Egypt influenced Greece. Orpheus is said to have been a reformer who was torn to pieces by
frenzied Maenads actuated by Bacchic orthodoxy. His addiction to music is not so prominent in
the older forms of the legend as it became later. Primarily he was a priest and a philosopher.
Whatever may have been the teaching of Orpheus (if he existed), the teaching of the Orphics is
well known. They believed in the transmigration of souls; they taught that the soul hereafter
might achieve eternal bliss or suffer eternal or temporary torment according to its way of life
here on earth. They aimed at becoming "pure," partly by ceremonies of purification, partly by
avoiding certain kinds of contamination. The most orthodox among them abstained from animal
food, except on ritual occasions when they ate it sacramentally. Man, they held, is partly of
earth, partly of heaven; by a pure life theheavenly part is increased and the earthly part
diminished. In the end a man may become one with Bacchus, and is called "a Bacchus." There
was an elaborate theology, according to which Bacchus was twice born, once of his mother
Semele, and once from the thigh of his father Zeus.
There are many forms of the Bacchus myth. In one of them, Bacchus is the son of Zeus and
Persephone; while still a boy, he is torn to pieces by Titans, who eat his flesh, all but the heart.
Some say that the heart was given by Zeus to Semele, others that Zeus swallowed it; in either
case, it gave rise to the second birth of Bacchus. The tearing of a wild animal and the devouring
of its raw flesh by Bacchae was supposed to re-enact the tearing and eating of Bacchus by the
Titans, and the animal, in some sense, was an incarnation of the God. The Titans were earth-
born, but after eating the god they had a spark of divinity. So man is partly of earth, partly
divine, and Racchic rites sought to make him more nearly completely divine.
Euripides puts a confession into the mouth of an Orphic priest, which is instructive: *
Lord of Europa's Tyrian line, Zeus-born, who holdest at thy feet The hundred citadels of Crete, I
seek to Thee from that dim shrine,* The verse translations in this chapter are by Professor Gilbert Murray.