Volume I Part 28 (2/2)

(2) Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 470. See also the quotations from Proclus.

(3) Gylfi's Mocking.

(4) Aglaophamus, p. 473.

In process of time Chaos produced an egg, s.h.i.+ning and silver white. It is absurd to inquire, according to Lobeck, whether the poet borrowed this widely spread notion of a cosmic egg from Phoenicia, Babylon, Egypt (where the goose-G.o.d Seb laid the egg), or whether the Orphic singer originated so obvious an idea. Quaerere ludicrum est. The conception may have been borrowed, but manifestly it is one of the earliest hypotheses that occur to the rude imagination. We have now three primitive generations, time, chaos, the egg, and in the fourth generation the egg gave birth to Phanes, the great hero of the Orphic cosmogony.(1) The earliest and rudest thinkers were puzzled, as many savage cosmogonic myths have demonstrated, to account for the origin of life. The myths frequently hit on the theory of a hermaphroditic being, both male and female, who produces another being out of himself. Praj.a.pati in the Indian stories, and Hrimthursar in Scandinavian legend--”one of his feet got a son on the other”--with Lox in the Algonquin tale are examples of these double-s.e.xed personages. In the Orphic poem, Phanes is both male and female. This Phanes held within him ”the seed of all the G.o.ds,”(2) and his name is confused with the names of Metis and Ericapaeus in a kind of trinity. All this part of the Orphic doctrine is greatly obscured by the allegorical and theosophistic interpretations of the late Platonists long after our era, who, as usual, insisted on finding their own trinitarian ideas, commenta frigidissima, concealed under the mythical narrative.(3)

(1) Clemens Alexan., p. 672.

(2) Damascius, ap. Lobeck, i. 481.

(3) Aglaoph., i. 483.

Another description by Hieronymus of the first being, the Orphic Phanes, ”as a serpent with bull's and lion's heads, with a human face in the middle and wings on the shoulders,” is sufficiently rude and senseless.

But these physical attributes could easily be explained away as types of anything the Platonist pleased.(1) The Orphic Phanes, too, was almost as many-headed as a giant in a fairy tale, or as Purusha in the Rig-Veda.

He had a ram's head, a bull's head, a snake's head and a lion's head, and glanced around with four eyes, presumably human.(2) This remarkable being was also provided with golden wings. The nature of the physical arrangements by which Phanes became capable of originating life in the world is described in a style so savage and crude that the reader must be referred to Suidas for the original text.(3) The tale is worthy of the Swift-like fancy of the Australian Narrinyeri.

(1) Damascius, 381, ap. Lobeck, i. 484.

(2) Hermias in Phaedr. ap. Lobeck, i. 493.

(3) Suidas s. v. Phanes.

Nothing can be easier or more delusive than to explain all this wild part of the Orphic cosmogony as an allegorical veil of any modern ideas we choose to select. But why the ”allegory” should closely imitate the rough guesses of uncivilised peoples, Ahts, Diggers, Zunis, Cahrocs, it is less easy to explain. We can readily imagine African or American tribes who were accustomed to revere bulls, rams, snakes, and so forth, ascribing the heads of all their various animal patrons to the deity of their confederation. We can easily see how such races as practise the savage rites of p.u.b.erty should attribute to the first being the special organs of Phanes. But on the Neo-Platonic hypothesis that Orpheus was a seer of Neo-Platonic opinions, we do not see why he should have veiled his ideas under so savage an allegory. This part of the Orphic speculation is left in judicious silence by some modern commentators, such as M. Darmesteter in Les Cosmogonies Aryennes.(1) Indeed, if we choose to regard Apollonius Rhodius, an Alexandrine poet writing in a highly civilised age, as the representative of Orphicism, it is easy to mask and pa.s.s by the more stern and characteristic fortresses of the Orphic divine. The theriomorphic Phanes is a much less ”Aryan” and agreeable object than the glorious golden-winged Eros, the love-G.o.d of Apollonius Rhodius and Aristophanes.(2)

(1) Essais Orientaux, p. 166.

(2) Argonautica, 1-12; Aves, 693.

On the whole, the Orphic fragments appear to contain survivals of savage myths of the origin of things blended with purer speculations. The savage ideas are finally explained by late philosophers as allegorical veils and vestments of philosophy; but the interpretation is arbitrary, and varies with the taste and fancy of each interpreter. Meanwhile the coincidence of the wilder elements with the speculations native to races in the lowest grades of civilisation is undeniable. This opinion is confirmed by the Greek myths of the origin of Man. These, too, coincide with the various absurd conjectures of savages.

In studying the various Greek local legends of the origin of Man, we encounter the difficulty of separating them from the myths of heroes, which it will be more convenient to treat separately. This difficulty we have already met in our treatment of savage traditions of the beginnings of the race. Thus we saw that among the Melanesians, Qat, and among the Ahts, Quawteaht, were heroic persons, who made men and most other things. But it was desirable to keep their performances of this sort separate from their other feats, their introduction of fire, for example, and of various arts. In the same way it will be well, in reviewing Greek legends, to keep Prometheus' share in the making of men apart from the other stories of his exploits as a benefactor of the men whom he made. In Hesiod, Prometheus is the son of the t.i.tan Iapetus, and perhaps his chief exploit is to play upon Zeus a trick of which we find the parallel in various savage myths. It seems, however, from Ovid(1) and other texts, that Hesiod somewhere spoke of Prometheus as having made men out of clay, like Pund-jel in the Australian, Qat in the Melanesian and Tiki in the Maori myths. The same story is preserved in Servius's commentary on Virgil.(2) A different legend is preserved in the Etymologic.u.m Magnum (voc. Ikonion). According to this story, after the deluge of Deucalion, ”Zeus bade Prometheus and Athene make images of men out of clay, and the winds blew into them the breath of life”.

In confirmation of this legend, Pausanias was shown in Phocis certain stones of the colour of clay, and ”smelling very like human flesh”; and these, according to the Phocians, were ”the remains of the clay from which the whole human race was fas.h.i.+oned by Prometheus”.(3)

(1) Ovid. Metam. i. 82.

(2) Eclogue, vi. 42.

(3) Pausanias, x. 4, 3.

<script>