A CURIOUS CONCOCTION: TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN OLYMPIODORUS’ “ORPHIC” CREATION OF MANKIND Radcliffe G. edmonds iii

Olympiodorus’ Commentary on Plato’s Phaedo I.3–6 has been the linchpin of the reconstructions of the supposed Orphic doctrine of original sin. While Olympiodorus links the Titans’ dismemberment of Dionysus and anthropogony, he does not include any element of inherited guilt, either in his narration of the myth or in his interpretation. Moreover, his telling of the myth, which makes the anthropogony the sequel to the dismemberment of Dionysus, is an innovation made for the purposes of his own argument. Rather than preserving in fossilized form a sacred myth more than a millennium old, Olympiodorus concocts an innovative tale of his own. olympiodoRus’ RecountinG (In Plat. Phaed. i.3–6) of the Titans’ dismemberment of Dionysus and the subsequent creation of humankind has served for over a century as the linchpin of the reconstructions of the supposed Orphic doctrine of original sin. From Comparetti’s first statement of the idea in his 1879 discussion of the gold tablets from Thurii, Olympiodorus’ brief testimony has been the only piece of evidence to pull together the threads of the Zagreus myth, linking the dismemberment of Dionysus with the creation of human beings.1 Scholars have repeatedly argued that Olympiodorus preserves the only complete version of the story, which exists elsewhere only in fragments or allusions.2 These fragments, it is argued, must be restored by supplying the missing threads from Olympiodorus’ story, which, despite the late sixth century c.e. date and peculiar biases of the author as a pagan Neoplatonist scholar (and possibly alchemist) in a Christian era, nevertheless preserves essentially 512 RADCLIFFE G. EDMONDS III 3 Brisson 1987, 1990, and 1992 (all reprinted in Brisson 1995). 4 Contra Bernabé 2002a, 423, who insists that, at least for the Zagreus myth, the various authors of the tale could only alter their interpretations, not any of the structural components: “Comme il arrive avec la plupart des mythes en général, les différents auteurs qui rapportent ce mythe puisent chacun à son gré dans différents éléments du paradigme, mais ils n’ajoutent jamais des éléments incompatibles avec le schéma retracé à l’intérieur de la structure narrative (ils peuvent le faire, par contre, dans l’interprétation, ce qui est tout autre chose).” Cf. Bernabé 1999 and 2002b. unchanged the central Orphic myth that dates from the sixth century b.c.e. Building on the studies of Proclus, Damascius, and Olympiodorus by Brisson, I want to show first that, while Olympiodorus does indeed link the dismemberment and the anthropogony, he does not include any element of inherited guilt, either in his narration of the myth or in his interpretation.3 Moreover, his telling of the myth, which makes the anthropogony the sequel to the dismemberment of Dionysus, is an innovation made for the purposes of his own argument. Rather than preserving in fossilized form a sacred myth more than a millennium old, Olympiodorus concocts an innovative tale of his own, manipulating a variety of sources that describe the dismemberment of Dionysus, as well as other sources that recount the punishment of the Titans for their rebellion in the Titanomachy and the subsequent creation of new races from them. Olympiodorus’ sources include not only poetic treatments of the subjects but also allegorical readings of the myths, especially those by his predecessors, Proclus and Damascius. Olympiodorus’ narration of the dismemberment of Dionysus is not the key witness to a lost, secret tradition that prefigures the Christian doctrine of original sin but rather a colorful example of a late antique Neoplatonic philosopher’s manipulation of the Greek mythic tradition. In this tradition, the interpretation of the myth cannot be kept separate from the way the narrative is recounted, since the author retelling a traditional tale always adapts the details of the story to fit the ideas he is trying to convey and the audience to which he is recounting the tale.4 In this process of bricolage (to borrow the term from Lévi-Strauss), the author strives to render his version authoritative for his audience by engaging with previous versions of the tale, especially the best known or most authoritative renditions. Olympiodorus adopts many of the same gambits used by earlier tellers of myth in the Greek tradition (including Plato), concealing his own innovations by starting with references to previous versions and then diverging from the earlier accounts. Olympiodorus crafts his myth to argue for a conclusion surprising for a Neoplatonist, that suicide is forbidden because the body contains divine elements. Olympiodorus’ 513 OLYMPIODORUS’ “ORPHIC” CREATION OF MANKIND 5 References to Orphic Fragments refer to the edition of Kern 1922 (OFK) or Bernabé 2004 (OFB). Translations from Olympiodorus and Damascius are my adaptations of Westerink. Other translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. mythic innovations allow him to provide a new and startling explanation of a crux in the Phaedo that Damascius and Proclus had tried to explain earlier. By drawing on these previous interpretations to provide a better and more authoritative version of the myth, Olympiodorus is engaging in the same kind of agonistic myth-telling that is characteristic of the Greek mythic tradition from the earliest evidence. Olympiodorus is not pedantically preserving an ancient Orphic myth; he is rather making use of the authority of Orpheus among the Neoplatonists to support his own philosophical ideas, concocting a curious new version of the traditional tale of the dismemberment of Dionysus to explain Socrates’ puzzling prohibition of suicide. Rather than treating it as an isolated Orphic fragment, we must understand Olympiodorus’ recounting and interpretation of the story in the context of the argument he is making as well as in the context of his Neoplatonic interpretive tradition. The text comes from Olympiodorus’ commentary on the Phaedo of Plato, in his explanation of Socrates’ puzzling prohibition of suicide. In addition to his own argument against suicide (I.2), Olympiodorus claims that the text itself contains two proofs, a mythical and Orphic argument and a philosophic and dialectic one (Olympiodorus In Phaed. I.3 = OF 220K = 227iv + 299vii + 304i + 313ii + 318iii + 320iB): Καὶ ἔστι τὸ μυθικὸν ἐπιχείρημα τοιοῦτον· παρὰ τῷ Ὀρφεῖ τέσσαρες βασιλεῖαι παραδίδονται. πρώτη μὲν ἡ τοῦ Οὐρανοῦ, ἣν ὁ Κρόνος διεδέξατο ἐκτεμὼν τὰ αἰδοῖα τοῦ πατρός· μετὰ δὲ τὸν Κρόνον ὁ Ζεὺς ἐβασίλευσεν καταταρταρώσας τὸν πατέρα· εἶτα τὸν Δία διεδέξατο ὁ Διόνυσος, ὅν φασι κατ’ ἐπιβουλὴν τῆς Ἥρας τοὺς περὶ αὐτὸν Τιτᾶνας σπαράττειν καὶ τῶν σαρκῶν αὐτοῦ ἀπογεύεσθαι. καὶ τούτους ὀργισθεὶς ὁ Ζεὺς ἐκεραύνωσε, καὶ ἐκ τῆς αἰθάλης τῶν ἀτμῶν τῶν ἀναδοθέντων ἐξ αὐτῶν ὕλης γενομένης γενέσθαι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. οὐ δεῖ οὖν ἐξάγειν ἡμᾶς ἑαυτούς, οὐχ ὅτι, ὡς δοκεῖ λέγειν ἡ λέξις, διότι ἔν τινι δεσμῷ ἐσμεν τῷ σώματι (τοῦτο γὰρ δῆλόν ἐστι, καὶ οὐκ ἂν τοῦτο ἀπόρρητον ἔλεγεν), ἀλλ’ ὅτι οὐ δεῖ ἐξάγειν ἡμᾶς ἑαυτοὺς ὡς τοῦ σώματος ἡμῶν Διονυσιακοῦ ὄντος· μέρος γὰρ αὐτοῦ ἐσμεν, εἴ γε ἐκ τῆς αἰθάλης τῶν Τιτάνων συγκείμεθα γευσαμένων τῶν σαρκῶν τούτου.5 And the mythical argument is as such: four reigns are told of in the Orphic tradition. The first is that of Uranus, to which Cronus succeeds after cutting off the genitals of his father. After Cronus, Zeus becomes king, having hurled his father down into Tartarus. Then Dionysus succeeds Zeus. Through the 514 RADCLIFFE G. EDMONDS III 6 See Westerink 1976 on Olympiodorus’ dependence on Damascius, as well as Damascius’ connection with Proclus’ lost commentary. Cf. Brisson 1990. 7 As Linforth 1941, 350, notes, “It is a curious thing that nowhere else, early or late, is it said or even expressly implied that guilt descended to men in consequence of scheme of Hera, they say, his retainers, the Titans, tear him to pieces and eat his flesh. Zeus, angered by the deed, blasts them with his thunderbolts, and from the sublimate of the vapors that rise from them comes the matter from which men are created. Therefore we must not kill ourselves, not because, as the text appears to say, we are in the body as a kind of shackle (φρουρά), for that is obvious, and Socrates would not call this a mystery; but we must not kill ourselves because our bodies are Dionysiac; we are, in fact, a part of him, if indeed we come about from the sublimate of the Titans who ate his flesh. As so often in Plato and Plutarch, a myth is used to provide traditional authority for a philosophical argument, and the meaning of the myth, properly interpreted, is the same as the conclusion of the dialectic. Olympiodorus insists that the allegorical meaning (ἡ τοῦ μύθου ἀλληγορία) must be uncovered in order to understand Socrates’ reference to the esoteric tradition, dismissing as too obvious the possibility that the φρουρά is simply the shackle of the body. While Olympiodorus draws heavily on the commentaries of Damascius and Proclus,6 he nevertheless must make a contribution of his own to the scholarship, finding new levels of meaning in the traditional story. Of course, to find the meaning he wants, he carefully selects and manipulates the details he provides of the traditional myth. Olympiodorus concludes the narration of the myth at the end of the quoted passage, and it is important to note that the myth he relates does not contain the narrative element of a burden of inherited guilt passed on to mankind. In Olympiodorus’ story, mankind receives its material from the Titans who cannibalized Dionysus; human bodies thus include an element of the god. The story begins with the kingship in heaven passing through four cosmic reigns: Uranus, Cronus, Zeus, and Dionysus. Uranus is castrated by Cronus; Cronus is sent to Tartarus by Zeus; Zeus hands over the throne to Dionysus. Hera is angry and incites the Titans to murder and cannibalism. Zeus blasts the Titans with lightning and humans are created from the particles that precipitate out of the smoke (ἐκ τῆς αἰθάλης τῶν ἀτμῶν) that rises from the blasted Titans. The idea that human beings inherited a burden of guilt, be it péché antécédent or original sin, from these Titans is not part of the story as Olympiodorus tells it but has been read into his story by commentators since Comparetti.7 515 OLYMPIODORUS’ “ORPHIC” CREATION OF MANKIND the outrage committed upon Dionysus. Even Olympiodorus does not say so.” Using the concept of péché antécédent from Bianchi 1978, Bernabé 2002a extrapolates this episode from the conclusion drawn by the pessimist in Dio Chrys. 30.10, that the gods would automatically bear humans a grudge because of their relation to the Titans who fought against them in the Titanomachy. To be sure, such a combination of elements by bricolage would have been possible for Olympiodorus or some other author, but none of the extant texts actually have it. 8 Olympiodorus In Phaed. I.4–5: οὕτως καὶ παρὰ τῷ Ὀρφεῖ αἱ τέσσαρες βασιλεῖαι αὗται οὐ ποτὲ μέν εἰσι, ποτὲ δὲ οὔ, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ μέν εἰσι, αἰνίττονται δὲ τοὺς διαφόρους βαθμοὺς τῶν ἀρετῶν καθ’ ἃς ἡ ἡμετέρα ψυχὴ ἐνεργεῖ σύμβολα ἔχουσα πασῶν τῶν ἀρετῶν, τῶν τε θεωρητικῶν καὶ καθαρτικῶν καὶ πολιτικῶν καὶ ἠθικῶν (“So, too, these four reigns of Orpheus are not sometimes existent, sometimes non-existent, but they are always there and they represent in mystical language the several degrees of virtues that our soul can practice, having in herself the tokens of all the virtues, contemplative, purificatory, civic, and ethical”). 9 Olympiodorus In Phaed. I.5. Nor does original sin enter into Olympiodorus’ interpretation of the myth’s meaning. Each narrative element of the myth’s vehicle corresponds with an element of meaning in its tenor. The four reigns in the succession of the kingship of heaven correspond to the degrees of virtue a soul can practice. The myth may divide them up in a temporal sequence, but the contemplative, purificatory, civic, and ethical virtues co-exist, and the myth’s temporal sequence represents the hierarchy of their value.8 The dismemberment of Dionysus signifies that the ethical and physical virtues are not necessarily consistent with one another. The Titans represent division and particularity, and their chewing of Dionysus is the ultimate degree of breaking down the unity into little particles. Hera provides the motivation for this process of division: κατ’ ἐπιβουλὴν δὲ τῆς Ἥρας, διότι κινήσεως ἔφορος ἡ θεὸς καὶ προόδου· διὸ καὶ συνεχῶς ἐν τῇ Ἰλιάδι ἐξανίστησιν αὕτη καὶ διεγείρει τὸν Δία εἰς πρόνοιαν τῶν δευτέρων (“it is by the plan of Hera, since she is the patron deity of motion and procession; hence it is she who, in the Iliad, is continually stirring up Zeus and stimulating him to providential care of secondary existents”).9 The lightning of Zeus signifies the reversion of the divided pieces back to the whole, since fire has an upwards motion. Dionysus is the patron of genesis, of the movement into life as well as back out of it, and so this divine process should not be undone by human will in suicide. The god oversees the processes of coming into and out of life, and humans have no right to take control away from the god. Thus, the mythic argument produces the same conclusion as the dialectic: εἰ θεοὶ ἡμῶν εἰσιν ἐπιμεληταὶ καὶ κτήματα ἐκείνων ἐσμέν, οὐ δεῖ ἐξάγειν ἑαυτούς, ἀλλ’ ἐπιτρέπειν ἐκείνοις 516 RADCLIFFE G. EDMONDS III 10 Olympiodorus In Phaed. I.7: Καὶ τοῦτο μὲν τὸ μυθικὸν ἐπιχείρημα. τὸ δὲ διαλεκτικὸν καὶ φιλόσοφον τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν, ὅτι εἰ θεοὶ ἡμῶν εἰσιν ἐπιμεληταὶ καὶ κτήματα ἐκείνων ἐσμέν, οὐ δεῖ ἐξάγειν ἑαυτούς, ἀλλ’ ἐπιτρέπειν ἐκείνοις. εἰ μὲν γὰρ θάτερον ἦν τούτων, καὶ ἢ κτήματα ἦμεν τῶν θεῶν οὐ μὴν ἐπεμελοῦντο ἡμῶν, ἢ ἀνάπαλιν, χώραν ὅπως οὖν εἶχεν εὔλογον τὸ ἐξάγειν ἡμᾶς ἑαυτούς· νῦν δὲ δι’ ἄμφω οὐ δεῖ λύειν τὸν δεσμόν (“This is the mythical argument. The dialectical and philosophical is as follows: if it is the gods who are our guardians and whose possessions we are, we should not want to put an end to our own lives, but leave it to them. If only one of the two were true, and either we were possessions of the gods, but they did not take care of us, or conversely, there would be at least a reasonable ground for suicide; as it is, both reasons together forbid us to cast off the shackle”). 11 Cf. West 1983, 166: “Although Olympiodorus’ interpretation of the Orphic myth is to be rejected, there is no denying that the poet may have drawn some conclusion from it about man’s nature; . . . any such conclusion is likely to have concerned the burdens of our inheritance.” The hypothetical nature of the element of inherited guilt in the narrative is revealed by the verb—“may have drawn.” 12 “Le résumé de ce qui était narré dans le poème orphique semble être assez fidèle. En effet, en ce qui concerne les autres détailes du paragraphe, que l’on peut relever aussi dans d’autres sources, Olympiodore concorde avec d’autres citations, directes même, rapportées aux Rhapsodies. Il n’y a donc pas de raison valable de douter que la dernière affirmation soit aussi fidèle à la source que les autres.” Bernabé 2003, 28. (“if it is the gods who are our guardians and whose possessions we are, we should not put an end to our own lives, but leave it to them”).10 Although it is of course possible to invent an argument against suicide on the basis of human beings suffering the punishment of the Titans’ crime and doomed to suffer even worse punishment by evading life in the prison of the body, Olympiodorus does not, in fact, ever make such an argument. Neither the myth as he tells it nor the interpretation he provides of the details includes an idea of human beings inheriting the guilt of the Titans’ murder of Dionysus. While some scholars admit that Olympiodorus himself never brings up the idea, they nevertheless see him as providing evidence for another text that does include original sin as its central theme, Olympiodorus’ source in the Orphic Rhapsodies.11 By a circular argument, the element of original sin not found in Olympiodorus is supplied from an earlier text, even though that text is reconstructed from Olympiodorus. For example, Bernabé, whose recent edition of the Orphic fragments is a welcome replacement for Kern’s 1922 edition, argues that Olympiodorus faithfully reproduces a passage from the Orphic Rhapsodies, since some of the details he includes in the narrative correspond with details known from other sources to be in the Orphic poems.12 The succession of rulers in heaven appears in a number of Orphic works, and the dismemberment story was also certainly treated in at least one Orphic poem. Such correspondences do not, of course, necessarily mean 517 OLYMPIODORUS’ “ORPHIC” CREATION OF MANKIND 13 Cf. Aristotle’s advice for the orator to use mythic exempla to support his point: “For because they are common, they seem to be correct, since everyone agrees upon them” (διὰ γὰρ τὸ εἶναι κοιναί, ὡς ὁμολογούντων πάντων, ὀρθῶς ἔχειν δοκοῦσιν, Rhetoric 2.21.11). 14 Plato provides the earliest reference to the six reigns in the Philebus 66c8–9 = OF 14K = 25B. Plutarch quotes the same lines (de E ap. Delphi 391d), as does Proclus In Remp. that Olympiodorus did not innovate in his telling of the story, since bricolage, the creative manipulation of traditional elements is, after all, the standard operation of the transmission of myth in the Greek mythic tradition. Bernabé assumes that Olympiodorus simply summarized a section of the Orphic Rhapsodies without presuming to alter the sacred text in any way, except of course to leave out the essential point at the end in which the guilt of the Titans descends upon mankind. Such an omission is taken as unproblematic, since it is the only logical conclusion to be drawn from the story. On this interpretation, Olympiodorus replaces this natural conclusion with his Neoplatonic allegorizing, which can be disregarded by modern scholars as inauthentic and thus without any influence on the narrative of the myth itself. I argue, to the contrary, that we cannot neglect the interrelation of Olympiodorus’ interpretation and his telling of the story, since the meaning he finds in the story directly affects the elements he chooses to include. The assumption that Olympiodorus’ source is a single text which he summarizes without alteration is likewise unfounded; Olympiodorus refers to a whole mythic tradition associated with Orpheus rather than a single text, and some of his most important sources are the commentaries of his Academic predecessors, Proclus and Damascius, rather than the particular texts attributed to Orpheus. Olympiodorus indeed shows himself willing to adapt the Orphic materials to his philosophic points, especially when those points have a precedent in the commentaries of his predecessors. Olympiodorus begins his narration with a reference to the Orphic (παρὰ τῷ Ὀρφεῖ . . . παραδίδονται), not with a quotation from an Orphic text. The imprecision of his reference is reinforced by his use of φασι, they say, to continue his narrative. The indeterminate third person plural indicates that Olympiodorus is not citing or even summarizing a single text but rather referring to the way the story is traditionally told. Olympiodorus situates his own retelling of the story within the mythic tradition, providing his account with the authority of that tradition.13 However, his reference to four reigns in the succession of the kingship of heaven actually contradicts the accounts surviving elsewhere of six reigns, which seem to have been characteristic of Orphic theogonies.14 As Westerink 518 RADCLIFFE G. EDMONDS III II.100.23 and Damascius in De Princ. 53 (I.107.23), In Parm. 199 (II.80.15), 253 (II.123.5), 278 (II.150.6); cf. also 381 (II.231.26). The idea may also be found in the testimonies collected in OF 107K, esp. Proclus in Tim III.168.15–169.9; Proclus In Crat. 54.12–55.22 = §105. 15 Westerink 1976, 40–41. 16 Westerink 1976, 41, cites Ammonius De Interpretatione 135.19–32 and Philoponus In Categorias 141.25–142.3 for testimonies to Ammonius’ scale of virtues. Saffrey and Segonds 2001, lxix–c, provide a history of the ideas of degrees of virtues in the Neoplatonic tradition in the introduction to their edition of Marinus. notes, Olympiodorus is drawing on the commentaries of Damascius and Proclus, but his identification of each of the reigns with a class of virtues shapes his telling.15 Olympiodorus is clearly making use of Damascius’ discussion of the virtues in his Phaedo commentary (I.138–51), although Damascius includes more classes of virtues, separating the ethical from the physical virtues and putting the paradigmatic and hieratic virtues above the contemplative. Westerink plausibly suggests that Olympiodorus is following Ammonius in eliminating the paradigmatic and hieratic virtues as a way of devaluing theurgic practice in relation to philosophic contemplation, since these virtues could have been identified with the Orphic reigns of Phanes and Night if Olympiodorus had been concerned to stay as close as possible to the text of Orpheus.16 However, only four reigns are needed to make Olympiodorus’ point, so he has no compunction about jettisoning the first two from his narration (see chart). Damascius’ Virtues (In Phaed. I.138–51) Orpheus’ Reigns (cf. Plato Philebus 66c8–9) Olympiodorus’ Virtues (In Phaed. I.5)