MOUSIKÊ AND MYSTERIES: A NIETZSCHEAN READING OF AESCHYLUS’ BASSARIDES.

The Classical Quarterly 65.2 455–475 © The Classical Association (2015) doi:10.1017/S0009838815000154 MOUSIKÊ AND MYSTERIES: A NIETZSCHEAN READING OF AESCHYLUS’ BASSARIDES In chapter 12 of Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche describes Socrates as the new Orpheus, who rises up against Dionysus and murders tragedy: … in league with Socrates, Euripides dared to be the herald of a new kind of artistic creation. If this caused the older tragedy to perish, then aesthetic Socratism is the murderous principle; but in so far as the fight was directed against the Dionysiac nature of the older art, we may identify Socrates as the opponent of Dionysos, the new Orpheus who rises up against Dionysos and who, although fated to be torn apart by the maenads of the Athenian court of justice, nevertheless forces the great and mighty god himself to flee. As before, when he fled from Lycurgus, King of the Edonians, Dionysos now sought refuge in the depths of the sea, namely in the mystical waters of a secret cult which gradually spread across the entire world. (Trans. R. Speirs) (Cambridge, 1999), 64 For the story of Lycurgus’ resistance to Dionysus, Nietzsche follows Homer (Il. 6.130– 40) and ps.-Apollodorus (Bibl. 3.5.1). But since neither of these authors mentions Orpheus in connection with the Thracian king, it is probable that Nietzsche is referring to the Bassarides, the second tragedy of Aeschylus’ lost Lycurgan tetralogy.1 Only meagre fragments of the Bassarides survive, but a summary of the plot by ps.-Eratosthenes indicates that Orpheus was dismembered by maenads sent by Dionysus because of his exclusive devotion to Apollo:2 1 See M.S. Silk and J.P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cambridge, 1981), 179, 200; B. von Reibnitz, Ein Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik’: Kap. 1–12 (Stuttgart, 1992), 338–9; B. Biebuyck, D. Praet and I. Vanden Poel, ‘Cults and migrations: Nietzsche’s meditations on Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and the Greek mysteries’, in P. Bishop (ed.), Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition (Rochester, NY, 2004), 151–69, at 165. None of these authors considers whether/how Nietzsche engages with the Bassarides. Given that Nietzsche regarded Aeschylean tragedy as the apogee of the Apolline and the Dionysiac synthesis, it is remarkable that he never explicitly discusses the Bassarides. There can be little doubt that he knew of it. Reconstructions were attempted by German scholars whose work Nietzsche knew: F. Welcker, Nachtrag zu der Schrift über die Aeschylische Trilogie nebst einer Abhandlung über das Satyrspiel (Frankfurt, 1826); G. Hermann, De Aeschyli Lycurgia Dissertatio (Leipzig, 1831), 3–30. The epitome appeared in A. Nauck’s first edition of fragments of the lost tragedies, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Leipzig, 1856). Nietzsche’s friend E. Rohde refers to the Bassarides, the Lycurgia and (at some length) ‘Orphism’ in Psyche. Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen (Freiburg, 1890–41) = Engl. trans. W.B. Hillis (London, 1925), 268 n. 10, 305 n. 2. The composer Peter Gast wrote to Nietzsche about his plans for an opera on the subject of an Apolline/Dionysiac Orpheus in 1885: see M. Vogel, Apollinisch und Dionysisch. Geschichte eines genialen Irrtums (Regensburg, 1966), 236. H. Lloyd-Jones notes the astonishing omission in Blood for the Ghosts: Classical Influences in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1982), 173 n. 26. 2 The epitome existed in different recensions; a longer version, which included the bracketed portions of the text, is transmitted by Latin scholiasts. See M.L. West, ‘Tragica VI’, BICS 30 (1983), 63–82 = ‘The Lycurgus trilogy’, in M.L. West, Studies in Aeschylus (Stuttgart, 1990), 26–50. The portions bracketed

[διὰ δὲ τὴν γυναῖκα εἰς Ἅιδου καταβὰς καὶ ἰδὼν τὰ ἐκεῖ οἷα ἦν] ὃς τὸν μὲν Διόνυσον οὐκ[έτι] ἐτίμα, [ὑφ’ οὗ ἦν δεδοξασμένος], τὸν δὲ Ἥλιον μέγιστον τῶν θεῶν ἐνόμιζεν εἶναι, ὃν καὶ Ἀπόλλωνα προσηγόρευσεν· ἐπεγειρόμενός τε τῆς νυκτὸς κατὰ τὴν ἑωθινὴν ἐπὶ τὸ ὄρος τὸ καλούμενον Πάγγαιον <ἀνιὼν>3 προσέμενε τὰς ἀνατολάς, ἵνα ἴδηι τὸν Ἥλιον πρῶτον. ὅθεν ὁ Διόνυσος ὀργισθεὶς αὐτῶι ἔπεμψε τὰς Βασσαρίδας, ὥς φησιν Αἰσχύλος ὁ τῶν τραγωιδιῶν ποιητής, αἵτινες αὐτὸν διέσπασαν καὶ τὰ μέλη διέρριψαν χωρὶς ἕκαστον. αἱ δὲ Μοῦσαι συναγαγοῦσαι ἔθαψαν ἐπὶ τοῖς λεγομένοις Λειβήθροις. (ps.-Eratosth. [Cat.] 24 = S. Radt [ed.], TrGF 3, 138–9 = Orph. 536T + 1033T + 1070T + 1074T Bernabé)4 [having descended to Hades on account of his wife and having seen what things there were like] … who did not [any longer] worship Dionysus [by whom he had been made famous], but considered Helios the greatest of the gods, whom he also addressed as Apollo. Getting up during the night and ascending the mountain called Pangaeum at dawn, he would wait for the sunrise, so as to be first to see the sun. Hence Dionysus, being angry with him, sent the Bassarids, as the tragedian Aeschylus says, who tore him to pieces and threw his limbs in different directions. But the Muses gathered them up and buried them in the place called Leibethra. Like the Bacchae, for which it was an important model, the Lycurgia seems to have given a prominent place to reflection about mousikê.5 Strabo quotes a passage from the Edonians in which the chorus compares the new cult’s exotic instruments to those which they use in the worship of Cotys.6 The fact that an entire tragedy was dedicated to the quintessential mousikos Orpheus points the same way:7 the Bassarides, which ended with the gathering of Orpheus’ limbs by the Muses, was surely the focus of Aeschylus’ reflections about mousikê; above all, tragedy. Starting from the hypothesis that metatragedy was an important element of the Bassarides, this paper will attempt to make sense of the conflict between Orpheus and Dionysus in terms of Orpheus’ two spheres of interest—mousikê and mysteries. Since, as I will argue, in both spheres, Orpheus was connected with transcendence of mortality, his collision with Dionysus invites reflection about the metaphysical significance of their differing types of mousikê and the antagonism between Orphic and Dionysiac rites. The way I read this collision, therefore, has a good deal in common with, and is also indebted to, Birth of Tragedy, in which the mysteries of Dionysus, as taught at Eleusis, provide the doctrinal underpinning for tragedy (Birth of Tragedy, ch. 10). Indeed, the connections between Birth of Tragedy and the Bassarides seem to me sufficiently striking for an argument to be made that Birth of Tragedy is, in part, an implicit commentary on Aeschylus. Birth of Tragedy will therefore be an here did not appear in Nauck’s edition but were printed by Radt, following West. However, Massimo Di Marco (‘Dioniso ed Orfeo nelle Bassaridi di Eschilo’, in A. Masaracchia [ed.], Orfeo e l’orfismo. Atti del seminario nazionale [Rome, 1993], 101–53) has since argued—in my view, decisively—that the bracketed portions of the text cannot be Aeschylean. Discussion below, p. 460. 3 Suppl. Wilamowitz. 4 My translation. For Orphic fragments, I use the numbering in A. Bernabé (ed.), Poetarum epici Graeci. Testimonia et fragmenta. Pars II, Fasc. 1–2: Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta (Leipzig, 2004–5). 5 Understood in the broad sense as music, poetry and dance. On the Lycurgia as a model for the Bacchae, see E.R. Dodds, Euripides Bacchae (Oxford, 19602), xxxi-xxxiii. On ‘metatragedy’ see C.P. Segal, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae (expanded edition, Princeton, 1997 [1982]); A.F.H. Bierl, Dionysus und die griechische Tragödie: politische und ‘metatheatralische’ Aspekte im Text (Tübingen, 1991); A. Henrichs, ‘“Why should I dance?” Choral self-referentiality in Greek tragedy’, Arion 3 (1995), 55–111. 6 Fr. 57 Radt = Strabo 10.3.16. Cf. E. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy (Oxford,

important point of reference throughout this discussion. For reasons of space and focus, however, I will not attempt a systematic exploration of Nietzsche’s use of the Bassarides. My focus will be the existential conflict between Orpheus and Dionysus in Aeschylus and the question of how it may have been resolved. Let us begin, then, by following up on Nietzsche’s implication that Socrates is the heir to Orpheus’ conflict with Dionysus. Presumably, his description of Socrates as the new Orpheus who murders tragedy refers not just to the Bassarides but also to the critique of tragedy in Republic 10. And there, too, we find a reference to Orpheus’ demise. In the Myth of Er’s selection of lives, Orpheus is the first named figure (Resp. 620a). He chooses the life of a swan so as to avoid being born from a woman, because he hates women on account of his death at their hands. The swan is Apollo’s bird, wherein lies the connection between Aeschylus’ Orpheus and Socrates. For, in the Phaedo, Socrates describes his philosophical activity as a kind of mousikê (60e-61b) and explicitly compares his discussion about the immortality of the soul with the swans’ song, calling himself a fellow-servant of their god (84e-85b). He says men are wrong to think that swans sing most beautifully when they are about to die because they are lamenting, for no bird sings when it is in distress. Rather, the swans are joyful because of their prophetic knowledge about the afterlife. Here then, Socrates, like Orpheus, is advocating an anti-tragic Apolline mousikê.8 The correspondence is not coincidental. When Socrates compares his discussion about the afterlife with the Apolline swansong, he is engaging with ‘Orphic’ and Pythagorean ideas. Aristotle said that Pythagoras was known by the citizens of Croton as the Hyperborean Apollo.9 According to Aristoxenus (fr. 15 Wehrli), Pythagoras got his doctrines from Delphi. One of the Pythagorean ‘symbols’ asks, ‘What is the Delphic oracle?’. The answer is ‘tetractys: the harmony in which the Sirens sing’. This contains, in nuce, the doctrine of cosmic harmony, for which, according to Plato’s Cratylus (405c-d), ‘those clever in music and astronomy’, viz. the Pythagoreans (cf. Resp. 530d), worshipped Apollo as the symbol.10 Orpheus is a virtual double of Apollo in early iconography; indeed, some sources make him the god’s son.11 Our earliest evidence for the singer is from Delphi: a relief of c. 570–560 from the treasury of the Sicyonians (LIMC s.v. ‘Orpheus’ 6) which depicts him standing beside the Argo with his lyre. In early epic, Orpheus accompanied 8 Cf. Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente 7 (July 1882 – Winter 1883/84) (Berlin, 1977), 102: ‘Socrates … der den Mysterien gegenüber ablehnend ist, im übrigen sich an Apollo hält (wie die Schwäne, die Diener des Apollo).’ 9 Arist. fr. 191 Rose. On Pythagoras and Apollo, see W. Burkert, Weisheit und Wissenschaft. Studien zu Philolaos und Platon (Würzburg, 1962) = Eng. trans. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 91, 141, 143, 147–50, 187. 10 On the tetractys and cosmic harmony, see Burkert (n. 9), 72, 186–8, 350–68. L. Zhmud, Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans, trans. K. Windle and R. Ireland (Oxford, 2012), 300–3, 337–46 argues that the symbolon about the tetractys is late, but considers the harmony of the spheres to be an indisputably early Pythagorean doctrine. See also C.H. Kahn, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History (Indianapolis, 2001), 23–37; C. Riedweg, Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and Influence (Ithaca, NY, 2005), 29, 82–3. On Apollo’s association with the sun in Pythagoreanism, see P. Boyancé, ‘L’Apollon solaire’, in Mélanges d’archéologie, d’épigraphie et d’histoire offerts à Jérôme Carcopino (Paris, 1966), 149–70. 11 Cf. M. Garezou, ‘Orpheus’, LIMC 7.1–2 (Zurich and Munich, 1994), 99. Orpheus is usually the son of Oeagrus. On Orpheus’ father, see Orph. 890–901T. Apollo is first named as Orpheus’ father in Asclepiades of Tragilus (FGrHist 12 fr. 6b = Schol. Ap. Rhod. 1.23-5a = Orph. 896T), but cf. Pind. Pyth. 4.176–7 with K. Braswell’s commentary ad loc.

the Argonauts in order to ensure them safe passage past the Sirens.12 This points to his twin spheres of mousikê and eschatology. Given the importance which the Pythagoreans ascribed to these spheres, it is unsurprising that they were so closely entwined with the early history of things Orphic. Herodotus (2.81 = Orph. 650T) says that Orphic and Bacchic rites are really Egyptian and Pythagorean. He seems to be referring to reincarnation.13 Orpheus’ connection with these rites must, in part, be due to texts in his name. Ion of Chios said that Pythagoras had published writings in Orpheus’ name (Orph. 1144T). The fourth-century grammarian Epigenes asserted that four Orphic poems were the work of Pythagoreans (Orph. 406T).14 Plato’s interest in Orphic and Pythagorean ideas is well known.15 Dieterich argued long ago for their presence in Plato’s eschatological myths, including the Myth of Er, in which reincarnation and cosmic harmony supervised by the Sirens play a key role.16 In his re-working of the Myth of Er, Plutarch refers to an Orphic katabasis poem which mentioned an oracle at Delphi shared by Apollo (presumably Helios) and Night (De sera 566c). Martin West has suggested that, in his Bassarides, Aeschylus drew on this poem, which may have been Krater or a katabasis. He envisages Aeschylus’ Orpheus as a Pythagorean figure.17 See M.L. West, ‘Odyssey and Argonautica’, CQ 55 (2005), 39–64, at 45–7. The Herodotean passage is transmitted in shorter and longer versions: both suggest a close relationship between things Orphic and Pythagorean. Plutarch seems to have read the longer version (see n. 89 below), which is preferred by most modern scholars. See D. Asheri, A. Lloyd, A. Corcella, A Commentary on Herodotus Books I-IV, trans. B. Graziosi et al. (Oxford, 2007), ad loc. Important discussions for and against are Burkert (n. 9), 127–8 and I.M. Linforth, The Arts of Orpheus (London, 1941), 38–50. Zhmud, who wants to minimize the ritual elements of early Pythagoreanism, revives the argument for the shorter version ([n. 10], 218–38). He argues that Orphics and Pythagoreans were strongly differentiated, but this is not what the fifth- and fourthcentury evidence suggests. As Zhmud himself states, ‘the similarity between Orphism and Pythagoreanism lay precisely in metempsychosis, with all the doctrinal and practical consequences that flowed from it’ ([n. 10], 223). These were not negligible: see Burkert (n. 9), 125–33. On the relationship between Orphics and Pythagoreans, see also W. Burkert, ‘Orphism and Bacchic mysteries: new evidence and old problems of interpretation’, in W. Wuellner (ed.), Protocol of the 28th Colloquy of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture (Berkeley, 1977); id., ‘Craft versus sect: the problem of the Orphics and Pythagoreans’, in B.F. Meyer, E.P. Sanders (edd.), Jewish and Christian Self-Definition. Vol. 3: Self-Definition in the Graeco-Roman World (Philadelphia, 1982), 1–22, 183–9. 14 On Orphic writings in Pythagorean circles, see Burkert (n. 9), 125–33; M.L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford, 1983), 7–15. 15 See W.C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement (London, 1935; rev. ed. 1952); P. Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition (Oxford, 1995); A. Bernabé, ‘Platone e l’Orfismo’, in G. Sfameni Gasparro (ed.), Destino e salvezza: tra culti pagani e gnosi cristiana. Itinerari storico-religiosi sulle orme di Ugo Bianchi (Cosenza, 1998), 37–97; id., Platón y el orfismo. Diálogos entre religión y filosofía (Madrid, 2011). For connections between Platonic texts and the ‘Orphic-Bacchic’ gold leaves, see the indices locorum in A. Bernabé and A. Jiménez San Cristóbal, Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets, trans. M. Chase (Leiden, 2008); R.G. Edmonds, Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets (Cambridge, 2004), 51–2, 88–91. On Plato and Pythagoreans, see P.S. Horky, Plato and Pythagoreanism (Oxford, 2013). On mystical terminology in Plato, see C. Riedweg, Mysterienterminologie bei Platon, Philon und Klemens von Alexandrien (Berlin, 1987). 16 See A. Dieterich, Nekyia: Beiträge zur Erklärung der neuentdeckten Petrusapokalypse (Leipzig, 1893; 19132), 122–35. J. Adam, The Republic of Plato. Edited with critical notes, and an introduction on the text (Cambridge, 1897). 17 West (n. 14), 11–13. On Krater, see Kingsley (n. 15), 133–48; M.P. Nilsson, ‘Krater’, HThR 51 (1958), 53–8. On the opposition between Pythagorean and Dionysiac elements in the Bassarides, see R. Seaford, ‘Mystic light in Aeschylus’ Bassarai’, CQ 55 (2005), 602–6, at 605–6.

So Nietzsche, who sees Orphics, Pythagoreans and Plato as ideologically very close, has some justification for making Socrates the inheritor of Orpheus’ quarrel with the god of tragedy. That quarrel, in its Platonic instantiation, is articulated by the structure of Republic 10, which opposes two visions of human existence. Stephen Halliwell has convincingly argued that the critique of tragedy implies a conception of the tragic as a metaphysical vision that depends upon the belief that human suffering is of great significance. This premise, ‘if true, would negate [Plato’s] philosophical enterprise at its roots’.18 The seductiveness of this vision for the weaker parts of the soul is intensified by the power of the musico-poetic vehicle through which it is experienced; hence the need for a counter-charm. This we find in the anti-tragic Myth of Er, whose cosmic viewpoint looks to the possibility of the soul’s final release from human concerns. The myth offers an imaginative vision of Plato’s proposition that the individual’s pursuit of goodness accords with the rational and harmonious order of the cosmos. Halliwell has argued that Plato was the first to articulate a concept of the tragic.19 But the ideological collision in Republic 10 seems to have had an important precursor in Aeschylus’ Bassarides, with Orpheus embodying ideas which resembled those in the Myth of Er. In Aeschylus, Dionysus and tragedy were vindicated. Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy might therefore be interpreted as a correction of Plato’s correction, a reinstatement of Aeschylean tragic poetics as against those of Nietzsche’s ‘Antipodes’, Plato and Socrates. THE LYCURGIA AND THE HELLENISTIC EPITOME OF THE BASSARIDES With these models in mind, let us turn to Aeschylus’ Lycurgia.20 The tetralogy was first performed in the 460s.21 A scholion to Aristophanes (Thesm. 135) gives the titles as follows: Edonoi, Bassarides, Neaniskoi and Lykourgos (the satyr play). It is generally assumed that ps.-Apollodorus (Bibl. 3.5.1) preserves the outline of the tetralogy. The first half of the Edonians was reconstructed by Deichgräber on the basis of Aeschylean fragments and those of Naevius’ Lycurgus. The fragment in Strabo (fr. 57 Radt) describing the exotic instruments of Dionysus’ followers is from the parodos. A scene of confrontation between Lycurgus and the god probably came next, followed 18 S. Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton, 2002), 98. 19 Halliwell (n. 18), 99. 20 The Bassarides/Bassarai (both titles are attested) was named after its chorus of Thracian maenads, wearers of a fox-skin garment called the βασσάρα. Our earliest attestation for Bassarids is Anacreon’s Διόνυσου σαῦλαι Βασσαρίδες (fr. 411 Page/Campbell). For a reference to Bassarids in a recently discovered funerary epigram by Posidippus, see J.N. Bremmer, ‘A Macedonian maenad in Posidippus (AB 44)’, ZPE 155 (2006), 37–40. On the Aeschylean tetralogy, see Welcker (n. 1), 103–22; Hermann (n. 1), 3–30; K. Deichgräber, Die Lykurgie des Aischylos. Versuch einer Wiederherstellung der dionysischen Tetralogie (Göttingen, 1939); D.F. Sutton, ‘Aeschylus’ Edonians’, in Fons Perennis: Saggi critici di filologia classica raccolti in onore del Professore Vittorio D’Agostino (Turin, 1971), 387–411; id., ‘A series of vases illustrating the madness of Lykourgos’, Rivista di studi classici 23 (1975), 351–5; West (n. 2); Di Marco (n. 2); Seaford (n. 17); E. Suárez de la Torre, ‘Apollo and Dionysos: intersections’, in A. Bernabé, M. Herrero de Jáuregui, A. Jiménez San Cristóbal, R. Hernández, R. Martín (edd.), Redefining Dionysus (Berlin, 2013), 58–81; M. Tortorelli Ghidini, ‘Dionysos versus Orpheus?’, in Bernabé et al. (in this note), 144–58. See also J. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1908; 19223), 461; Guthrie (n. 15), 41–8; G. Murray, Aeschylus (Oxford, 1940), 154–9. On the date, see West (n. 2 [1990]), 48–50 and Di Marco (n. 2), 146–8.

by the imprisonment of Dionysus and his entourage. There are obvious parallels with the Bacchae both here and in the earthquake which rocks the palace after the god’s escape (fr. 58). Ps.-Apollodorus recounts the king’s murder of his son, whom, in the grip of madness, he mistook for a vine branch and cut down with an axe.22 The Edonians probably concluded with anagnōrisis and lamentation, like the Bacchae. The expiation of this crime seems to have been the subject of the third play, Youths, whose chorus probably comprised the companions of the murdered boy. As for the Bassarides, there are two manuscript traditions for ps.-Eratosthenes’ epitome. As Martin West has demonstrated, both are ancient; the tradition with greater detail (T and R) was read by the Latin scholiasts who refer to the story. According to this longer version, which West considers Aeschylean,23 Orpheus was an apostate who turned away from his ‘original’ worship of Dionysus and became a devotee of Apollo because of knowledge acquired on his journey to the underworld to fetch his wife.24 Massimo Di Marco, however, has argued plausibly that the supplements in T and R are not Aeschylean but derive from elsewhere in the Orpheus tradition.25 As he points out, the sequence in T and R does not fit well with the chronology of the tetralogy, which treated Dionysus’ arrival in Thrace from Phrygia. If, as their longer version requires, Orpheus is Dionysian in the Edonians, he will need to have lost his wife and made his underworld journey and religious conversion in between the Edonians and the Bassarides. This does not seem plausible. Furthermore, Orpheus was never depicted as an easterner at this stage in the tradition and, hence, cannot have been a member of Dionysus’ Phrygian entourage.26 Given the setting of the Bassarides, it is probable that Aeschylus made Orpheus a Pierian Thracian.27 Orpheus’ ethnicity weighs decisively against the apostate idea and in favour of the shorter version, namely that Orpheus was originally devoted to Apollo, but then was forced to understanding of Dionysus in death. Whether or not his worship of Apollo was connected with knowledge acquired on a katabasis (perhaps for the sake of his wife) remains an open question. The epitome’s statement that Orpheus got up during the night and climbed Mt Pangaeum to greet the sun resembles an ascent following a katabasis.28 For reasons which will become clear as my argument progresses, it seems very possible that Aeschylus should have promoted the heterosexual dimension of Orpheus’ love-life. 22 The theme is illustrated in contemporary vase painting. See Sutton (n. 20 [1975]), 351–5. West (n. 2 [1990]), 39–42. 24 West (n. 2 [1990]), 29 makes Orpheus part of Dionysus’ retinue in the first play. Fr. 60 of the Edonians refers to a mousomantis, whom West takes to be Orpheus. The (corrupt) fragment, however, could also apply to Dionysus—so Deichgräber (n. 20), 251–2—or to Orpheus qua priest of Lycurgus—so Hermann (n. 1), 16–17; Di Marco (n. 2), 131–3. 25 Di Marco (n. 2), 117–24. 26 Di Marco (n. 2), 122. 27 Orpheus’ mother, Calliope, qua Muse, is Pierian. On Orpheus’ father as Apollo or Oeagrus, see n. 11. Thucydides (2.99) says that the Edonians and the Pierians originally lived in Macedonia but were expelled by the Temenid kings into Thrace, where they occupied the territory north and south of Mt Pangaeum. It was only during the period from the mid to the late fifth century that Orpheus acquired Thracian and (still later) Phrygian attributes. On Polygnotus’ mural in the Cnidian Lesche (c. 460 B.C.E.), he was represented as a Greek (Paus. 10.30.6), as in all the early vase paintings (see F. Lissarrague, ‘Orphée mis à mort’, Musica e storia 2 [1994], 269–307, at 273–4). On the complex ethnographic status of Macedonians, see J.M. Hall, ‘Contested ethnicities: perceptions of Macedonia within evolving definitions of Greek identity’, in I. Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 159–86. On the Thracian setting of the drama, see E. Hall (n. 7), 130, 133, 136, 143–4. Cf. Seaford (n. 17).

The surviving fragments are compatible with the scenario sketched in the shorter version of the epitome. Fr. 23 Radt, in which someone refers to a bull on the point of charging, was interpreted by Richard Kannicht as a phantom of Dionysus appearing to Orpheus.29 Kannicht ingeniously combined it with Adesp. 144 N., in which the speaker debates where he should flee. Fr. 23a mentions pine torches on Mt Pangaeum: the women presumably found Orpheus at the end of their night-time revels on the mountain. Fr. 24 apparently refers to the charred remains of an altar, where, perhaps, Orpheus has been conducting his sun-worshipping rites. THE DEATH OF ORPHEUS BEFORE AESCHYLUS The epitome’s statement about Orpheus’ sun-worshipping is followed by a connecting relative (ὅθεν ὁ Διόνυσος ὀργισθείς—‘in consequence of which, Dionysus, being angry’) which clearly refers to the preceding clause.30 Only Aeschylus is credited with making Dionysus responsible for Orpheus’ death and it is likely that both Dionysus’ involvement and the cause of his anger were Aeschylean innovations. Orpheus’ death at the hands of Thracian women was a favourite subject for vase painters. The images first appear c. 490 B.C.E. and proliferate in the period 470–440 B.C.E.31 The story which they depict is not the Aeschylean one: Orpheus’ assailants are never Bassarids or maenads, nor is there dismemberment; the women attack him with traditional weapons and household tools.32 In a fragment of Hellenistic poetry (Phanocles, fr. 1 Powell), Orpheus was killed by the Thracian women because he founded pederasty and ‘did not recommend’ heterosexual love. As I argue elsewhere, of our extant explanations about Orpheus’ death, this is the most compatible with the vase paintings.33 The singer’s death is sometimes combined with scenes in which he performs to an enchanted group of Thracian men.34 Some of these scenes have homoerotic overtones. This is not sufficient, however, to explain the violence of Orpheus’ conflict with women. In Greek culture, homo- and heterosexual erôs are not incompatible, but Phanocles’ Orpheus actively disparages heterosexual love. Women are apparently excluded from Orpheus’ performances on the vase paintings. Antagonism with women is, in fact, a remarkably R. Kannicht, ‘Zu Aesch. Fr. 23 und Trag. Adesp. Fr. 144 N’, Hermes 85 (1957), 285–91. I.M. Linforth, ‘Two notes on the legend of Orpheus’, TAPhA 62 (1931), 5–17 argues that the only definitively Aeschylean part of the hypothesis is the statement that Dionysus sent the Bassarids against Orpheus. This is too sceptical. An earlier theory that the epitome refers to a choral ode is also generally rejected. See West (n. 2 [1990]), 36; Di Marco (n. 2), 126–7. 31 On the vases, see M. Schmidt, ‘Der Tod des Orpheus in Vasendarstellungen aus Schweizer Sammlungen’, in H.P. Eisler and G. Seiterle (edd.), Zur griechischen Kunst 9, AK Suppl. (1973), 95–105; F. Graf, ‘Orpheus: a poet among men’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London, 1987), 80–106; Lissarrague (n. 27), 269–307; M. Garezou (n. 11); B. Cohen, ‘Man killers and their victims: inversions of the heroic ideal in classical art’, in ead., Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art (Leiden, 2000), 98–131; T.J. McNiven, ‘Behaving like an other: telltale gestures in Athenian vase painting’, in Cohen (in this note), 71–97. 32 Lissarrague (n. 27), 277–86. 33 S. Burges Watson, ‘Orpheus’ erotic mysteries: Plato, pederasty, and the Zagreus myth in Phanocles F 1’, BICS 57 (2014), 47–71. 34 e.g. LIMC s.v. ‘Orpheus’ 25–8. LIMC ‘Orpheus’ 26 depicts a (bearded) Thracian man standing defensively between Orpheus (un-bearded) and a Thracian woman, sickle in hand. In a striking scene on a hydria in Boston dating to the 460s (LIMC s.v. ‘Orpheus’ 28), a Thracian man and a boy look on passively as five women attack Orpheus.

stable theme in the traditions about Orpheus.35 In Republic 10, he is vehemently misogynistic, at least after his death. In Euripides’ Hippolytus, Theseus interprets his son’s rejection of Aphrodite as of a piece with his ‘Orphic’ lifestyle (952–4). In the Argonautic story of Orpheus’ contest with the Sirens, he is again pitted against female figures and located in an all-male group on the brink of manhood.36 François Lissarrague has argued plausibly that the vase paintings depict Orpheus’ music-making as a threat to the oikos.37 Orpheus’ death is ignominious and anti-heroic.38 The Thracian men, stereotyped as savage warriors, have abandoned all thoughts of warfare under the spell of Orpheus’ song. The women’s motley array of weapons—spears, rocks, agricultural tools and household implements—highlights the confusion of gender roles. An interesting textual analogue may be found in the Republic’s discussion about preliminary education, in which Socrates contemplates the deleterious effects on the thymos of too much or too little mousikê: softness, on the one hand, and savagery, on the other (Resp. 410b-412b). The passage may well be an implicit commentary on the Orpheus myth, since elsewhere in the Republic (435e) the Thracians epitomize spiritedness. This gendered exploration of mousikê is part of a broader discourse about the tensions between the mousikos and the (democratic) polis, exemplified by texts such as Euripides’ Antiope. In the agôn, Zethus accuses his twin brother Amphion of effeminacy, cowardice and neglecting politics and philoi. In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates envisages his dispute with Callicles as a reconfiguration of the Euripidean debate, with philosophy taking the place of mousikê.39 In Orphic traditions, these tensions are cast in metaphysical terms. The enchantment of mousikê belongs to the realm of transcendence: it is a desire which engages the soul rather than the body, an opportunity to share in the divine. Hence, it represents an alternative to the generative realm and generative erôs. This dualistic Orphic idea is embraced by Plato, who transposes it, replacing the (erôs of) mousikê with philosophy.40 The Symposium characterizes love of women as the vulgar (merely procreative) Aphrodite, whilst celestial homosexuality leads the soul back to where it really wants to be. The most extreme case of the musician’s estrangement from the sublunary world is that of the cicadas’ ancestors, who were so bewitched by music that they forgot to eat and died of starvation. For Plato, however, mousikê without knowledge of the forms is a dead end. By contrast, the true mousikê of philosophical erôs will enable Socrates and Phaedrus to steer past the Sirens in safety (Phdr. 258e–259d). In a Gelan krater dating to the mid fifth century, Orpheus’ head is raised heavenwards as he performs to the enchanted Thracian men.41 One is depicted frontally and has his eyes closed, as if transported to another dimension. Orpheus’ music seems to be represented as yearning for the divine. This idea of mousikê as a transcendent 35 Burges Watson (n. 33); cf. Guthrie (n. 15), 49–50. Cf. Graf (n. 31). 37 Lissarrague (n. 27). 38 See Cohen (n. 31); McNiven (n. 31); F. Jourdan, ‘Orphée est-il véritablement un homme? La réponse grecque: l’efféminé versus l’initiateur des hommes’, LEC 76 (2008), 129–74. 39 Eur. frr. 182b-220 Kannicht, Pl. Grg. 506b, 485e. On Euripides’ representation of the mousikos and its political implications, see P. Wilson, ‘Euripides’ tragic muse’, ICS 24–5 (1999–2000), 427–49. On Plato’s treatment of the subject, see A.H. Hobbs, Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness, and the Impersonal Good (Cambridge, 2000). 40 See Burges Watson (n. 33). LIMC s.v. ‘Orpheus’ 9. In LIMC s.v. ‘Orpheus’ 12 and 22 Orpheus’ head is also raised heavenwards, which Garezou (n. 11), 99 plausibly interprets as a sign of ekstasis.

alternative to erôs belongs to the earliest stratum of Orpheus’ myth. His defeat of the Sirens suggests immunity to female sexual temptation and the ability to transcend mortal limits, since their song is a summons to death. In the story of his katabasis, music again transcends death.42 This evidence suggests that the constellation of music, eschatology and immunity to female sexual temptation was already part of Orpheus’s mythical identity by the early sixth century. AESCHYLEAN INNOVATIONS Mapping the Bassarides onto the alternative version of Orpheus’ death, we find the following correspondences and/or substitutions: 1 2 3 4 Vase Paintings Aeschylus Devotion to mousikê and homoerotic erôs All-male groups, rejection of the generative realm and heterosexual erôs Aggressors = Thracian women Death by weapons/household implements Devotion to Apollo (Helios) Rejection of Dionysus, conflict with maenads Aggressors = Bassarids Death by dismemberment Aeschylus has substituted Dionysus for the generative realm and Apollo for transcendent mousikê (with its homoerotic connotations). Erôs and mousikê are closely related in the dichotomous existential views of singer and god, which result in very different types of ekstasis. One need only think of the perennially aroused satyrs, who will have featured in the final play of the tetralogy, performing their exuberant dances.43 As for the Bassarids, although our earliest extant reference (in Anacreon) refers to their ‘swinging hips’, mythical representations of maenads tend to focus not on their sexuality as such, but rather on their re-connection with nature through miracles of creation and nurture as well as ritually, in mountain-roaming, ecstatic dancing and, notoriously, dismemberment.44 Orpheus’ lyre-singing, on the other hand, does not put his audiences back in touch with their primal energies but tames their savagery away. Indeed, some early vase paintings show satyrs listening to Orpheus’ music in a state of fascinated 42 Cf. C.P. Segal, Orpheus: The Myth of the Poet (Baltimore, 1989). On early representations of satyrs, see T.H. Carpenter, Dionysian Imagery in Archaic Greek Art (Oxford, 1986), ch. 5; C. Isler-Kerényi, Civilizing Violence: Satyrs on 6th-Century Greek Vases (Göttingen, 2004); ead., Dionysus in Archaic Greece: An Understanding through Images (Leiden, 2007). On satyrs more generally, see F. Lissarrague, ‘On the wildness of satyrs,’ in T.H. Carpenter and C.A. Faraone, Masks of Dionysus (Ithaca and London, 1993), 207–20; id., ‘The sexual life of satyrs,’ in D.M. Halperin, J.J. Winkler, F.I. Zeitlin (edd.), Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton, 1990), 53–82. On dance in satyr play, see B. Seidenstecker, ‘Dance in satyr play’, in O. Taplin and R. Wyles (edd.), The Pronomos Vase and its Context (Oxford, 2010), 213–29. 44 On Bassarids, see above, n. 20. On maenads more generally, see A. Henrichs, ‘Greek maenadism from Olympia to Messalina’, HSPh 82 (1978), 121–60; J.N. Bremmer, ‘Greek maenadism reconsidered,’ ZPE 55 (1984), 267–86; Bremmer (n. 20); A.F. Jaccottet, Choisir Dionysos. Les associations dionysiaques ou la face cachée du dionysisme (Zurich, 2003), with further bibliography.

repose.45 Orpheus has no association with dance, nor with the exotic panoply of instruments which the chorus of Edonians describes as inducing terror and frenzy (fr. 57 Radt). Nietzsche speaks of the Apolline mousikos as ‘keeping at bay’ the ‘essence’ of Dionysiac music: ‘the power of its sound to shake us to our very foundations, [the unified stream of melody and the quite incomparable world of harmony]’, which includes not just ‘the mouth … but the full gesture of dance with its rhythmical movement of every limb’.46 Where the presence of Dionysus elicits a breaking out of savage energies and a ritual channelling of those energies into ecstatic dance, the Apolline Orpheus turns to the harmony of the heavens. It is not difficult to see why this transcendent figure should run into conflict with Dionysus. Hyginus (Poet. astr. 2.7 = Orph. 1034T) says that Dionysus sent the maenads against Orpheus while he was sitting on Mt Pangaeum delighting in song. This immediately follows a statement that ps.-Eratosthenes’ account diverges from others in locating Orpheus’ death on Mt Pangaeum. Hyginus seems to be referring to the Aeschylean version. The solitary worshipper of Apollo is dismembered whilst hymning his god as the sun on the summit of Pangaeum. This fits the argument that Aeschylus’ Orpheus had Pythagorean traits. Aeschylus seems to have given the myth a more metaphysical and religious slant, drawing on themes present in the earlier tradition. RITUAL DIMENSIONS OF THE COLLISION BETWEEN ORPHEUS AND DIONYSUS The collision has obvious metatragic implications. But in order to better understand how they were articulated, we need to consider further the ritual dimension of the tragedy. For, Di Marco has plausibly argued that the purpose of Aeschylus’ innovations was to provide an aetiology for Orphic rites. Ps.-Apollodorus juxtaposes Orpheus’ founding of Dionysiac mysteries with his dismemberment and burial in Pieria (Bibl. 1.3.2 = Orph. 501T + 1035T). Damagetus talks of Orpheus’ founding Bacchic mysteries in conjunction with his burial at the Thracian foot of Mt Olympus (Anth. Pal. 7.9 = Orph. 1071T). There is only one story concerning Dionysus with which Orpheus seems to have been connected in the Classical period: that of Dionysus Zagreus, son of Zeus and Persephone, who was dismembered and eaten by man’s ancestors—the Titans.47 LIMC s.v. ‘Orpheus’ 22 (c. 460 B.C.E.), LIMC s.v. ‘Orpheus’ 23–4 (c. 430 B.C.E.). (Trans. R. Speirs) (Cambridge, 1999), 21. The assertion I have bracketed cannot apply to Orpheus and may be one reason why Nietzsche did not engage explicitly with the Bassarides. For an incisive discussion of the evidence about Dionysus and for relevant bibliography, see A. Henrichs’s entry on ‘Dionysus’ in OCD4. On conceptions of Dionysus in literature and scholarship, see A. Henrichs, ‘Loss of self, suffering, violence: the modern view of Dionysus from Nietzsche to Girard’, HSPh 88 (1984), 205–40; id., ‘“He has a god in him”: human and divine in the modern perception of Dionysus’, in Carpenter and Faraone (n. 43), 13–43; and the recent collections by Bernabé et al. (n. 20) and R. Schlesier, A Different God? Dionysos and Ancient Polytheism (Berlin, 2011). 47 On this myth and its relation to ‘Orphism’ in the Classical period, see M. Nilsson, ‘Early Orphism and kindred religious movements’, HThR 28 (1935), 181–230; Linforth (n. 13), 147–56; W. Burkert, ‘Le laminette auree: da Orfeo a Lampone’, in Orfismo in Magna Grecia. Atti del quattordicesimo convegno di studi sulla Magna Grecia (Naples, 1975), 81–104; id., Da Omero ai magi. La tradizione orientale nella cultura greca (Venice, 1999), 59–86; West (n. 14), 15–26, 140–76; F. Graf and S.I. Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (New York, 2007), 50–93; A. Henrichs, ‘Dionysus dismembered and restored to life: the earliest evidence (OF 59 I-II)’, in M. Herrero de Jáuregui, A. Jiménez, E. Luján, R. Martín, M. Santamaría,

As Nietzsche and Proclus noted, Orpheus’ dismemberment is a mirror image of this story.48 Di Marco’s aetiological argument is therefore appealing, but it raises a problem. For, what we know of Orphic-Bacchic mysteries seems every bit as antithetical to the Dionysiac sphere as Orpheus’ celestial music.49 On a ‘bone tablet’ from Olbia (Orph. 463T), the words DIO<NYSOS> and ORPHIK<OI> appear together in connection with the words ‘life/death/life’ and ‘truth’. A second bone tablet (Orph. 465T), if supplemented correctly, seems to equate σῶμα and ψυχή with falsehood and truth respectively.50 The customary values of life and death are inverted, as in the Euripidean fragment quoted by Socrates in the Gorgias (492e) at the start of his discussion about the σῶμα-σῆμα equivalence.51 Two of the so-called Orphic-Bacchic gold leaves contain the remarkable assertion that the initiate has become a god instead of a mortal (Orph. frr. 487–8). In these and two other leaves, the soul declares that it belongs to the race of gods but has been struck by lightning (Orph. frr. 489–90). The soul claims to be pure again, referring to initiation rites. Several of the leaves contain the declaration that the soul is an offspring of Gaia and ‘starry’ Ouranos; some add, ‘but my race is heavenly’ (Orph. frr. 475–7, fr. 484); one (Orph. fr. 477) specifies, ‘my name is Asterios (Starry)’. This seems to be a dualist account of origins, with an astral dimension.52 INTERPRETERS OF THE ZAGREUS MYTH IN PLATO H.J. Rose connected the leaves with the Zagreus myth on the basis of Meno 81b-c.53 Both there and elsewhere in Plato, the myth appears in conjunction with Pythagorean S. Torallas (edd.), Tracing Orpheus: Studies on Orphic Fragments (Berlin, 2011), 61–8; R. Gagné, Ancestral Fault in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 2014), 453–72. R.G. Edmonds III argues that the Zagreus myth is a modern construct: see ‘Tearing apart the Zagreus myth: a few disparaging remarks on Orphism and original sin’, CA 18 (1999), 35–73; and his Redefining Ancient Orphism: A Study in Greek Religion (Cambridge, 2013), 453–72. He is successfully refuted by Henrichs (in this note) and A. Bernabé, ‘La toile de Pénélope: a-t-il existé un mythe orphique sur Dionysos et les Titans?’, RHR 219 (2002), 401–33. 48 Procl. In R. I 174–5 = Orph. 503T. See Di Marco (n. 2), 134 n. 85 and 150–2. Cf. F. Nietzsche, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, trans. G. Whitlock (Urbana, 2000), 11 n. 2 = Excerpts from F. Bornmann and M. Carpitella (edd.), Nietzsche Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 4, part 2 (Berlin, 1995): ‘The name (Orpheus) points to darkness, as well as underworld descent, Orpheus is torn to pieces by the Maenads, Zagreus, by the Titans.’ 49 Cf. J. Harrison (n. 20), ch. 9; Rohde (n. 1), 335–47; E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), 135–56; A. Henrichs, ‘Mystika, Orphika, Dionysiaka: Esoterische Gruppenbildungen, Glaubensinhalte und Verhaltensweisen in der griechischen Religion’, in A. Bierl, W. Braungart (edd.), Gewalt und Opfer. Im Dialog mit Walter Burkert (MythosEikonPoiesis 2) (Berlin, 2010), 87–114. 50 See M.L. West, ‘The Orphics of Olbia’, ZPE 45 (1982), 17–29; L. Zhmud, ‘Orphism and Graffiti from Olbia’, Hermes 120 (1992), 159–68. 51 On the Gorgias passage, see further below, p. 466. Cf. the opening of Orph. frr. 485 and 486. 52 See H.D. Betz, ‘“A child of Earth am I and of starry Heaven”, in R.G. Edmonds III (ed.), The “Orphic” Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path (Cambridge/New York, 2011), 102–19. 53 H.J. Rose, ‘The ancient grief. A study of Pindar, fr. 133 (Bergk), fr. 127 (Bowra)’, in C. Bailey (ed.), Greek Poetry and Life: Essays Presented to Gilbert Murray on his 70th Birthday (Oxford, 1936), 79–96. Rose’s theory has found widespread (if not quite universal) acceptance. See A. Bernabé, ‘Una cita de Píndaro en Platón Men. 81 b (fr. 133 Sn.-M.)’, in J.A. López Férez (ed.), Desde los poemas homéricos hasta la prosa griega del siglo IV d.C. Veintiséis estudios filológicos

ideas.54 In the Meno, Socrates says that wise priests and priestesses interpret the story as teaching reincarnation, and deduce from it the need to live as holy a life as possible. In the Cratylus (400c), Plato attributes to ‘Orpheus and his followers’ the idea that the soul is imprisoned in the body as a penalty for certain crimes. Some of these ‘followers’ connect this idea with the body-as-tomb (σῶμα-σῆμα) doctrine, which, in the Gorgias, is ascribed to a wise man from a Pythagorean environment of eschatological myth-making and allegorizing.55 In the Phaedo, the story of the soul’s imprisonment in the body forms the basis for the philosophical life. It is associated with the mysteries and with the Pythagorean Philolaus’ prohibition against suicide.56 All this suggests that the Orphic/Bacchic doctrines to which Plato refers were derived from the Zagreus myth through allegorical interpretation along Pythagorean lines.57 This interpretation finds support in Plutarch, who says that some verses of Empedocles which preclude the eating of meat refer allegorically to the story of the soul’s imprisonment (De esu carnium 996b-c). He says that with these verses Empedocles means (but does not say directly) that the soul is imprisoned in the body as a punishment for murder, the eating of flesh and cannibalism. But, he says, the doctrine appears to be older than Empedocles, since the story about Dionysus’ sufferings and dismemberment, the Titans’ assault on him, their eating of his flesh and their punishment by the thunderbolt of Zeus are really a ‘riddling’ myth about reincarnation. The disorderly and violent part of us comes not from gods, but from evil spirits, whom the ancients called Titans, meaning those who are punished and paying the penalty. According to the ‘founders of the mysteries’, katharsis is necessary if one is to achieve blessedness in the beyond (Phd. 69c). Aristoxenus (fr. 26 Wehrli) said that the Pythagoreans used music for the purification of the soul. In the Phaedo (69c-d), philosophy is the cathartic agent: as we have seen, it is described by Socrates as a kind of mousikê (60e-61b), his service to Apollo. Strabo (10.3.10) said that, on account of the doctrine of cosmic harmony, the Pythagoreans and Plato used mousikê and philosophy as virtual synonyms. The context of his statement is a discussion of music and mysteries as analogous types of contact with the divine or turning aside from human affairs. In Plato’s Timaeus, a dialogue whose Pythagorean affinities are well known, the individual soul is a microcosm of the world soul; both are composed in accordance (Madrid, 1999), 239–59; Graf and Johnston (n. 47); Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal (n. 15); Edmonds (n. 47). On the Zagreus myth, see above, n. 47. 54 The doctrine of recollection is proved by the demonstration of a slave boy’s ability to resolve a mathematical puzzle. On memory in the gold leaves, see R. Janko, ‘Forgetfulness in the golden tablets of memory’, CQ 34 (1984), 89–100; Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal (n. 15), passim. Scholars have also noted the affinities between the Pindaric quotation and Empedocles, frr. 146–7. On Orphics and Pythagoreans in the Meno passage, see R.S. Bluck’s commentary ad loc. in his volume Plato’s Meno (Cambridge, 1961). 55 Grg. 493a. See E.R. Dodds, Plato Gorgias. A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1959), ad loc.; Burkert (n. 9), 248–9 n. 48; A. Bernabé, ‘Una etimología platónica: sôma-sêma’, Philologus 139 (1995), 204–37; Kingsley (n. 15), 113–14, 116–17, 165–71. 56 Phd. 61e-62c forms an integrated discussion: Philolaus, 61e; mysteries, 62b. Cf. Guthrie (n. 15), 162. C.A. Huffmann, Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic: A Commentary on the Fragments and Testimonia with Interpretive Essays (Cambridge, 1993), 406–9 disagrees, but he considers the passage in isolation from the other Platonic passages discussed here and, like Zhmud (n. 10), sees Orphics and Pythagoreans as strongly differentiated groups. 57 For a more detailed investigation of these Platonic passages with bibliography, see Bernabé (n. 15) and Kingsley (n. 15), 159–71. On the relation between Orpheus, Bacchic mysteries and Pythagoreanism, Burkert’s discussions (n. 13) remain seminal.

with harmonic ratios and music’s purpose is to realign them, resolving any discord in the soul (47d). ORPHEUS AS AN ANTI-DIONYSIAC, ANTI-TRAGIC FIGURE IN THE BASSARIDES As Plato and Nietzsche saw, these ideas are not very compatible with tragedy. One might think along Christian lines in which tragedy’s theme is the vanity of human efforts, and the Orphic consolation is that we must turn away from the world and embrace the god within. This, presumably, is the conclusion that Nietzsche wants to avoid. And he must be right that it is an unlikely denouement for the Bassarides. Why would the Muses have lamented if Orpheus’ soul was being released from its incarnate prison? The vision of men as fallen gods seems an unthinkable resolution to a plot in which Orpheus is dismembered for overvaluing celestial harmony. Nor is it likely that Aeschylus was advocating Pythagorean ideas to his Athenian audience, for whom Orpheus’ most important association was the Eleusinian mysteries, whose founder he was said to be by at least the end of the fifth century.58 Although initiates at Eleusis were promised a blessed afterlife, there was no talk of becoming divine or of reincarnation, let alone vegetarianism, which was contrary to sacrifice, the city’s accustomed mode of communicating with the divine. As Theseus’ contemptuous parody in Euripides’ Hippolytus (952–4) makes clear, such ideas were considered deviant and elitist.59 In the second quarter of the fifth century, the Pythagoreans in Croton suffered purges which ended their dominance in southern Italy.60 It is tempting to see this strife as the immediate political context of the Bassarides. If Orpheus’ connection with Orphic-Bacchic mysteries played a role, it is unlikely that these were its ideological telos. DENOUEMENT OF THE BASSARIDES (1): ORPHEUS’ ORACULAR HEAD How, then, was the conflict between Orpheus and Dionysus resolved? The epitome says that the Muses buried Orpheus in Pieria. Presumably the resolution came from them; above all, from Orpheus’ mother, Calliope. Let us first consider its ritual dimension. Since Orpheus was devoted to Apollo until his death, his connection with Dionysiac 58 In Aristophanes’ Frogs (1032), it is Aeschylus who begins the contest for Dionysus’ affections by referring to Orpheus’ founding of ‘our’ (i.e. Eleusinian) mysteries as his special benefaction. It is attractive to suppose that the tragedian was being credited for his mythical innovation. On Orpheus and Eleusis, see F. Graf, Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit (Berlin, 1974); id., ‘Orfeo, Eleusis y Atenas’, in A. Bernabé and F. Casadesús (edd.), Orfeo y la tradición órfica: un reencuentro (Madrid, 2008), 671–96; A. Bernabé, ‘Orfeo y Eleusis’, Synthesis 15 (2008), 13–36. 59 See M. Detienne, ‘Les chemins de la déviance: orphisme, dionysisme et pythagorisme’, in Orfismo in Magna Grecia. Atti del quattrodicesimo convegno di studi sulla Magna Grecia (Naples, 1975), 49–79. On Pythagoreanism in comedy, see fr. 58E DK and Burkert (n. 9), 199– 202. Aristophanes’ representation of Socrates as an initiator into newfangled mysteries belongs to the same anti-elitist discourse. M. Rashed argues plausibly that Aristophanes’ Socrates has Pythagorean traits: see ‘Aristophanes and the Socrates of the Phaedo’, OSAPh 36 (2009), 107–36. See Burkert (n. 9), 115–17; Kahn (n. 10), 7; Riedweg (n. 10), 104–6. On perceptions of Pythagorean brotherhoods as oligarchic, see Horky (n. 15), 96–124.

rites must have been post-mortem. Scholars have noted that Orpheus’ connection with these rites presupposes the existence of texts in his name. There is therefore good reason to suppose that Orpheus’ oracular head played a role at the end of the trilogy. Several sources refer to a Thracian oracle of Dionysus. The chorus of Euripides’ Alcestis (962– 9) sings of writing tablets in Thrace ‘which the voice of Orpheus wrote down’. Our earliest visual evidence that the head is talking is a spectacular hydria of c. 440 B.C.E. (now in Basel—BS 481 = LIMC s.v. ‘Orpheus’ 68), showing a naked man who consults the head in the presence of six Muses. A late fifth-century cup, now in Cambridge, shows a young boy taking dictation from the head in the presence of Apollo.61 On the reverse, Muses are depicted with a lyre. Linforth suggested that the boy be identified as Musaeus, who is represented as Orpheus’ scribe in several sources and serves to connect Orpheus with the Eleusinian mysteries.62 A hydria of c. 420 B.C.E. shows Apollo pointing at Orpheus’ head with his staff. The scene seems to depict an oracular investiture.63 Muses may, again, be present. As I argue elsewhere, these scenes seem to use the same version of the myth as Aeschylus and may even have been inspired by the Bassarides.64 They raise the possibility of Apollo’s involvement in the tragedy, which seems prima facie likely. An anonymous epigram (Anth. Pal. 7.10 = Orph. 1054.IIT) describes the Pierian Muses lamenting together with Apollo Lyceius at Orpheus’ death. We will return to this in due course. The establishment of a Dionysiac oracle at the end of the Bassarides fits well with the probable plot of the Lycurgia. Ps.-Apollodorus says that after the murder of Dryas (the subject of the first play) a plague afflicted the land of the Edonians and an oracle was sent from Dionysus, saying that fruitfulness would be returned to the land if Lycurgus was punished. So the Edonians took Lycurgus to Mt Pangaeum, where they ‘bound him to the mountain’ (Bibl. 3.5.1). If we accept that these events refer to the Neaniscoi, the Dionysiac oracle will need to have been established previously.65 There is no space in the Edonians for the establishment of an oracle. This leaves the Bassarides. Further clues about the ending of the Bassarides and its relation to the wider trilogy are offered by a scene in the [Euripidean] Rhesus, for which the Lycurgia appears to be LIMC s.v. ‘Orpheus’ 70 = s.v. ‘Apollon’ 872. See Linforth (n. 13), 123–33; Graf (n. 58), 9–22. On Musaeus’ Eleusinian genealogy, see A. Henrichs, ‘Zur Genealogie des Musaios’, ZPE 58 (1985), 1–8. The fact that Herodorus of Heraclea wrote a treatise on the poetry of Orpheus and Musaeus suggests that their writings were closely connected in the late fifth / early fourth century. Pausanias describes Musaeus as ‘copying Orpheus in everything’ (10.7.2). He surely has in mind Musaeus’ poems, all but one of which he ascribed to Onomacritus (1.22.7). The frequent pairing of Orpheus and Musaeus in Plato points in the same direction (Ap. 41a, Resp. 364e, Ion 536b, Prt. 316d); cf. Ar. Ran. 1032–3 and Hippias fr. 86 B 6 DK. 63 LIMC s.v. ‘Orpheus’ 69 = s.v. ‘Mousa/Mousai’ 99. 64 S. Burges Watson, ‘Muses of Lesbos or (Aeschylean) Muses of Pieria? Orpheus’ head on a fifth-century hydria’, GRBS 53 (2013), 441–60. 65 West (n. 2 [1990]) also makes Orpheus deliver the prophecy about Lycurgus’ punishment, but puts this prophecy in the first play. His reconstruction differs from that of other scholars. He plausibly argues that the Bacchae gives a persuasive model for the inclusion of Lycurgus’ accidental murder of Dryas in the Edonians. But he also shifts to the first play the onset of famine after Dryas’ death, the oracle instructing the Edonians to bury Lycurgus alive, the fulfilment of this instruction and the amalgamation of Lycurgus and Dionysus on Mt Pangaeum. This seems too much and leaves nothing from ps.-Apollodorus for the Neaniskoi. It also results in a premature resolution of the conflict between Lycurgus and Dionysus. Since Aeschylus’ tetralogies were always thematically connected and since we are dealing with a Lycurgia, it is probable that its central problem was resolved at the end of the third play, not the first.

the principal model.66 An unnamed Muse obtains post-mortem privileges for her son Rhesus on the grounds that Persephone is obliged to honour ‘the friends of Orpheus’ (965-6). She says that Orpheus, her nephew and Rhesus’ cousin, revealed to Athens her secret mysteries and that Musaeus was trained by Phoebus and the Muses (941– 7). The Muse is apparently referring to Eleusis.67 She says that her son will inhabit a cave under Mt Pangaeum as a ‘man-god’, a prophet of Dionysus (970–3): κρυπτὸς δ’ ἐν ἄντροις τῆς ὑπαργύρου χθονὸς ἀνθρωποδαίμων κείσεται βλέπων φάος, Βάκχου προφήτης, ὅς γε68 Παγγαίου πέτραν ὤικησε, σεμνὸς τοῖσιν εἰδόσιν θεός. He will lie hidden in caverns of the silver-bearing earth, a man-god, looking upon the light; a prophet of Bacchus, who once settled the rock of Pangaeum; a reverend god to those who know his secrets. As scholars have noted, Rhesus’ fate in this passage resembles that of Lycurgus as described in a choral ode of Sophocles’ Antigone for which the Lycurgia is again thought to be the principal model.69 The chorus says that Lycurgus ebbed out his anger, drop by drop, in a rocky prison. Strabo (10.3.16), however, in the same chapter in which he quotes from Aeschylus’ Edonians, refers to a more favourable outcome for Lycurgus—a cultic identification between the king and Dionysus on Mt Pangaeum. Following this lead, West adopts VaL’s reading ὥστε for ὅς γε at Rhesus 972, and argues that Rhesus’ fate is directly compared with that of Lycurgus, whom he envisages installed in a chamber on Pangaeum as Bacchus’ prophet. James Diggle, however, has rejected VaL’s reading on the grounds that there are no definite cases in tragedy of ὥστε with finite verb following its subject.70 He adopts Matthiae’s ὅς γε, making Bacchus the subject of a relative clause which describes his settling on Pangaeum. As Diggle points out, neither Strabo nor Sophocles nor ps.-Apollodorus mentions any oracle of Lycurgus. We may also note that the oracle mentioned in ps.-Apollodorus concerned Lycurgus’ own fate; it cannot, therefore, have been delivered by him qua Βάκχου προφήτης. If we accept Diggle’s arguments, the oracle on Mt Pangaeum was established by Dionysus. Orpheus is an obvious candidate for its first priesthood. An intriguing parallel with the Thracian Zalmoxis lends further support to this view. Zalmoxis’ affinities with Orpheus are well known. Herodotus (4.94–5) says that the Hellespontine Greeks considered Zalmoxis a slave of Pythagoras, and adds that he invited the most prominent men of Thrace to dinner parties, where he gave lessons in immortality and then duped them by disappearing into a cavern.71 Herodotus, however, considers Zalmoxis much older than Pythagoras and reports the Getae’s belief that, rather than dying, they would join their On this passage, see Linforth (n. 13), 60–6; J. Diggle, ‘The prophet of Bacchus: Rhesus 970–3’, SIFC 5 (1987), 167–72 = Euripidea (Oxford, 1994), 320-6; West (n. 2 [1990]), 32; Di Marco (n. 2), 115; A. Feickert, Euripidis Rhesus. Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kommentar (Frankfurt, 2005), ad loc.; V. Liapis, A Commentary on the Rhesus Attributed to Euripides (Oxford/New York, 2012), ad loc. 67 That the Muse is referring to Eleusis is clear from the use of the term μυστήρια: cf. Feickert (n. 66), ad loc., Liapis (n. 66), ad loc. and Graf (n. 58), 29. 68 ὅς γε Matthiae: ὅς τε Q: ὥστε VaL. 69 Soph. Ant. 955–65. See C. Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘The fourth stasimon of Sophocles Antigone’, BICS 36 (1989), 141–65; M. Griffith, Sophocles Antigone (Cambridge, 1999), ad loc. 70 Diggle (n. 66). 71 See Burkert (n. 9), 154–9; Graf (n. 31), 91–2. The similarities between Orpheus and Zalmoxis form part of Dodds’ argument ([n. 49], 144–5) that Orpheus reflected a shamanic background.

daimon Zalmoxis in paradise. In Plato’s Charmides (156d), Socrates says that he has learnt a charm from ‘followers [plural] of Zalmoxis’, who claim to have the ability to make people immortal. Strabo says that Zalmoxis lived in a cave on a holy mountain from which he instructed the king in the gods’ commands (7.3.5). An oracular priesthood connected with knowledge about the afterlife seems a good fit with both the Bassarides and the Rhesus. There seems, therefore, to be a good case that the ending of the Rhesus is alluding to the Muses’ establishment of Orpheus as a post-mortem prophet of Bacchus in Aeschylus’ Bassarides. A secondary reference to the king’s imprisonment—and perhaps a cultic amalgamation between god and king at the end of the trilogy—is also possible. In Aeschylus’ play, Orpheus was probably represented as a priest of the native religion, who, like Zalmoxis, was closely associated with the king.72 As Nietzsche noticed, Lycurgus’ name suggests that, like Orpheus, he too was a kind of surrogate for Apollo Lyceius.73 It is Apollo Lyceius who, in Anth. Pal. 7.10, laments Orpheus’ death together with the Muses.74 That the singer and the king should have suffered parallel fates on Pangaeum in punishment for their opposition to Dionysus seems plausible. This reading also makes sense architecturally: the Bassarides was a microcosm of the larger theological drama. 72 Cf. Deichgräber (n. 20), 283. Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, vol. 7, fr. 7 [122], aphorism 175. Lyceius is a widely dispersed epithet for Apollo, attested from the seventh century. The cult seems to have been important in Pythagoras’ hometown of Metapontum, where the temple of Apollo Lyceius was situated next to the agora. See F. Graf, Apollo (New York, 2009), 121. In the Classical period the epithet Lyceius is connected with wolves, especially in the context of Apollo’s role in warding off hostile invaders. Chantraine analyses the second part of the name Lycurgus as deriving from *wergo = ‘repel’. This points to Apollo’s ‘wolf-slaying’ aspect, which seems to be directed to the protection of the city-flock against the dangerous outsider. Cf. Aesch. Sept. 145, Ag. 1257; Soph. El. 6–7; and see W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley, 1979), 165–6 n. 24. The wolf also serves as a symbol for the outlaw from the Archaic period (e.g. Alc. fr. 130.16–25 L.-P.). See M. Detienne and J. Svenbro, ‘The feast of the wolves, or the impossible city’, in M. Detienne and J.P. Vernant (edd.), The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks, trans. P. Wissing (Chicago, 1989), 148–63; R. Buxton, ‘Wolves and werewolves in Greek thought’, in J.N. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London, 1987), 60–79. In Argos a foundation myth told how, when the Egyptian Danaus, descendant of Zeus and Io, arrived in Argos to claim the kingship, a wolf killed the lead-bull of the local herd. They accepted the omen and replaced their king with the outsider (Pausanias 2.19.3–4). If we consider the Lycurgia in relation to this discourse, we find Dionysus in the role of the ‘Lupine’ outsider, with the ‘Apolline’ Lycurgus as the defender of the city’s laws. Hence, from a ‘lupine’ perspective Apollo and Dionysus emerge as aspects of the same phenomenon. Wolves and Apollo Lyceius are also connected with initiation. This fits well with the Neaniscoi and the Rhesus. Dionysus Bassareus has vulpine rather than lupine connections (see above, n. 20). Zalmoxis, on the other hand, was associated with bear-hide in ancient etymologies. See Rohde (n. 1), 268 n. 10; Graf (n. 31), 91. According to Macrobius (Sat. 1.18.9), Dionysus Bassareus was depicted bearded. These different animals may have referred to different initiatory phases. Interesting in this regard is the reference to Apollo Lyceius on a sixth-century B.C.E. bone tablet from Olbia. See L. Dubois, Inscriptions grecques dialectales d’Olbia du Pont (Geneva, 1996), no. 93; W. Burkert, ‘Olbia and Apollo of Didyma: a new oracle text’, in J. Solomon (ed.), Apollo: Origins and Influences (Tucson, 1994), 49–60. On the initiatory aspects of Apollo Lyceius, see M. Jameson, ‘Apollo Lykeios in Athens’, Archaiognosia 1 (1980), 213–36; L. Gernet, ‘Dolon le loup’, Mélanges Franz Cumont. Annuaire de l’institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales et slaves 4 (1936), 189– 208; W. Burkert, ‘Apellai und Apollon’, RhM 118 (1975), 1–21. 74 On this epigram, see the helpful discussion of B. Scherer, ‘Der Tod des Zauberers: die Orpheus-Epigramme in der Anthologia Palatina’, in M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit, G.C. Wakker (edd.), Hellenistic Epigrams (Groningen, 2002), 175–200.

DENOUEMENT OF THE BASSARIDES (2): A SOLAR SYNTHESIS OF APOLLO AND DIONYSUS It is probable, then, that at the end of the Bassarides, Orpheus’ head was established as an oracle of Bacchus in a cave on Mt Pangaeum. The Rhesus passage and the close relation between the Eleusinian Musaeus and Orpheus’ oracular head suggest that this oracle situated Orpheus and his rites within a wider Eleusinian context, perhaps as founder of the Eleusinian mysteries. A final, fascinating Aeschylean fragment seems also to point beyond esoteric Orphic rites, this time to Delphi. Macrobius (Sat. 1.18.6), quoting an unidentified fragment (fr. 341 Radt), tells us that Aeschylus identified Apollo and Dionysus: ὁ κισσεὺς Ἀπόλλων, ὁ βακχειόμαντις75 Apollo in ivy, the Bacchic prophet Nauck and Wilamowitz assigned the fragment to the Bassarides because of the bacchiacs.76 Macrobius introduces the quotation as part of a demonstration that Mt Parnassus is sacred to one and the same god, Apollo-Dionysus, whom he later identifies with the sun. The fragment appears to have a single subject, to which two nouns serve as predicates, the second in apposition to the first. Although the text is uncertain, all plausible readings point either to an amalgamation or exchange of attributes or, more strongly, to Macrobius’ interpretation of a synthesis between Apollo and Dionysus. Our earliest secure evidence for the identification of Apollo with Dionysus at Delphi is Philodamus’ Paean to Dionysus in the fourth century. A late fifth-century vase painting shows Apollo and Dionysus shaking hands over the Delphic tripod.77 All three tragedians refer to Dionysus’ Delphian connection.78 But Macrobius’ statement is our only evidence for a synthesis at the time of Aeschylus. Can there be any substance to it? Macrobius begins his chapter by saying that the identity of Apollo and Liber (Dionysus) has been made ‘with many other arguments’ by Aristoteles qui theologoumena scripsit,79 with one argument being that the ‘Ligyreans’ in Thrace have a shrine of Liber from which oracles are given (Macrob. Sat. 1.18.1). Macrobius says that the Boeotians worship Dionysus and Apollo as a single god in Delphi and describes the 75 βακχςειόμαντιEllis, Wilamowitz: ΒΑΧΙΟΣΟΜΑΝΤΙΣ F: ΒΑΚΣΙΟΣΟΜΑΝΤΙΣ BVZ: ΚΑΒΑΙΟΣΟΜΑΝΤΙΣ NDP ΒΑ R: βακχεύς, ὁ μάντις Nauck. 76 These also occur in fr. 23, quoted by the metrician Hephaestion as a rare example of consecutive bacchiacs and identified by the metrician Choeroboscus as coming from the Bassarides. 77 LIMC s.v. ‘Apollo’ 768a. 78 See W. Burkert, Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche (Die Religionen der Menschheit 15) (Stuttgart, 1977) = Greek Religion, trans. J. Raffan (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 224. 79 The identity of this Aristotle has not been established. Macrobius also refers to two Latin authors from the first century B.C.E. (Varro and Granius Flaccus) before the first of his three quotations from tragedy. When, later in the chapter, he quotes Orphic verses identifying Dionysus with the sun, he cites a work of Cornelius Labeo, a third-century Neoplatonist theologian, entitled On the Oracle of Apollo of Claros. He says that Labeo developed an interpretation identifying Liber and the sun as Iao. Arnobius also cites both Aristotle the theologian and Granius Flaccus for the same doctrine. P. Mastandrea, Un neoplatonico latino. Cornelio Labeone: testimonianze e frammenti (Leiden, 1979) argues that Labeo is the common source of Arnobius and much of Macrobius’ Sat. 1.17. For the identification of Dionysus and Apollo, Macrobius also refers to his arguments from the previous chapter that Apollo is the sun. There, in the discussion about Apollo’s title ‘Ieios’ and the address ‘Ie Paian’, he quoted Apollodorus of Athens. Like Labeo, Apollodorus had a special interest in divine syncretisms; he may be Macrobius’ ultimate source.

cult of Bacchus on Mt Parnassus. Immediately before the Aeschylean quotation, he adduces a verse from Euripides’ Licymnius, which he takes to be equivalent to the idea in Aeschylus (ad eandem sententiam Aeschylus …). There can be no doubt that the two gods are identified in the Euripidean verse.80 Later in chapter 18, drawing on his proof (in chapter 17) that Apollo is the sun, Macrobius presents proofs that Apollo and Dionysus are the same and that both of them are the sun. These proofs show striking correspondences with the Bassarides. Macrobius mentions a mystical doctrine according to which the sun is called Apollo by day and Dionysus by night; he also compares statues showing Dionysus at different ages which he equates with different stages of the sun’s development. When bearded, he says, the god is called Bassareus. Citing Alexander Polyhistor (FGrHist 273 fr. 103), Macrobius says that in Thrace the sun is identified with Dionysus and worshipped as Sebazius ( = Sabazius) in a temple on Mt Zilmissus81 whose shape represents the sun. He then quotes Orphic verses (Orph. frr. 538–45) equating Dionysus/Phanes with the sun. One of these verses is quoted by Diodorus Siculus (1.11.3) in conjunction with a verse from ‘epic poetry concerning Bacchus’ by Eumolpus. Together they form part of a demonstration that the Greeks equated Dionysus with Osiris, who, in turn, was identified with the sun. Diodorus’ source here is generally agreed to be Hecataeus of Abdera, who takes us back to the fourth century B.C.E. The doctrines to which Macrobius refers have other antecedents which date back to the Classical period.82 In Euripides’ Phaethon (224–6), the equation of Apollo and Helios is ascribed to ‘those who know the hidden names of things’. This sounds like a mystical and/or Pythagorean environment.83 Sophocles (Tereus, fr. 582 Radt) makes the sun the principle god of the Thracians and, elsewhere (fr. 752 Radt), ascribes to sophoi the doctrine that the sun is the father of all things. Plato’s Cratylus (405c-d) seems to indicate that the Pythagoreans worshipped Apollo as the symbol of cosmic harmony.84 The Thracians in Macrobius, on the other hand, equate Dionysus with the sun, a doctrine which we may now suppose that Orpheus learnt in the course of his fateful encounter with the Bassarids. In the hymn to Dionysus in Sophocles’ Antigone (1116–52), the god is invoked as Lord of Italy and Eleusis, and is called ‘chorus-leader of the fiery stars’ in connection with the maenadic rituals on Mt Parnassus.85 In Philodamus’ paean to the mixtum numen of Apollo and Dionysus, Apollo orders the fashioning of a statue of Bacchus which is like the rays of the rising sun (strophe 11).86 This was not Philodamus’ invention. δέσποτα φιλόδαφνε βάκχε, παιὰν Ἄπολλον εὔλυρε = fr. 477 Kannicht. The name bears an obvious resemblance to Zalmoxis but our knowledge of Thracian is too defective for any reliable conclusions to be drawn from this. Robert Kaster notes (on Macr. Sat. 1.18.11) that ‘the cult title Zylmydr(i)ênos is found on inscriptions dedicated to Asclepius in Thrace’, which brings to mind the Orphic tablets mentioned in the Alcestis (p. 468, above). 82 On this (and later) evidence cf. Seaford (n. 17). 83 Cf. J. Diggle, Euripides Phaethon (Cambridge, 1970), ad loc. 84 See above, p. 457. 85 On astral imagery in the Eleusinian mysteries, see E. Csapo, ‘Star choruses: Eleusis, Orphism, and new musical imagery and dance’, in M. Revermann and P. Wilson (edd.), Performance, Iconography, Reception: Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin (Oxford, 2008), 262–90. Cf. A. Hardie, ‘Muses and mysteries’, in P. Murray and P. Wilson (edd.), Music and the Muses: The Culture of ‘Mousikê’ in the Classical Athenian City (Oxford, 2004), 11–37. 86 Cf. Eur. Ion 1074–80. On Philodamus, see B.R. Lee, ‘Philodamus’ Paean to Dionysus: a Literary Expression of Delphic Propaganda’ (Diss., University of Illinois, 1975); L. Käppel, Paian: Studien zur

We may also recall Plutarch’s reference, in De sera numinis uindicta (566c), to an Orphic poem in which Night and Apollo share the Delphic oracle (above, p. 458). For this, the Derveni papyrus offers an intriguing comparandum. The commentator refers to his own activities in a prophetic shrine. In the Orphic poem which he quotes, the first-born goddess, Night, is also a prophetess, who instructs Zeus to swallow the generative principle of the universe—either the first-born god, known as Phanes in later Orphic mythology (cf. Orphic Argonautica 14–16), or the phallus of Ouranos (the text is corrupt). After doing this, Zeus gives birth to the cosmos a second time by way of his mind. This is the most important event of the poem as we know it, since it resolves the question of Zeus’ primacy. The Derveni author interprets the phallus allegorically as the sun (col. 11). He sees Night’s advice as an illustration of her role in maintaining the balance of the cosmos by cooling and solidifying that which the sun warms. Night’s shrine is read in opposition to the setting sun (ἄδυτον = a-dyton, ‘unsetting’). In view of the evidence under consideration, it does not seem implausible to suppose that the prophetic shrine in question is Delphi.87 It seems likely, then, that the Bassarides concluded with a solar synthesis between Apollo and Dionysus which served as an aetiology for their union at Delphi. How did Orpheus fit in? Callimachus and Euphorion knew a version of the Zagreus myth in which Dionysus’ limbs were given to Apollo, who placed them beside the Delphic tripod.88 In a passage whose language recalls Herodotus’ reference to Orphic and Bacchic rites as being ‘in reality Egyptian and Pythagorean’ (2.81), Plutarch, himself a priest of Delphi, maps Dionysiac rites onto those of Osiris, and connects the dismemberment story with a secret sacrifice made by the hosioi in the temple of Apollo, ‘when the Thyiades wake up Dionysus Liknites’.89 As we have seen, Plutarch seems to have known one (Pythagorean) interpretation of the Zagreus myth, in which it served as an allegory for reincarnation.90 Remarkably, in the De E (388e-389b), Plutarch gives a second allegorical interpretation of the myth, in which the dismemberment and resurrection of Dionysus through the agency of Apollo is explained as a cosmic alternation between unity (Apollo/fire) and multiplicity (Dionysus). For Nietzsche (Birth of Tragedy, ch. 10), this second interpretation of the Zagreus myth is ‘the doctrine of the [Eleusinian] Mysteries taught by tragedy: the fundamental recognition that everything which exists is a unity; the view that individuation is the primal source of all evil; and art as the joyous hope that the spell of individuation can be broken’ (52–3). He considers the reconciliation between Dionysus and Apollo at Delphi ‘the most important event in the history of Greek religion’. Geschichte einer Gattung (Berlin, 1992), 207–90; J. Strauss-Clay, ‘Fusing the boundaries: Apollo and Dionysos at Delphi’, Metis 11 (1996), 83–100. 87 For the argument that the Derveni author is a religious practitioner, see D. Obbink, ‘Cosmology as initiation vs. the critique of Orphic mysteries’, in A. Laks and G.W. Most (edd.), Studies on the Derveni Papyrus (Oxford, 1997), 39–54; G. Betegh, The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation (Cambridge, 2004). Contra: R. Janko, ‘The physicist as hierophant: Aristophanes, Socrates, and the authorship of the Derveni papyrus’, ZPE 118 (1997), 61–94; id., ‘The Derveni papyrus (Diagoras of Melos, Apopyrgizontes Logoi?): a new translation’, CPh 96 (2001), 1–32. 88 Orph. 36V = Callim. fr. 643 Pf.; Philochorus (fourth century B.C.E.) said that the locals showed the remains of Dionysus at Delphi (FGrHist 328 fr. 7a). 89 De Is. et Os. 364f = (in part) Orph. 613T: ὁμολογεῖ δὲ καὶ τὰ Τιτανικὰ καὶ Νυκτέλια τοῖς λεγομένοις Ὀσίριδος διασπασμοῖς καὶ ταῖς ἀναβιώσεσι καὶ παλιγγενεσίαις. The language and syntax of the opening sentence echoes the longer version of the sentence about Orphic rites at Hdt. 2.81 (cf. n. 13, above) and may be Plutarch’s way of indicating that he is explaining the historian. Above, p. 466.

Orpheus’ dismemberment and burial by the Muses mirrors Dionysus’ fate at the hands of the Titans and the gathering of his limbs by Apollo. Aeschylus’ remodelling of the story of his death provides a fitting aetiology for his connection to Dionysiac mysteries (qua prophet of Bacchus) as ‘author’ of the Zagreus myth. Since the doctrine of reincarnation seems to have been derived allegorically from the myth, there is no need to suppose that it was foregrounded in Aeschylus’ play. In the Bassarides, the reconciliation between Orpheus and Dionysus situated the singer within a broader mystical context, which was both Eleusinian and Delphian. In Aeschylus’ reconfiguration of the myth, Orpheus’ previously ignominious death became a collision between opposing metaphysical and theological poles, whose reconciliation marked the beginnings of the most sacred institutions in Greek religious life. This proposed reconstruction of the Bassarides finds further support from an intriguing intertext in Book 2 of Apollonius’ Argonautica.91 Apollo appears to the heroes in a solar epiphany, whilst on his way to the Hyperboreans. In Delphic mythology, it was during Apollo’s stay with the Hyperboreans that Dionysus presided over the oracle. Orpheus orders the crew to name the island after Apollo ‘of the Dawn’. There is no parallel besides Aeschylus to explain this cult title. Orpheus hymns the god with a version of the Delphian Hymn to Apollo, and the Argonauts found a cult of Homonoia in conjunction with Apollo’s gift of concord through mousikê. Apollo’s locks are described as βοτρυόεντες (2.677). The word is normally used of clustering grapes and, hence, is ideally suited to ὁ κισσεὺς Ἀπόλλων, ὁ βακχειόμαντις. The epiphany takes place at a time called ἀμφιλύκη (2.671). Just as the word ὀρφναίη (2.670) points to darkness and Orpheus’ underworld connections, so ἀμφιλύκη underscores the solar connotations of Apollo Lyceius.92 RESOLUTION OF THE MUSICAL CONFLICT: AN AETIOLOGY FOR TRAGEDY The evidence so far would lead us to expect a corresponding denouement to the musical collision between Orpheus and Dionysus which made sense in terms of tragedy. The revels of the Bassarids on Mt Pangaeum are an obvious precursor of the trietêris in which the Delphic maenads danced on Mt Parnassus and to which Athens sent a delegation of maenads.93 Macrobius may provide further clues. Deichgräber and Wilamowitz gave Macrobius’ quotation to the Bassarids on the grounds of the bacchiac metre. But the Muses may also have sung in bacchiacs. In the choral ode from the Antigone discussed above, Lycurgus is said to have provoked the φιλαύλους … Μούσας (965). The aulos belongs to the sphere of Dionysus rather than to that of Apollo.94 As we have seen, in Anth. Pal. 7.10, Apollo Lyceius mourns Orpheus with the Muses; this seems to be a reference to the Bassarides. But it is likely that Aeschylus cast the reconciliation between Apollo and Dionysus in musical as well as 91 2.669–719. On this passage, see R. Hunter, ‘Apollo and the Argonauts: two notes on Ap. Rhod. 2, 669–719’, MH 43 (1986), 50–60. 92 The scholia connect the epithet with light and with wolves. On the role of Apollo Lyceius in the Lycurgia, see above, n. 73. Cf. the third-century Olbian inscription: Βίος-Βίος, Ἀπόλλων-Ἀπόλλων, Ἥλιο̣[ς]-Ἥλιος, Κόσμος-Κ[όσ]μος, Φῶς-Φῶς (Orph. 537V = Dubois [n. 73], no. 95). 93 See Henrichs (n. 44), 152–5; C. Sourvinou-Inwood, Hylas, the Nymphs, Dionysos and Others: Myth, Ritual, Ethnicity: Martin P. Nilsson Lecture on Greek Religion (Stockholm, 2005). On the opposition, see P. Wilson, ‘Athenian strings’, in P. Murray and P. Wilson (n. 85),

in theological terms. Philodamus’ Paean recounts how the Muses in Pieria formed the dance of Dionysus under Apollo’s lead (53–62). The fourth-century temple at Delphi showed Dionysus as an Apolline lyre-player with maenads on the west pediment. Apollo and the Muses appeared on the east pediment.95 It seems probable that the Bassarides also drew attention to the opposition between Muses and maenads, and closed with an exchange of attributes between them. This may well have been reflected in the metre. The Muses, after all, are not accustomed to lamentation. They are compelled to use music as a solace for grief because of their involvement with the mortal sphere. Their lament counterbalances Orpheus’ vision of mousikê as a vehicle for accessing the divine realm to which the soul, in ‘Orphic’ doctrine, ultimately belongs. As Nietzsche realized, it is an assertion of tragic aesthetics in Pieria, a musical aetiology, whose positive Dionysian counterpart is the ecstatic celebration of life in the mountain dances of the Delphic maenads. CONCLUSIONS I began by suggesting that the ideological conflict between tragedy and transcendence dramatized in Republic Book 10 had an important precursor in Aeschylus’ Bassarides, whose ‘ideology’ Nietzsche reasserted, rejecting Platonic metaphysics in favour of tragedy. Noting the well-established convergences between things Orphic and Pythagorean, I took as my starting point the earliest representations of Orpheus’ death in vase paintings, arguing that, already at this stage, his conflict with women was due to his turning aside from worldly affairs through mousikê. Noting the deviations of Aeschylus’ version of Orpheus’ death from the earlier story and taking up Proclus’ and Di Marco’s observation that Orpheus’ death (in Aeschylus) mirrored that of Dionysus Zagreus, I suggested that Aeschylus reconfigured the myth as a conflict between Orpheus and Dionysus in terms of mousikê and mysteries. In attempting to ascertain how Aeschylus resolved the conflict, I first explored evidence in ps.-Euripides’ Rhesus and elsewhere that the singer was established as an ultimately Eleusinian prophet of Bacchus. I then suggested, on the basis of Aeschylus fr. 341 Radt, that the mysteries established in the Bassarides resolved the conflict between these competing world-views by way of a synthesis between Apollo and Dionysus (in solar form) at Delphi, celebrated at the trietêris. Orpheus was to be known as founder of the mysteries by way of the Zagreus myth, which served as an underpinning for the Apollo-Dionysus synthesis, but did not imply the doctrine of reincarnation, since this was extracted from it by Pythagorean allegorizing. Rather, Dionysus was to be celebrated in the biennial mountain-roaming of Athenian and Delphian maenads on Mt Parnassus. On the side of mousikê, I argued that Orpheus’ dismemberment and the lamentation of the Muses served as an aetiology for the genre of tragedy, which vindicated its inescapably human perspective.96 SARAH BURGES WATSON sarahebwatson@gmail.com 95 See J.M. Barringer, Art, Myth, and Ritual in Classical Greece (Cambridge, 2008), 159–70. Philodamus’ paean seems to have been commissioned at the same time as the building of the temple. Warm thanks to Kathy Coleman, Albert Henrichs, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Philip Horky, Richard Hunter, Richard Janko, Joshua Katz and Gregory Nagy for their comments on this paper.

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