Adonis, Attis, Osiris : studies in the history of oriental religion / by J.G. Frazer.
- James George Frazer
- Date:
- 1906
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Adonis, Attis, Osiris : studies in the history of oriental religion / by J.G. Frazer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
113/368 page 93
![93 witch Medea professed to give back to the old their lost youth by boiling them with a hell-broth in her magic cauldron ;1 and when Pelops had been butchered and served up at a banquet of the gods by his cruel father Tantalus, the divine beings, touched with pity, plunged his mangled remains in a kettle, from which after decoction he emerged o alive and young.2 “ Fire,” says Jamblichus, “ destroys the material part of sacrifices, it purifies all things that are brought near it, releasing them from the bonds of matter and, in virtue of the purity of its nature, making them meet tor communion with the gods. So, too, it releases us from the bondage of corruption, it likens us to the gods, it makes us meet for their friendship, and it converts our material nature into an immaterial.” 3 Thus we can understand why kings and commoners who claimed or aspired to divinity should choose death by the fire. It opened to them the gates of heaven. The quack Peregrinus, who ended his disreputable career in the flames at Olympia, gave out that after death he would be turned into a spirit who would guard men from the perils of the night ; and, as Lucian remarked, no doubt there were plenty of fools to believe him.4 According to one account, the Sicilian philo¬ sopher Empedocles, who set up for being a god in his life¬ time, leaped into the crater of Etna in order to establish his claim to godhead.5 There is nothing incredible in the tradition. The crack-brained philosopher, with his itch for notoriety, may well have done what Indian fakirs 6 and the brazen-faced mountebank Peregrinus did in antiquity, and what Russian peasants and Chinese Buddhists have done in ras Ovpras oapxas avrov, and again (iii. 13. 6), els to 7rup eyKpvfiovaa rrjs vvktos e<fi9eipev 8 a vrcp OvrjTOV 7rarpipov. Apollonius Rhodius says, i] p.ev yap (3poreas alel irepi aapieas £8aLev vvKra dia p.ecrar]v <fi\oypL<2 irvpos. And Ovid has, Pique foco pueri corpus vivente favilla Obruit? humanumpurget ut ignis onus. 1 She is said to have thus restored the youth of her husband Jason, her father-in-law Aeson, the nurses of Dionysus, and all their husbands (Euripides, Medea, Argum. ; Scholiast on Aristophanes, Knights, 1321 ; compare Plautus, Pseudo/us, 879 sqq.) ; and she applied the same process with success to an old ram (Apollodorus, i. 9. 27 ; Pausanias, viii. 11. 2 ; Plyginus, Fab. 24). 2 Pindar, Olymp. i. 40 sqq., with the Scholiast ; J. Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 152. 3 Jamblichus, De mysteriis, v. 12. 4 Lucian, De inorte Peregrini, 27 sq. 5 Diogenes Laertius, viii. 2. 69 sq. 6 Lucian, De inorte Peregrini, 25 ; Strabo, xv. 1. 64 and 68, pp. 715, 717 ; Arrian, Anabasis, vii. 3.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31346510_0113.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
