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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14697#0181
Orphic Theogonies and Cosmogonic Eros i o 19
(X) Penalties exacted by the children in 'Expulsion' Tales.
It remains but to notice the extreme savagery with which, in the folk-tales,
the guilty parties are punished :
1. The king's mother and the midwife are torn asunder by horses.
2. The king's mother is banished from the palace : the midwife is beheaded.
3. The king's mother and the midwife are torn asunder by horses.
4. The king's mother is torn asunder by mules.
5. The jealous sisters are thrown into a caldron of boiling oil: the nurse is
flung from the window.
6. The jealous sister and the midwife are cast into a furnace.
Even here classical mythology, for all its refinement and polish, can offer a
gruesome analogy. Zethos and Amphion, as we have already heard1, bind the
ill-starred Dirke to a wild bull, by which she is dragged to death. Nay worse,
the scene of her agony was a favourite subject with the sensational art of the
Hellenistic age (fig. 886)2.
APPENDIX G.
ORPHIC THEOGONIES AND THE COSMOGONIC EROS.
The Orphic fragments were collected and discussed with marvellous insight
by C. A. Lobeck Aglaophamus Regimontii Prussorum 1829 i. 411—ii. 964. A
somewhat fuller and handier collection is that of E. Abel Orphica Lipsiae-Pragae
1885 pp. 137—273, who, however, does not add a commentary and occasionally
refers a fragment to the wrong context. An important supplement is G. Murray
' Critical Appendix on the Orphic Tablets' in Harrison Proleg. Gk. Rel.2 pp. 659
—673 {supra p. 118 n. 2). Recently O. Kern in his Orphicorum fragmenta
Berolini 1922 has produced an admirably careful and complete edition, which
includes 'Testimonia' (pp. 1—79), 'Fragmenta' (pp. 80—344), bibliography
(pp. 345—350), reference-tables (pp. 351—353), and 'Indices' (pp. 360—407).
But the subject is even now far from being exhausted, and a Corpus of the monu-
folk-tales, Prof. W. R. Halliday, in R. M. Dawkins Modern Greek in Asia Minor Cam-
bridge i"9i6p. 216 f. : ' It cannot be too strongly insisted that there is no special connexion
at all between ancient mythology and modern Greek folk-tales. Wherever it has been
traced, there is obvious to the impartial observer either a straining of the evidence or a
palpable mistake.'
1 Supra pp. 1013, 1015.
2 See e.g. Collignon Hist, de la Sculpt, gr. ii. 532 ff., Herrmann Denkm. d. Malerei
pi. 43 Text p. 55, E. Bethe in Pauly—Wissowa Real-E7ic. v. 1170.
I figure e.g. the principal design on an Apulian krate'r from Palazzuolo near Syracuse,
now in Berlin (Furtwangler Vasensam?nl. Berlin ii. 926 f. no. 3296 K. Diltheyin the Arch.
Zeit. 1878 xxxvi. 42 ff. pis. 7 (= my fig. 886) and 8, Reinach Re'p. Vases i. 421, 2, O. Jessen
in Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 21846°. fig. 1, J. H. Huddilston Greek Tragedy in the light of
Vase Paintings London 1898 p. 9 n. 1). On the left Dirke, a pathetic figure with bared
breast, is dragged to death by the raging bull. On the right Lykos, caught skulking in a
cave by Zethos and Amphion, is about to be dispatched, when Hermes—as in the
Euripidean version (supra p. 1013)—suddenly intervenes to stay the slaughter. Antiope
escapes to the right. The panther-skin hung on the wall of the cave hints at the Dionysiac
character of Antiope (supra i. 735).
(X) Penalties exacted by the children in 'Expulsion' Tales.
It remains but to notice the extreme savagery with which, in the folk-tales,
the guilty parties are punished :
1. The king's mother and the midwife are torn asunder by horses.
2. The king's mother is banished from the palace : the midwife is beheaded.
3. The king's mother and the midwife are torn asunder by horses.
4. The king's mother is torn asunder by mules.
5. The jealous sisters are thrown into a caldron of boiling oil: the nurse is
flung from the window.
6. The jealous sister and the midwife are cast into a furnace.
Even here classical mythology, for all its refinement and polish, can offer a
gruesome analogy. Zethos and Amphion, as we have already heard1, bind the
ill-starred Dirke to a wild bull, by which she is dragged to death. Nay worse,
the scene of her agony was a favourite subject with the sensational art of the
Hellenistic age (fig. 886)2.
APPENDIX G.
ORPHIC THEOGONIES AND THE COSMOGONIC EROS.
The Orphic fragments were collected and discussed with marvellous insight
by C. A. Lobeck Aglaophamus Regimontii Prussorum 1829 i. 411—ii. 964. A
somewhat fuller and handier collection is that of E. Abel Orphica Lipsiae-Pragae
1885 pp. 137—273, who, however, does not add a commentary and occasionally
refers a fragment to the wrong context. An important supplement is G. Murray
' Critical Appendix on the Orphic Tablets' in Harrison Proleg. Gk. Rel.2 pp. 659
—673 {supra p. 118 n. 2). Recently O. Kern in his Orphicorum fragmenta
Berolini 1922 has produced an admirably careful and complete edition, which
includes 'Testimonia' (pp. 1—79), 'Fragmenta' (pp. 80—344), bibliography
(pp. 345—350), reference-tables (pp. 351—353), and 'Indices' (pp. 360—407).
But the subject is even now far from being exhausted, and a Corpus of the monu-
folk-tales, Prof. W. R. Halliday, in R. M. Dawkins Modern Greek in Asia Minor Cam-
bridge i"9i6p. 216 f. : ' It cannot be too strongly insisted that there is no special connexion
at all between ancient mythology and modern Greek folk-tales. Wherever it has been
traced, there is obvious to the impartial observer either a straining of the evidence or a
palpable mistake.'
1 Supra pp. 1013, 1015.
2 See e.g. Collignon Hist, de la Sculpt, gr. ii. 532 ff., Herrmann Denkm. d. Malerei
pi. 43 Text p. 55, E. Bethe in Pauly—Wissowa Real-E7ic. v. 1170.
I figure e.g. the principal design on an Apulian krate'r from Palazzuolo near Syracuse,
now in Berlin (Furtwangler Vasensam?nl. Berlin ii. 926 f. no. 3296 K. Diltheyin the Arch.
Zeit. 1878 xxxvi. 42 ff. pis. 7 (= my fig. 886) and 8, Reinach Re'p. Vases i. 421, 2, O. Jessen
in Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 21846°. fig. 1, J. H. Huddilston Greek Tragedy in the light of
Vase Paintings London 1898 p. 9 n. 1). On the left Dirke, a pathetic figure with bared
breast, is dragged to death by the raging bull. On the right Lykos, caught skulking in a
cave by Zethos and Amphion, is about to be dispatched, when Hermes—as in the
Euripidean version (supra p. 1013)—suddenly intervenes to stay the slaughter. Antiope
escapes to the right. The panther-skin hung on the wall of the cave hints at the Dionysiac
character of Antiope (supra i. 735).