Each of the three parts which constitute this book challenges a distinctive feature traditionally attributed to ancient Orphism: its characterisation as a religious movement, its specific connection with writing and the conception of a primordial guilt inherited by mankind after Dionysus’ dismemberment by the Titans.
In addition to explaining the methodology and object of the study, Part 1 provides a well-informed overview of previous research and – most importantly – clarifies the consequences of the Christian and Neoplatonic reception of Orphic literature on modern scholarship.
Such a critical investigation leads E. to make a clearer exemplification of his methods. By borrowing some categories from anthropology he aims to overcome certain limitations by the application to the ancient world of patterns of analysis belonging to modern religions. Levi-Strauss’ metaphor of bricolage is employed in order to present Orphic literature as the production of religious craftsmen (Orpheotelestai or ‘professional bricoleurs’), who collected and adapted traditional myths to the demand of their clients. In this respect, E. fully accepts the results achieved by W. Burkert in one of his seminal studies on Orphism (‘Craft Versus Sect: the Problems of Orphics and Pythagoreans’, in B. Meyer and E.P. Sanders, Jews and Christian Self-Definition [1982], pp. 1–22) but, by defining the expertise of orpheotelestai in terms of mere technique, he denies any kind of genuine religious interest in their activity, and assumes a very sceptical position, different from the more positive conclusions reached by S. Iles Johnston in her description of the same activity of bricolage with regard to the myth of Dionysus (S.I. Johnston, ‘The Myth of Dionysus’, in Ritual Texts for the Afterlife [20132], pp. 66–93).
Furthermore, in spite of the many debts acknowledged to Linforth, E. adopts a different defining criterion and, by choosing an emic rather than an etic perspective, he achieves a polythetic definition through the individuation of clues which are indicative of his label of Orphism. Pursuing the same approach followed in his article of 2008 (‘Extra-Ordinary People: Mystai and Magoi, Magicians and Orphics in the Derveni Papyrus’, CPh 103 [2008], 16–39), E. recognises the ‘extra-ordinary’ as his defining macro-category, and identifies in ‘purity’, ‘sanctity’, ‘antiquity’ or ‘strangeness’ the clues which characterise a text as Orphic.
This method offers doubtless advantages for studying the heterogeneous evidence that constitutes Orphic literature, and provides patterns of analysis which are more sensitive to Greek social dynamics. Nevertheless, the refusal to recognise any thematic elements as distinctive traits of religious thought produced under the authority of Orpheus determines a not negligible difficulty in distinguishing the ‘extra-ordinary’ which must be labelled as Orphic from the one developed under the influence of other religious or intellectual figures.
Part 2 analyses Orphic literature moving from a relevant theoretical premise: the denial of the pivotal role played by writing in ancient Orphism. The several references to the books of Orpheus are explained as a natural consequence of the authority acquired by textuality in fifth-century Athens, which must have encouraged professional bricoleurs in making use of such an innovative tool.
Even though intellectual competition was one of the most powerful incentives to produce specialised forms of thought – as studies on the birth of Greek philosophy have shown – it is worth remembering that the strict link between Orpheus and writing is also attested by pictorial evidence. Furthermore, the denial of the existence of specific themes related to Orphic thought, along with consideration of the importance reserved to cosmogonic accounts as a deceptive assumption of modern scholarship, is not supported by the finding of the Derveni Papyrus. Indeed, the theo-cosmogonic nature of the poem quoted in the book-roll confirms the relevance of these themes among the religious experts who acted under the name of Orpheus, and the same poetic contents show how certain distinctive mythological images – previously known only from Christian and Neoplatonic sources – had been in circulation since the fifth century b.c. (e.g. the primary role of Night within the Uranides’ theogonic line; the act of engulfment by Zeus and the re-generation of the cosmos).
The typological analysis of Orphic literature illustrates – with fair lucidity – the different kinds of relationship possibly existing between ritual activity and Orphic writings, which ranged from poetic compositions that played some role in the performance of rites, to texts which merely conveyed ideas similar to those involved in a determined ritual context. Of particular interest is the comparison between the Orphic Rhapsodies and the Sibylline Oracles, that – despite the considerably late date proposed for the canonisation of the Rhapsodies (fourth century a.d., i.e. four or three centuries later than the dates respectively proposed by M. West and L. Brisson) – evinces significant formal affinities between the two texts.
The classification proposed for the contents of Orphic literature (cosmogonic accounts; compositions to be performed in a ritual context; writings about the legend of Orpheus) supports the reader in understanding the main thematic cores recognisable in such a varied corpus of texts, even though, as happens with fixed categorisation, it fails to highlight the overlaps between some of the themes. The sharp distinction between cosmogonic and ritual accounts, for instance, is challenged, again, by the Derveni Papyrus, which took part in a funerary rite, and contained the exegesis of a cosmogonic poem along with a religious account of sacrifices and afterlife retributive justice.
Part 3, devoted to the analysis of ‘Orphic doctrines’, represents the core of the book. In spite of the firm refusal to recognise the existence of people who called themselves Orphikoi, E. admits a strict correlation between Orphism and ritual practice, which was performed under the name of Orpheus, and addressed to gods like Dionysus, Persephone or the Great Mother. This sacrificial activity, however, did not necessarily imply a concern for the afterlife, which – in E.'s view – was not a distinctive trait of Orphism. Despite his fair criticism towards the not uncommon inclination to ascribe to Orphism all the references to afterlife retribution of souls who kept their personal identity in the Underworld, I cannot agree in considering such conceptions as already spread in the first Archaic period, since the Homeric poems do not support this assumption.
That being said, it is worth bearing in mind – as E. often claims – that such an urge for purity might have found different expressions in terms of religious practice and thought. What remains not fully explored are instead the many articulations potentially assumed by the relationship between afterlife concerns, conceptions of the soul and ritual activity. As part of the oldest evidence clearly shows (e.g. P. Derveni, Aristotle, De Anima 410b27–30), Orphism must have been a fertile ground in this respect, where philosophical thought, cosmogonic account, and physical and cosmological speculation could merge with particular needs of purity to give birth to distinctive conceptions of the soul and of its relationship with the kosmos.
The book ends with an in-depth examination of the myth of Dionysus Zagreus. In continuity with his previous studies – written in a friendly debate with A. Bernabé – E. starts by explaining how the mechanisms of formation of Greek mythology make an early date for the entire story rather questionable. Moreover, as R. Gagné has recently shown (Ancestral Fault in Ancient Greece [2014]), the idea of an ancestral fault may be recognised in several places in Greek literature, mostly unconnected with Orphism: the association of all the ancient references with Orphic eschatology might run the risk of erasing the relevant differences existing among the various developments of such an idea in different times and places.
Some doubt arises from the consideration of Olympiodorus as the author of the last part of the myth: the assembling mechanisms which regulated the formation of Greek mythology, indeed, make it very difficult to recognise any specific authorship behind such a complex account.
Much more convincing is the interpretation of the ποινή which mankind had to pay to Persephone as a necessary act of retribution for the grief caused by the rapt, in order to obtain the favour of the Underworld Queen for a safe passage to the afterlife. The strict relationship with Dionysus still needs further exploration, but this line of interpretation opens up new horizons of analysis – legitimated also by the representations of Persephone's rapt in Macedonian tombs – which will determine new and relevant results on this debated matter in the wake of E.'s important work.
