may well be based on a tradition
independent from the Attic vases 10.
We find similar bands of wandering youths in the Iranian tradition, where they too must have been accepted in the king's retinue, as
the designation of the Persian vassals sti1lreflects the name for youths
(marika). We may perhaps here also think of the Homeric word for
ally, epikouros, a word traditionally connected with Latin curro
but perhaps more likely to be associated with kouros". And in the
Germania, Tacitus mentions that the noble youths, after their initiation, wandered from chief to chief and married relatively late (c. 20:
sera iuvenum venus). We need not assume that these groups have
existed ever since the Indo-European Urzeit. It is perhaps preferable
to see in them a possibility of the initiatory structure which could be
actualized whenever society did not offer sufficient possibilities to its
youths to start a new household; a nice example would be the Roman
ver sacrum (Versnel, 1986). In more recent times we have the
tc
On Finn and the!ian see now Nagy (1985), esp. 17-40 (<<Finn,poet and outsider ] and 4t-79 (<<Fennid,Fian, Rig[ennid; McCone (1986): less helpful, h6gain

(1988)."

Iranians: Widengren (1953), 59-62; idem (1969),86-92; idem (1975), 61 f; for

a possible Indian parallel see Bollee (1981). Epikouros: Negri (1977). I am grateful
to Professor R.S.P. Beekes for advice in this question (letter 5 April 1989).

21
JAN BREMMER

20

phenomenonoftheiuvenes(D
century knights who h d
u by, 1973, 213-225), the young twelfthbride and whose wa d a to wander around in search of a wealthy
errant (Ch- . 1n9enngs are reflected in the legends of the knights
enene,
86 ch . 1). We may perhaps also compare the
peregrinatio
academic'
obligatory wanderin :~~~he noble students (Mornet, 1973) and the
1981; Didier, 1984)~both e J~~rneymen o~ the guilds (Reininghaus,
records of universities and p ilds resne going back to our earliest
In its various Macedoni;~l s respectively ...
of Orpheus preserved th
a~d Greek traditions, then, the myth
in which the youths b ~ me~ones of an archaic social organisation,
the countryside of 'p.u .pro ably also less fortunate adults, roamed
. .
lena under the
. .
Sirnilar Indo-Europea n groups alwa supervision of a poet-singer .
t h e free-born if not the ari
ys seem to belong to the layers of
,
e anstocracy Th
.
seems to point to groups of
.
~ roammg, therefore, also
anstocrats would sur I h
youths like the fian : established
e y ave used ho
In recent decades I"
rses to move around.
t erm eror these warrio ' mguists have sh own t h at the Indo-Eun:ipean
r groups of yo th
was 0 koryos, which surviv d i GUs
on the brink of adulthood
m ay bee Important
i
.
to obs e hm reek k oiranos.
For our purpose it
were especially frequentinTh at onomastic testimonies for this term
hand, a Thracian origin fo 0 essaly and Macedonia. On the other
be totally excluded as traditi rpheus' association can perhaps not
tion
f Pil~na (Graf,
' 1987, I87)
IonIftold of
. Thracian
'
,
t
0
. .a~ earlier
populahe Tbracian singer Tham .'
so, It IS interesting to observe that
Chalcidice or the Scythia:sn(sTwhas
~eputed to have been king of the
ractans?)" .

3. A GAY ORPHEUS?
Having shown th . "
'
Graf (198
e InItiatory back
introduci~' 92) goes on to argue that :l~~und of t~~ Orpheus myth,
g homosexuality to Th
. the tradition of Orpheus
an
we
had
th
h
race
might
preserve older traditions
th
as ped
oug t. At first sight hi
erasty was a standard '
ISsuggest'Ion ISvery
.
.
attractive
feature of an cient
.
Greek initiation '
" OkaryoS" Be
.
Robert (1963 38'
nvemste (1%9, \11-115'
26 F 1 7 . ' 5-396); McCone (1987). Th)'amyns:
Heubeck
Strabo(1978)
7 f' W h 0 overlooked
, r. 35; Conon FGrH

ORPHEUS: FROM GURU TO GAY

(Bremmer, 1989). Yet at closer inspection doubts arise. The oldest

authority for Orpheus' pederastic activities is Phanocles, an author
of whom we know virtually nothing but who did not live before the
third century. From his poem Erotes e kaloi a fragment (fr, 1 Powell
= Hopkinson, 1988, lines 834-861) has survived which tells how
Orpheus was murdered by the Thracian women, who resented the fact
that he shunned them but loved Calais, the son of Boreas; from then
on, as a punishment, the Thracian males tattood their women (Zimmermann, 1980; Jones, 1987,145). Other, even later authors, such as
Ovid (Met. 10,83-85), Hyginus (Astr., 2, 7) and Philargyrius (Georg.,
4, 520), also call Orpheus the inventor of pederasty but do not mention Calais, whose pederastic role was probably invented by
Phanocles himself, as no other account mentions him: he was a wellknown fellow Argonaut who came from Thrace and whose name
recalls the kaloi of the title of the poem (Hopkinson, 1988, 178).
On the other hand, all these accounts clearly connect Orpheus'
pederasty with his shunning of women. Such a contrast is postclassical, as classical pederastic males were usually married, but we
may compare the statement of Aristotle (Pol., 2, 7, 5) that the Cretan
lawgiver instituted pederasty in order to prevent women from having
many children. Such a negative valuation of pederasty only appears
in the course of the fourth century. Orpheus' homosexuality,
therefore, does not belong to the original myth. Hardly surprisingly,
the parallel tradition of Thamyris being the inventor of pederasty is
equally late".
This conclusion is supported by a scrutiny of the myths related in
those places which claimed to have Orpheus' grave. The central site
was Leibethra on the foothills of Mt Olympus, where women were
forbidden to enter the sanctuary of Orpheus. Here, as the natives
related, Orpheus used to assemble the warriors of Macedonia and
Thrae, although they had to leave their weapons outside. The women
resented their exclusion and one day they collected these weapons,
forced their way into the building and tore Orpheus to pieces. No
homosexuality here, but Conon (FGrR 26 F I, 45), the source of the

" Tharnyris and pederasty: Apollod., 1, 3, 3; Eustath. on II., 298, 40; in

general, Robert (1920), 413-416; Marcade (1982); add now the society of Boeotian
Tharnyriddontes (SEG, 32, 503). As regards our conclusi~n, note also Robert (~920),
404: Als die altesten (viz, causes of his death) werden die zu gelten haben, dIe von
der Eurydikesage unabhangig sind.))

23
JAN BREMMER

story,
adds
that some say th. ate
t h women may well have resented the
fact that
Orph
that this
.euswas not mterested in their love, thus demonstrating
import~n;~~S~~g:;:s~~:~~~d

in Leibethra itself but had become

In Dium a nei b
.
Orpheus' gr~ve at f:~stot~mg town which also claimed to have
the traveller St:abo arri : women were not even mentioned. When
~hatpolitical oppone::;~a:e~e in the time of Augustus, he was told
In this account Orph
. denici Orpheus. It IScunous to note that
itinerant initiation pr~e~~.I~ epicted as a typical Orpheotelest, the
lected money (agyrt
. <a Wizard (andra goeta) who at first col. .
euonta) through hi
.
imtatory rites. this t diti
IS mUSIC, prophecies and
,ra
mon
was
h
dl
I
rpheus". When two
.
ar y we l-disposed towards
O
.
centuries late P
.
mthesametown the nati
h d
r ausamas (9, 30, 4-12) arrived
.
'
ives
a
appa
I
h
.. wiser to adapt
th en story to the more
I
rent y t ought It
the exact spot where t~~pu ar version and they could indicate to him
It is clear, as Graf (l9~~~e~9had killed Orpheus.
murdering women finds it
:. I f) has seen, that the myth of the
Sl songmmth
I
sanctuar~ _ in other words ..
e e~c us~on of women from this
myths existed in Clazom
' It ISan aetiological myth Comparable
enae wher th
.
.
sanctuary of Herrnoti
e e exclusion of women from the
h.
imos
was
ex
I
d
w ich had led to his murd
d, ame by the treason of his wife
women were excluded from erth an ' most lik
.
I ely, m
Tarentum where'
an exclusion hardly to be s
e sanctuary of the Agamernnonids a number of cults, suche~:r:~ed from Clytaemnestra's murder. In
J:!eracles,the exclusion of the wo~se of. Hermotimos, Achilles and
t1(ons
with their rituals of I.nl.t. . en pomts to ancient men's associa2), 0 rp heus
eus iISalso to be ration. In some way, as we have seen
Both in I..eibethra and Dconnected with such rituals.
rum, then ,eth women were supposed to
h ave. object
. ed to Orpheus taki
against his being a misogynist ~~gaway their males from them not
we also ~nd on some of our e ~.Pederast. It is this tradition ~hich
:~;ch fro~ the 4~Osonw~r~:s~i:ources, the Attic red-figured
only b y. A mlsogymstic and co play Orpheus surrounded by
ecomes historically credl.b'l .nsequently, pederastic Orpheus
emthef ourt h century and after

:=~:~

. " Strabo, 7, fr. 18 f S

kai goeteia with Dionysi~c~ trabo~ 10, 3, 23 who ex .. y
also the characterisation of -:. Orphic crafts. OrpheotJhCltl connects to agyrtikon
agyrtes.
iresias by <Edipus in Sop~st~ Burkert (1982, 4-6; note
. R., 387 f as a magos and
j

."

ORPHEUS: FROM GURU TO GAY

when the man-wife relationship became more bourgeois. The changing emphasis on Orpheus' lovelife is an interesting example of how
the Hellenistic periode kept myths alive by shifting the accents of the
narration away from its religious and social aspects towards a more
psychological approach towards its protagonists I'.

4. ORPHEUS AS GURU
After Graf's (1987) investigation, the problem of Orpheus has
become even more complicated. For how can we explain the fact that
an initiator ended up as a poet of abstruse speculations as well as a
kind of guru for Greeks dedicated to an alternative life-style? The
question is perhaps insoluble but there is certainly room for a few
observations. Let us therefore once again look at the earliest
testimonia of Orpheus. The oldest certain reference occurs on the
metope of the Sicyoniam treasurehouse at Delphi which dates from
before 550 B.C. where Orpheus is pictured as an Argonaut (above);
the reference of Ibycus (PMG, 306) to the famous Orpheus may
also come from an Argonautic epos as Karl Meuli (1975, 657) has persuasively suggested. Various sources agree that his major feat on
board was to have outsung the Sirens. We cannot be sure that an Attic
black-figured lekythos in Heidelberg (580-570), depicting a singer
er
between two Sirens, represents Orpheus (Gropengiess , 1977,
doubted by Vojatzi, 1982, 43 f), but around 400 B.C. Herodorus of
Heraclea (FGrH 31 F 43 a) mentioned that Cheiron had advised
Jason to take Orpheus along with him as protection against the
Sirens, a tradition also recorded by Apollonius of Rhodes (I, 32-35).
In addition, around 320/310 a nearly life-size terracotta group of
Orpheus and two Sirens was made and buried in an underground
Tarentine chamber tomb (Frel, 1979, 25 f). His quality as a mastersinger, then, is well attested as the oldest stratum of his Greek tradition. Orpheus' skill in singing is also stressed in Conon's account and
it seems perfectly acceptable that the archaic Greeks selected the singing as the most striking quality of the activities of this Macedonian
cult figure. So the question remains why and when Orpheus was
transformed from a singer into the poet of Orphic poetry?

I'

For a similar changing interpretation of a myth see Graf (1988).

25
JAN BREMMER

24

ORPHEUS: FROM GURU 10 GAY

be proved that a Pythagorean philosophy or science existed before

Regarding
Orphi
seem
to go back
int~ ~~etry t h ere ar~ at l~ast three traditions which
theogonic
t
e early classical, If not archaic age: Orphic
poe ry, Pythagorean
0 h'
eschatological poetry. W, Id
rp tea
and
Eleusinian
U
perhaps help us to fi d th not a closer look at these traditions
.
n
e answer? Let us t t . h h
'
theogonies, West (1983) h
h
.
s ar Wit t e Orphic
to have been written by ~s shown that the oldest theogony claiming
and may be even later th r~eus c~n hardly be older than 500 B.C.
at various places, unlik:~es:~emdes
w~ose ~ork it seems to echo
and Richardson (1985) h
' hough, his reviewers Brisson (1985)
has to remain largely obave stress~d that the content of this theogony
determination of the scure. This observation is important for the
.
area where this th
' .
persuasively established
eogony ongmated. Having
Parmenides and Emped ~ connection of the theogony with
Ionia above Sicily or SouotchesWI
, est (1983, 110), in the end prefers
,
. that the theogony
ISconnected
with the S b ern
. taly o n th e b asis
m
a azian cult myth H
.,
ent _ the connection of S bazi
"
owever, his mam arguthe fact that Meter Hipta i a lazms With Meter Hipta - overlooks
rmuted
. area of Lvdia ahISon y con necte d wi
with Sabazius in a highly
tiimes. Moreover'J Hipta
,were her cult .IS not attested before imperial
orphiIC context in' the 0 appears
only for t h e very first time in an
hi
which ~ere the product
a I~i~~m.ns (no: 48 f = OF 199), poems
~u~elYIII this syncretistic periot~~c society in imperial times. It is
in uence, the more so as n
at we would expect Sabazian
demonstrated for the Orphi hother Sabazian elements have been
there
ICt eogonires. W'ith Hipta
.
, , seems no reason not to
out of the way,
~nglllated in Sicily or Souther~~~t that the oldest Orphic theogony
ave ~pected the birth of such y, exa~tly the area where we would
Given the close r
speculatIOns"
might even
esemblance of Or hi
.
area as a won.der whether Orphism Pdi;m to P~~ago~eanism one
Parrneni
split off from Pyth
not ongmate m the same
enides and Empedocles; it sho~f~~anism sometime between
e remembered that it cannot

:r

Parmenides (Burkert, 1972, 283, 289).

In Eleusis, Orpheus, Orphic ideas, and Orphic poems, such as the
Orphic account of Demeter's entry into Eleusis, are not demonstrable
before the second half of the fifth century (Graf, 1974, 79-150). The
only exception seems to be a late sixth-century Eleusinian katabasis
of Heracles, in which Graf (1974, 146) thought to detect Orphicpythagorean eschatological ideas, which he tentatively ascribed to
Musaeus, a figure closely related to Eleusis (Henrichs, 1985). Graf
based himself on Attic imagery (now LIMe, IV, 1, 1988, pp. 805-888)
and Aristophanes' mention of malefactors in Hades in his Frogs, but
the occurrence of Orphic-Pythagorean ideas in late sixth-century
Athens seems too early, as pytagorean influence in that periode is
hardly credible. Moreover, Orpheus' connection with the mysteries is
in general of a much later date: a katabasis ascribed to Orpheus was
not part of the Eleusinian canon (Marmor Parium FGrH 239 F 14).
Now Apollodorus (2, 5, 12) only mentions Heracles' initiation but
not a meeting with the Eleusinian initiates in Hades, and so does
Euripides in his HeracJes (610-613). As Apollodorus almost certainly depends on the Athenian mythographer Pherecydes (Van der
Valk, 1958, 129), it seems perfectly possible that in the later fifth century Orphic-pythagorean ideas were inserted into the existing version
of Heracles' katabasis which until then had only mentioned his initiation.Finally, the pythagorean Orphica. Unfortunately the only
passage which might connect pythagoras with Orpheus is highly
enigmatic. According to Heraclitus (B 129), pythagoras son of
Mnesarchus practised inquiry most of all men, and having made a
selection of these writings he claimed for himself expertise,
polymathy, knavery. According to Burkert, Heraclitus may have
meant Orphica with these writings, but the expression itself is
obscure and the explanation presuPposes the existence of Orphic
writings within Pythagoras' life-time, something which is still to be
demonstrated

17.

nest
" '"

(1983): this hi
,
19h1~mgeniOlls but also .
l::sadlo (1986, 1987), Met~; ~nsson (1985), Graf (~~~~~ speculative study has to
ne, 1985, no, 40),352 (= ~ta and Sabazius: Titu/' ): RIchardson (1985) and
~te also Zgusla (1964), 204 4ne, 1985, no. 36), 459 I~slae Mmoris,V, I, 264 (=
est (1983, 97) wrongly de;i~es8:,Sabazian ritual:
Lane, 1985, no, 36), 529;
he Schlangenhoch ,(l985b, 589) points out thai
zeit from S ab'aZlan rItual.
,
.
,
be rea? with the reviews

O~f

,.

;11, ,

" Pythagoras and Orphism: Burkert (1972), 125-132; note that Mansfeld
(1983),249 perhaps preferably translates WIth: ... und mdem er em,e Auswahl auS
seinen diesbeziiglichen Notizen vornahm, machte er Slch daraus eme elgene WeIsheIt,
Vielwisserei, schlimme Machenschaften.

27

26

JAN BREMMER

Early
Orphict writings ,en,
th
of the
fifth
are not attested before the beginning
dar's Secon;e~l ury, .although they were already current before Pinhelp us in our q:e7:::;;f
468 (Lloyd-Jones, 1985), and they do not
tion The most
I rpheus the poet. Yet there may be one excepinto' Hades _ e~~~uP~~ha~~~: all, Pythagoras had also descended
one or possibly variou b gk n-.Orphlc wnting seems to have been
variously ascribed to;
00 s entitled Descent into Hades which was
Camarina (OT 222, 0:02~j~~~~s, Zopyrus or ?rpheus Camarinus of
certainty into the sixth
), none of which goes back with any
the most authoritative one.Is s One of these Descents, presumably
in an autobiographical for ISgenerally agreed to have been written
which seems to refer to 'tO~~, Just as the later Orphic Argonautica
here the link between 0: ~ f\It ~eems not impossible that we find
The autobiographical for;:s ~f e sl~ger and Orpheus the poet/guru.
Orpheus as a poet and hi . this poem must have established
transformed him into
IS visit to the underworld must have
tance to the Orphics: an expert. on th e a fterlife,
. an issue of imp or.
' anthextension
of th e k now ledge of Orpheus
into
other areas would
b
authentication of th
en e o~IYa matter of time. Does not the
Orpheus also point e : s~cce~slVe writings with the name of
t
~rchaic age? When Sixth~ce~~:mthe early classical rather than the
~ltlOUSpoet in order to enh ry Athens (Eleusis?) created a fiemvented the name Musa ance the credibility of oracles it still
irnmedilate invocation of the
eusMus
Lat e~. times
.
'
could do without
the
Wehave started . h
es .
them If'
WIt Orpheus and Ed'
82-84' n a ~scmating section of hi
ury Ice, we will also end with
North Monn~er,this volume, ch 6 ~ study of Orpheus, Graf (1987,
A)mencan Orpheus Tra'd~t'as drawn attention to the mainly
woman goesott he world of th Id 100 ,ni whlich a man (rarely a
sue h asd a .wif e. G'raf ISinclined eto ac
ead to f et ch back a near relative,
tually
the ab enves from this tradition Th~ept that the Greek story evensence of an
b
.
IS seems d b f
and Pacific A' .um er of related stories'
ou t ul, however, as
sia IS a strong argum
in the area between Greece
em agai nst a diffusionist
.
.
explanaP h L' Ea r 1Y Pythagoreans
d
A~t agoras: Burkert (1972) ISSan Orpheus: West 1
n. 6, 119; Graf (1974) 142 -163.Autobiographi a I 983), 7-15. Descent of
goes b~ckat least into Hell . ~.. 6, ~ho points Dut
rpheus: E. Norden on Verg.
Muses. Calame (1986), 31.5:mslIc tImes; West (l98~~~\1he autobiographical form
. DlmlOlshmg role of the

ORPHEUS: FROM GURU TO GAY

tion. Moreover, Orpheus' demonstration of his musical power in the

underworld is only a logical extension of his power over humans,
animals and nature; the inclusion of his wife is one possible motivation amongst many others. It also seems improbable that the sixth
century already knew of a katabasis of a man for his wife: such an
attempt hardly fits into the general spirit of the archaic period. It is
even harder to accept that the motif originated among the Orphics
themselves, as they seem to have felt rather hostile towards sexuality.
On the other hand, the Pythagoreans promoted marriage and strict
monogamy. Is it not possible that they invented the motif of Eurydice,
perhaps improving upon an earlier version 19?Such a suggestion is of
course pure speculation, but would the pythagoreans or Orphics have
disapproved of that"?
Jan BREMMER

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29
JAN BREMMER

28

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1m Jahre 1974 wurden beim Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia in Tarent im Rahmen des Gesamtthemas VOrfismo in Magna
Grccia die damals bekannten unteritalischen Orpheusdarstellungen
untersucht. Die Ergebnisse wurden in den erst 1978 erschienenen Atti
del XIVo Convegno publiziert'. Seitdem ist wieder mehr als ein Jahrzehnt vergangen, und das Genfer Colloque sur l'Orphisme et Orphee
gibt nun Gelegenheit zur Dberprufung, ob neuere Funde und Forie
schungen Erganzungen oder Modifizierungen zur lkonolog
der
Orpheusgestalt nahelegen. Nach wie vor bietet die apulische Vasenmalerei des 4. Jhs.v.Chr. das reichste Material zum Thema des
Orpheus in der antiken Bildkunst, und auf diesem Gebiet lassen sich
auch verschiedene Neufunde und neue Gruppierungen verzeichnen.
Deshalb gelten die folgenden Bemerkungen ausschliesslich apulischen Vasenbildern, die Orpheus in der Unterwelt und/oder in der
Gesellschaft von Thrakern zeigen.
Die sogenannten Unterweltsvasen aus Apulien sind in den meisten
alteren publikationen als undifferenzierte Einheit behandelt worden.
Heute sind wir in der gunstigeren Lage, auch fur ikonographische
Untersuchungen die neuen Ergebnisse der Malerforschung zu nutzen.
Fur den unteritalischen Raum sind nahezu alle wesentlichen Klassifizierungen den Arbeiten von A.D. Trendall zu verdanken. Gemeinsam

RVAp' Zitate zur Idenlifizierung apulischer Vasen werden hier in der von
A.D. Trendall empfohlenen Form gegeben. d.h., zunachst wird die Kapitelnummer
zitiert (die dem Kundigen schon einen Hinweis auf Maler bzw. Werkstiitten gibt),
gefolgt von der Ordnungsnummer der einzelnen Vase. Zusiitzlich gebe ich in Klammern die Seitenzahl an, um das Auffinden zu erleichtern. Auf die Angabe der Bandzahl wird verzichtet: Bd. I umfasst Kapitell-16, Bd. 2 KapiteI17-30. Die meisten in
diesem Beitrag behandelten Vasen sind spatapulisch (2. HaIfte des 4. lhs.v.ehr.). Sie
sind dementsprechend im 2. Band von RVAp zu finden.
\

Schmidt, Orfeo.