On the Soul and its Σῶμα / Σῆμα

or, On the Ὀρφικος βίος and its Δόγμα / Λογοι

Many an ancient theologian has grappled with notions of what specifically it is that animates life. Indeed, the words “animate” and “animal” come to us from the Latin “anima,” meaning “breath” or “soul.” It is not wholly unexpected, then, that we find the phrase “the breath of life” in use even today. This idea, that breath is a defining factor of life, provides us an excellent launch-point: it is very much in line with Orphic concepts of the soul. Aristotle gives us a glimpse of this, mocking Orphism in his work titled On the Soul:

The same objection lies against the view expressed in the 'Orphic' poems: there it is said that the soul comes in from the whole when breathing takes place, being borne in upon the winds. Now this cannot take place in the case of plants, nor indeed in the case of certain classes of animal, for not all classes of animal breathe. This fact has escaped the notice of the holders of this view.¹

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Aristotle’s mockery here goes against a modern understanding of plant and animal life. By “certain classes of animal,” he likely meant aquatic life, namely fish, which today are commonly thought of as ‘breathing’ with their gills. Similarly, we today think of plants as ‘breathing,’ although their intake and output are reversed from animal life. Of course, this is a gross oversimplification of all of these biological processes.

Ovid, the famous Roman poet, wrote what survives to us as the most detailed telling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in his Metamorphoses². Later in the work, he recounts the death of Orpheus at the hands of Maenads, preserving the Orphic idea of the soul-as-air explained by Aristotle:

they hastened to destroy the harmless bard, devoted Orpheus; and with impious hate, murdered him, while his out-stretched hands implored their mercy—the first and only time his voice had no persuasion. O great Jupiter! Through those same lips which had controlled the rocks and which had overcome ferocious beasts, his life breathed forth, departed in the air.³

Ovid here is specific with the phrase “his life breathed forth,” and it certainly does seem to echo the idea presented by Aristotle. To Aristotle, however, the soul of something dies when that thing’s body dies⁴. To Orphics, the soul is immortal. It has existed before us, and it will exist after us. In Phaedo, Plato mentions an “ancient doctrine” that tells of reincarnation:

Suppose we consider the question whether the souls of men after death are or are not in the world below. There comes into my mind an ancient doctrine which affirms that they go from hence into the other world, and returning hither, are born again from the dead.⁵

Plato elaborates a bit in Meno, where Socrates recalls another story of reincarnation before reciting a fragment of Pindar:

They were certain priests and priestesses who have studied so as to be able to give a reasoned account of their ministry; and Pindar also and many another poet of heavenly gifts. As to their words, they are these: mark now, if you judge them to be true. They say that the soul of man is immortal, and at one time comes to an end, which is called dying, and at another is born again, but never perishes. Consequently one ought to live all one's life in the utmost holiness. “For from whomsoever Persephone shall accept requital for ancient wrong, the souls of these she restores in the ninth year⁶ to the upper sun again; from them arise glorious kings and men of splendid might and surpassing wisdom, and for all remaining time are they called holy heroes amongst mankind.” Seeing then that the soul is immortal and has been born many times, and has beheld all things both in this world and in the nether realms, she has acquired knowledge of all and everything; so that it is no wonder that she should be able to recollect all that she knew before about virtue and other things.⁷

Beyond just the nature of the soul, Plato gives us insight into its relationship with the body through Socrates in Cratylus by telling us what the Orphic poets had in mind when they gave the word σῶμα to the body:

I think this admits of many explanations, if a little, even very little, change is made; for some say it is the tomb (σῆμα) of the soul, their notion being that the soul is buried in the present life; and again, because by its means the soul gives any signs which it gives, it is for this reason also properly called “sign” (σῆμα). But I think it most likely that the Orphic poets gave this name, with the idea that the soul is undergoing punishment for something; they think it has the body as an enclosure to keep it safe, like a prison, and this is, as the name itself denotes, the safe (σῶμα) for the soul, until the penalty is paid, and not even a letter needs to be changed.⁸

The Epistles are thirteen letters attributed to Plato but often seen as spurious. The seventh and eighth letters, however, are public letters and not private ones, which lends credibility to their attribution. The seventh letter specifically contains a passage relevant to our inquiry:

But we ought always truly to believe the ancient and holy doctrines which declare to us that the soul is immortal and that it has judges and pays the greatest penalties, whensoever a man is released from his body; wherefore also one should account it a lesser evil to suffer than to perform the great iniquities and injustices. But to these doctrines the man who is fond of riches but poor in soul listens not, or if he listens he laughs them (as he thinks) to scorn, while he shamelessly plunders from all quarters everything which he thinks likely to provide himself, like a beast, with food or drink or the satiating himself with the slavish and graceless pleasure which is miscalled by the name of the Goddess of Love; for he is blind and fails to see what a burden of sin—how grave an evil—ever accompanies each wrong-doing; which burden the wrong-doer must of necessity drag after him both while he moves about on earth and when he has gone beneath the earth again on a journey that is unhonored and in all ways utterly miserable.⁹

Again Plato refers to “ancient and holy doctrines” of reincarnation and judgment. This view of giving in to one's urges as being sinful can be related to the Pindar fragment quoted earlier by Socrates in Plato's Meno:

For from whomsoever Persephone shall accept requital for ancient wrong, the souls of these she restores in the ninth year to the upper sun again; from them arise glorious kings and men of splendid might and surpassing wisdom, and for all remaining time are they called holy heroes amongst mankind.¹⁰

The aversion to a sinful life, as suggested in Plato’s seventh letter, causes one to suppress their bodily urges, as suggested in the excerpt from Meno. This suppression is the method of repayment for the ancient crime mentioned by Pindar. However, not everyone adhered to a strict lifestyle. In Phaedo, Plato has Socrates quote ‘the mysteries’¹¹ as essentially saying ‘many talk the talk, but few walk the walk’:

For as they say in the mysteries, 'the thyrsus-bearers are many, but the mystics few'; and these mystics are, I believe, those who have been true philosophers.¹²

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So, what does it mean to walk the walk? What are the distinguishing features of an Orphic life? Plato gives us a direct answer in Laws through the voice of the Athenian:

The custom of men sacrificing one another is, in fact, one that survives even now among many peoples; whereas amongst others we hear of how the opposite custom existed, when they were forbidden so much as to eat an ox, and their offerings to the gods consisted, not of animals, but of cakes of meal and grain steeped in honey, and other such bloodless sacrifices, and from flesh they abstained as though it were unholy to eat it or to stain with blood the altars of the gods; instead of that, those of us men who then existed lived what is called an “Orphic life,” keeping wholly to inanimate food and, contrariwise, abstaining wholly from things animate.¹³

An Orphic life consists of abstaining from bloodshed, up to and including in meals and sacrifice. This definition is corroborated by Euripides in Hippolytus where Theseus, believing his son has raped his wife and caused her to commit suicide, berates Hippolytus:

Are you, then, the companion of the gods, as a man beyond the common? Are you the chaste one, untouched by evil? I will never be persuaded by your vauntings, never be so unintelligent as to impute folly to the gods. Continue then your confident boasting, take up a diet of greens and play the showman with your food, make Orpheus your lord and engage in mystic rites, holding the vaporings of many books in honor. For you have been found out. To all I give the warning: avoid men like this. For they make you their prey with their high-holy-sounding words while they contrive deeds of shame. She is dead. Do you think this will save you? This is the fact that most serves to convict you, villainous man. For what oaths, what arguments, could be more powerful than she is, to win you acquittal on the charge?¹⁴

On its surface, this attack appears to present an obvious disdain for Orphics. However, Alberto Bernabé notes that it is more likely that Euripides wrote Theseus as being confused by the nature of his son, and grasping at what was likely seen as a confusing label to try to insult him¹⁵. Thus, Euripides is not trying to condemn Orphism, but to use Theseus’ confusion to highlight the perceived gap, as Plato did, between the virtue someone professes and the virtue of their actions.

In his Cretans, Euripides again uses the esoteric nature of Orphism (and related mystery cults), as a narrative tool; specifically here that they live an unusual, sequestered life. Although the play is fragmentary, Porphyry preserves a section where the chorus, summoned to see King Minos, explains that they are Bacchoi and initiates of Idaean Zeus:

Pure is the life I have led since I became an initiate of Idaean Zeus, and celebrated the thunderbolts of night-ranging Zagreus performing his feasts of raw flesh¹⁶; and raising torches high to the Mother of the mountain, among the Curetes, I was consecrated and named a Bacchos. In clothing all of white I shun the birth of men, and the places of their dead I do not go near; against the eating of animal foods I have guarded myself.¹⁷

The strange nature of the mysteries presented by Euripides proves the quote from Socrates in Phaedo that not everyone ‘walks the walk’; if they did, Euripides would’ve needed different examples of alternative lifestyles.

In Rhesus, whose authorship is usually attributed to Euripides, Orpheus is depicted as the cousin of the title character¹⁸, who has been slain. Rhesus’ mother a few lines later makes a prayer to Persephone:

So earnest a prayer will I address to the bride of the nether world, the daughter of the goddess Demeter, giver of increase, to release his soul, and debtor, as she is to me, show that she honours the friends of Orpheus. And to me for the rest of time he will be as one who is dead and does not see the light; for never again will he meet me or see his mother; but he will lie hidden in a cavern of the land with veins of silver, restored to life, a deified man, just as the prophet of Bacchus dwelt in a grotto beneath Pangaeus, a god whom his votaries honored.¹⁹

This prayer calls back some of what we’ve seen from Pindar and from Plato: souls of ‘friends of Orpheus’ (i.e. those who have lived an Orphic life) are entitled to freedom, to be granted by Persephone. In the Pindar fragment we’ve looked at, She sends the soul back up as a Hero after its penalty is repaid. Pindar does not mention it here, but in his Olympian Ode 2, he does specify that pure souls ascend to “where ocean breezes blow round the Isle of the Blessed”²⁰. Elsewhere in mythology, Heroes live in the afterlife on the Isles of the Blessed. Thus, reincarnation as a Hero entitles one’s soul to a similar escape from the cycle.

We will transition now toward the wholly-Orphic sources, by way first of discussing the Zagreus myth. Radcliffe G. Edmonds III suggests that Olympiodorus in the 6th century CE fabricated the anthropogeny (the generation of mortal life from the ashes of the Titans by the thunderbolt of Zeus as punishment for the dismemberment of Zagreus) as a mashup of other, disconnected myths, and that the anthropogeny and the resulting body/soul dualism rely on the Christian concept of Original Sin²¹. He also says that “the meaning [Olympiodorus] finds in the story directly affects the elements he chooses to include”²². While Olympiodorus’ conclusion that the body is Dionysiac²³ is unique to him, he seems to discard the idea of dualism, which we find along with the dismemberment and tasting by the Titans as early as the 1st century CE. Plutarch writes in On Eating Meat discussing Empedocles, who lived in the 5th century BCE:

For in these, by way of allegory, he [Empedocles] hints at men's souls, as that they are tied to mortal bodies, to be punished for murders, eating of flesh and of one another, although this doctrine seems much ancienter than his time. For the fables that are storied and related about the discerption of Bacchus, and the attempts of the Titans upon him, and of their tasting of his slain body, and of their several punishments and fulminations afterwards, are but a representation of the regeneration. For what in us is unreasonable, disorderly, and boisterous, being not divine but demoniac, the ancients termed Titans, that is tormented and punished…²⁴

Plutarch very clearly mentions the part of us that is Titanic, named after those who were tormented and punished for the sparagmos of Dionysus and who represent the regeneration of life. He also is clear that we inherit the Titanic nature. Olympiodorus ‘invention,’ when viewed this way, is a natural consequence. If we inherit the Titanic nature, and the Titans had tasted or consumed a piece of Dionysus, then we must also inherit a piece. It could just be that the Neoplatonic exegesis that spells it out for us is the earliest that survives. Moreover, Plutarch was a priest of Apollo at His Temple in Delphi, which in the winter months was occupied not by Apollo but by Dionysus, and he also wrote about the mysteries of Osiris²⁵, who is often equated with Dionysus (especially in the context of the mysteries). Thus, Plutarch is a very credible source. The Orphic idea can be traced also to Philodemus, who lived in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE and wrote in his work On Piety about the three births of Dionysus:

They say that Dionysos had three births: one of these is that from his mother, another that from the thigh of Zeus, and the third the one when he was torn apart by the Titans and came back to life after Rhea reassembled his limbs. (space) And in his Mopsopia Euphorion agrees with this (account); the Orphics too dwell on (it) intensively.²⁶

Later in the same work, he also again mentions the dismemberment and reassembly of Dionysus. Euphorion, mentioned here by Philodemus, lived in the 3rd century BC, but he is also quoted much later, by Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes:

And Dionysus was also honored in Delphi with Apollo in this way: the Titans tore the limbs off Dionysus and gave them to Apollo his brother, putting them in a cauldron, and he put it next to the tripod as Callimachus says, and Euphorion saying “they threw divine Bacchus over the fire in a bowl”.²⁷

This quote in Tzetzes seems to show that Dionysus was cooked, and thus presumably eaten (or tasted, as the Delphic priest Plutarch says), by the Titans. We can see that, although the anthropogeny is not mentioned specifically each time, the dismemberment of Dionysus, as well as the Titans and their punishments, are frequently cited as reasons for birth and rebirth. Edmonds’ arguments that this is a later Christian reading or an invention of Olympiodorus both fall flat when we consider that the window of time in which Philodemus and Plutarch wrote (to say nothing of Euphorion and Empedocles) was before the full development of the Christian concept of Original Sin, and well before the life of Olympiodorus.

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Having surveyed a handful of sources adjacent to or that mention Orphism but are not usually themselves classified as Orphic, and with the Zagreus myth settled for now, we may turn finally to Name-famed Orpheus²⁸;

The belief in an immortal soul, damned to a cycle of potentially infinite reincarnation by guilt of an ancient crime at no fault of our own, but that can be redeemed from the Titanic nature of the body and freed from the cycle of reincarnation by the denial of its bodily urges in favor of asceticism and cultivating the soul, with the ultimate fate of pure and freed souls being a pleasant afterlife in the Isles of the Blessed, i.e. ascension in unity to the Gods, is a belief that survives today in the ancient Orphica.

By the end of the Hellenistic period, the Hieroi Logoi in Twenty-Four Rhapsodies was likely in circulation²⁹. The Rhapsodies is thought to be a compilation or a reworking of older, individual Orphic myths and texts³⁰. Although the title implies a division similar to the Iliad and the Odyssey, it is unlikely that the Rhapsodies reached the same length as Homer’s works³¹. Today, the Rhapsodies is fragmentary, as if it has undergone its own sparagmos. However, Anthi Chrysanthou dedicates a chapter in her monograph to the Rhapsodies, and attempts a reconstruction³² using the fragments preserved in various 1st to 5th century CE authors, most of whom were commenting on Plato. Chrysanthou’s reconstruction does not make use of the discovery found in the Sinai palimpsest³³, but the contents of the palimpsest do not mention the soul and cut off before the dismemberment, consumption, and resulting anthropogeny. The reconstruction begins, as we are told did many Orphic texts, with a seal:

I will sing to those who are wise; cover your ears, you profane!³⁴