Orpheus

Orpheus

ORPHEUS. In the sixth century BCE, a religious movement that modern historians call Orphism appeared in Greece around the figure of Orpheus, the Thracian enchanter. The features of this movement, and even its existence, have been subjects of debate since the nineteenth century.

A Concise Survey of the Scholarship

In 1829 Christian Augustus Lobeck (1781–1890) collected and commented on a huge amount of materials about Orphic literature and religion, in stark opposition to Georg F. Creuzer (1771–1858), whose monumental work Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker (1810–1812) had produced a great deal of mystification. During the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, however, information about the activities of the Orphics in the classical and early Hellenistic periods was scarce. Some scholars tended to fill the information gap by elaborating a religious pattern for Orphism based on concepts that are characteristic of modern religions. Such authors as Jane Ellen Harrison and Albrecht Dieterich were convinced that the Orphics made up a true church and had a great influence over contemporary philosophy. Vittorio Macchioro and Robert Eisler even argued that Christianity was only a kind of derivation of Orphism. Against these excesses, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff began, around 1930, a hypercritical reaction (followed by Ivan M.

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