ORPHEUS' EROTIC MYSTERIES: PLATO, PEDERASTY, AND THE ZAGREUS MYTH IN PHANOCLES F 1
In his Ἔρωτɛς ἢ Kαλoί, Phanocles tells how Orpheus was decapitated by Thracian women because he ‘revealed’ homoerotic love and rejected women. Iconographic and literary evidence suggests that Orpheus is associated with homoeroticism and misogyny from the Classical period. Phanocles' poem also exploits Orpheus' ambivalent status: as founder of the Eleusinian mysteries, his authority was immense. But he was also seen as the guru of a countercultural fringe, who preached reincarnation and vegetarianism. The fact that Phanocles presents Orpheus' erotic predilections as mysteries points to Plato, who rejected the mainstream, Eleusinian Orpheus, and embraced the counter‐cultural (Pythagorean) one. Orpheus rejects generative love because he is associated with the transcendent, rather than earthly, realm. Plato re‐configures both Orpheus' mystical teachings and his music‐making as philosophy/philosophical love, benefiting from traditions of interpreting Orphic poetry allegorically.
Fritz Graf has arguied that the Orphic poems including the katabasis were recited at the Eleusinian mystery rites by the 5th C BCE
Orphic poetry is seen as a challenge to Hesiod's theogony and catalogue of women
( those who had relationships with the gods and created a race of heroes and the closeness of gods and mortals) but Opheus was an Argonaut, predates Homer, and presented the love of men, rejecting women, for which the Thracian women killed him.
p 56 the author points our that homo and hetero sexual love are not incompatible in ancient Greece.
p 57 Orpheus is depicted with young men, not attracted to women, a threat to women and the oikos. He turned on women after his failure to save his wife Eurydice.
and that he set up the Bachic/ Dionysian mysteries. Dionysius (Zagreus) the son of Persephone and Zeus, who was dismembered and eaten by the titans, Zeus attacked the ttitans with his thunderbolt and imprisoned them in mortal bodies, And so Orpheus is killed and dismembered by the women
p 48 Herodotus says the Bacchis/Orphic mysteries are Egyptian and Pythagorean ( Osiris, Isis?). Plato says that the human body imprisoned the soul as punishment for crimes (Cratuylus). Bone fragmnents have written on them life-death, life-truth
Xenpcrates ( Platos pupil) says that the souls imprisonment is titanic and this culminated in Dionysius. Persephone's grief is interpreted as either her initiation or the loss of her son Zagreus.
Gold leaves buried with the dead across the Med show Bacchic inscriptions regarding Zagreus they say I have paid the penalty for unjust deeds, sent to Persephone ( the blood price) Hence a good life, just and without blame provides the blood price. - the soul is then earned the rights to special privileges in the afterlife that is to become a god.
p 64 the Myth of Er, Er who made eschatological journey relates how Orpheus hated women and this reflected his choice of reincarnation- he moved down the cosmoloigal ladder to come back as a swan to avoid being born of women
p 65 the Eleusinian mysteries begin with katharsis then mythical exegesis culminating in revelation
there can be no doubt that Alcibiades erotic mysteries ( socratic love)- his alleged profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries 415 BC, played a role in Socrates indictment In Socrates An apology he blames Aristophanes The Clouds which portrays Socrates as the initiator in the new intellectual mysteries
p 67 Diotona /Socrates explains the mysteries eros is for the body, beauty, but then the lovers gaze turns form the phenomena to the noumena- the love of wisdom, laws,poetry, virtue and finally to the revelation, the Form of Beauty
p 69 from Socrates eros is a beneficial form of madness, yogether with the mysteries tele tai, mousike and prohiecy the good types of ekstasis or mania eros is depicted as the wings of th soul and this brings us back to the Forms. Mousike brings us back to our celestial origns
he heady mix of mystical and poetic language in Socrates’ second speech is closely
integrated with his definition of erôs as a beneficial branch of madness, together with
mysteries (teletai), mousikê, and prophecy. The Phaedrus is by no means unequivocal on
these ‘good’ types of ekstasis or mania (248de, 261e-262d, 265b). Philosophical erôs,
however, is fundamental to the soul’s salvation, for it is metaphorically figured as the
soul’s wings and only they have the capacity to lift it back to the forms.
71
According to
Aristotle (F 15 Rose), the higher mysteries involved experiences which bypassed the
intellectual. Mousikê seems to have played an important role in reconnecting the soul with
its celestial origins.
72
In the Phaedrus, this role is taken over by philosophical erôs.
Phanocles’ Orpheus is said to have ‘revealed’ () pederasty in Thrace – a fitting
lexical choice: the revelation of sacred objects was an important part of mystical rites and
is used by several authors for Orpheus’ founding of the cult.
7
Fritz Graf has argued
persuasively that Orphic poetry, including a katabasis, was recited in the Eleusinian
mysteries by the fifth century BCE. Christoph Riedweg plausibly reads a passage in Plato’s
Republic as a reference to the performance of Orphic theogony at Eleusis.
8
The katabasis
seems to have been presented as a first-person account of the things which Orpheus had seen
in Hades whilst seeking his wife.
9
His shift in sexuality may therefore have implications for
one of the most sacred institutions in the Greek world.
p 49 Fritz Gras has argued that the Orphic poems, including the katabsis were recited at the Eleusi
Phanocles’ Orpheus is said to have ‘revealed’ () pederasty in Thrace – a fitting
lexical choice: the revelation of sacred objects was an important part of mystical rites and
is used by several authors for Orpheus’ founding of the cult.
7
Fritz Graf has argued
persuasively that Orphic poetry, including a katabasis, was recited in the Eleusinian
mysteries by the fifth century BCE. Christoph Riedweg plausibly reads a passage in Plato’s
Republic as a reference to the performance of Orphic theogony at Eleusis.
8
The katabasis
seems to have been presented as a first-person account of the things which Orpheus had seen
in Hades whilst seeking his wife.
9
His shift in sexuality may therefore have implications for
one of the most sacred institutions in the Greek world.
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