Orpheus rediuius

Abstract

In support to the author’s thesis in his Orpheus, Das Alter des Kitharoden (Berlin, 1953) further material is advanced. One of the basic conclusions drawn there, that congruent passages in Homer and Hesiod are not due to a borrowing of either from the other, but that they are relics of an old poetic tradition that is to be connected with the name Orpheus (whence Hesiod «borrowed» as well as the sixth- -century Final-Redactor of the Homeric poems): in support of this section the writer gives an interpretation of Odyssey λ 13-19, with the result that this passage is not a cento of the disparate Hesiodic parallels, but poetry composed of old poetic elements known to Hesiod too and connected somehow or other with traditions signed by the name Orpheus. To corroborate a coherent thesis, viz. that Boeotic and Aeolie (Lesbiac) poetic tradition derive ultimately from the old Orphic art (originating in Mycenaean times) and that relics of it are to be found therefore not only in Hesiod but in Terpander, Sappho and Alcaeus too, section II gives an interpretation of Ale. Z 41 ; inc. auct. 4; Ale. B 13; G 1, 6 f.; a 3; Θ 1 LP. For the mythical association of the encountering of Night and Day together with Okeanos as borders of the Other World (an association basic for the interpretation of the famous great gold ring from Mycenae) section III adds Pind. Pyth. IV 195 f. to what has been adduced in Orpheus.