On Orpheus' Cave of the Nymphs
or, On Porphyry's "Fiery, Noetic Masses" (OA pt. 7)
This is Part Seven of an ongoing series in which we examine the Orphic Argonautica. Here are the links for Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, and Part Six.
You can find links to buy/download our full translation of the poem in this post:
At the end of our previous essay, we had reached the point where the Argonauts set up an altar to Rhea Piesmetie in thanks for her purifying intervention. As soon as “cables were loosed of detained Argo”1, everything was back on track:
But when indeed the sails of the ship the wind filled,
she rushed traversing salt-brine waves of the open sea,
and of Mysia, near passed by the borders of the land.
And quickly Rhyndakos’ mouths she crossed running,
and into the beautiful sandy harbors entered.
And she drove on the beach; and forestays upon casting hand,
sails they furled and around the mast-straps they bound;
and the gangway they lowered onto ground, and out they stepped themselves,
for food and drink yearning. And on both sides the slope
of Arganthon shone down and the high-peaked hills.
And Herakles was rushing through wooded gullies,
bow holding in hands and three-barbed arrows,
so that he might hunt and provide for supper for the companions
either swine or horned calf or wild goat.
And he straightaway having set out, Hylas went out from the ship
secretly following; but he missed the crooked path
having wandered in the wood and came into the cave of the Nymphs
of the Lake; and they having gazed upon him coming,
the youth still unmarried, detained him, so that with them
both deathless he might be and ageless for all days.
But when towards the middle of the dawn swift horses was bearing
Helios, and rushing out of the mountain was blowing a breeze,
and it fell upon silvery sails, and Tiphys shouted
of the ship inside to cross, and from shore the cables to loosen.
And they the steersman’s instructions obeyed;
And the son of Eilatos, up the promontory swiftly Polyphemos was stepping,
so that Herakles swiftly towards the ship he might call,
but he did not meet him: since for him to go not at all was it fated
to Phasis beautiful-streamed, the mighty strength of Herakles.2
Argo’s sails are filled, and they head to the sandy shore at the mouth of Rhyndakos, a river (modern day Mustafakemalpaşa in Türkiye). There, the men realize they are hungry, and Herakles sets out to catch their supper. Hylas, Herakles’ companion, secretly sets out after Him, but is captured and brought into the cave of the Nymphs, who take him to keep forever. When the sun was in the middle of the sky, Tiphys ordered everyone back on board, and Polyphemos called out to Herakles from the shore, but Herakles was not fated to continue on this particular journey.
In Part One, Herakles was identified as symbolic of the Soul’s mastery over the physical world around us. In Part Two, Hylas was identified as ‘hyle’, i.e. “matter”. In case it bears reminding, this entire poem is an allegory for the Initiated Soul’s ascent in union to the Gods. So then, in this scene, we are at the point of our Soul’s journey where it no longer requires its interface for ‘the physical’. Perhaps Hylas’ following Herakles signifies that once one’s Soul lets go of its reliance on physical interaction/mastery, its reliance on matter itself follows close behind. This is intimately connected to other symbolism being layered on this scene, and a keen eye is likely to notice “the cave of the Nymphs” mentioned in line 645.
On the Cave of the Nymphs is the title of a philosophical treatise by Porphyry, who flourished in the 3rd century CE (roughly a hundred years before Orpheus’ Argonautika was written). In this treatise, Porphyry examines eleven lines of Homer’s Odyssey as an allegory for the immortal Soul’s descent into matter and its eventual return to the Gods. The lines he examines are as follows:
and at the head of the harbor is a slender-leaved olive
and near by it a lovely and murky cave
sacred to the nymphs called Naiads.
Within are kraters and amphoras
of stone, where bees lay up stores of honey.
Inside, too, are massive stone looms and there the nymphs
weave sea-purple cloth, a wonder to see.
The water flows unceasingly. The cave has two gates,
the one from the north, a path for men to descend,
while the other, toward the south, is divine. Men do not
enter by this one, but it is rather a path for immortals.[Od. 13, 102-112]3
Porphyry’s exegesis begins with the cave itself, and he says that this cave isn’t completely a work of fiction, but also that the passage is not perfectly literal. He likens the cave to the cosmos, saying that “earth is a symbol of the matter out of which the cosmos emerged”, and that ancients saw caves likewise, as a symbol of the cosmos generated from matter4. He continues, adding that caves are separate from the earth but surrounded by rock, and that the cosmos similarly has its own separate nature, but one which is inseparable from matter. Porphyry suggests that Homer calls the cave “lovely and murky” to signify that dual-nature: matter is what makes the cosmos “murky”, but specifically that the intermingling of matter and form “and the resultant order (διακόσμησις, whence the name ‘cosmos’ itself)” makes the cosmos “lovely”5. To Porphyry, like a cave, the cosmos is shadowy, rocky, and constrained by our physical limitations, but it is also free from having its own constraints, loved and ordered only by Nature and the Gods into something beautiful.
Porphyry says that “Persians” perform initiations in caves, and he quotes another author as saying that Zoroaster consecrated caves as “an image of the cosmos that Mithras created” and that later “the custom of performing mysteries in caves and grottoes […] caught on among others as well”. This doesn’t refer to actual Persian Zoroastrianism, but rather shows that Porphyry shared the common misconception that Zoroastrianism was the\a precursor to the Mithraic Mysteries. Porphyry here is assuming that then-common underground sanctuaries consecrated to Mithras were also part of an even-more-ancient tradition. In Part Four, we saw a veiled Tauroctony and interpreted Kheiron’s Cave as a Mithraeum, one of these underground sanctuaries. If there was uncertainty before that this link between Mithras and Orpheus’ Argonautika is a stretch, perhaps now it seems more likely.
Porphyry says that caves are sacred to the Nymphs “on account of the waters that pour down into caves and come up out of them”6. He says that these Nymphs are called “Naiads” from the poetic word “they flow” (νάουσι), and that this is likely where the Pythagorean and Platonic idea of the-cosmos-as-a-cave comes from7. He quotes briefly from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, before making a detour:
Porphyry says that it has been shown that caves are symbolic of the cosmos and of the powers within it, but that this Platonic connection asserts that caves are symbolic of “the noetic substance” (i.e. the ‘immaterial Mind’ and the forms which it contains). He adds that though these both result in the cave as a symbol of the universe, the Platonic idea uses the cave to signify that the forms “are not easily grasped by the senses and at the same time they are essentially solid and enduring”8.
Back on track, Porphyry says that this particular cave is symbolic of the material (rather than the above Platonic noetic) existence because it is described with two entrances, and also “because its ‘water flows incessantly’”9. He continues, saying that these waters and the Naiad Nymphs who rule them are Souls descending into genesis, or ‘becoming’. He quotes Herakleitos saying “it is a delight, not a death, for Souls to become wet” and “we live their deaths while they live our deaths”, elaborating that Souls are drawn into genesis by the delight of this ‘wetness’, which for the Souls of mankind is bodily fluids, in the same way that “the Souls of plants are nourished by water”10. In a previous essay, it was argued that Orphic poetry commonly compares people to plants (of course, without excluding the possibility of this convention in other poetry).
