The mystical hymns of Orpheus / Translated from the Greek, and demonstrated to be the invocations which were used in the Eleusinian mysteries, by Thomas Taylor.
- Date:
- 1824
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The mystical hymns of Orpheus / Translated from the Greek, and demonstrated to be the invocations which were used in the Eleusinian mysteries, by Thomas Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![them we are informed, “ that what Orpheus delivered mystically through arcane narra¬ tions, this Pythagoras learned when he cele¬ brated orgies in the Thracian Libethra, being initiated by Agiaophemus in the mystic wis¬ dom which Orpheus derived from his mother Calliope, in the mountain Pangaeus.” This sublime theology, though it was scien¬ tifically disseminated by Plato, yet conform¬ ably to the custom of the most ancient philo¬ sophers, was delivered by him synoptically, and in such a way as to be inaccessible to the vulgar; but when, in consequence of the commencement of a degraded and barren pe¬ riod, this theology became corrupted through the negligence and confusion of its votaries, then such of his disciples as happened to live when it was thus degraded and deformed found it necessary to unfold it more fully, in order to prevent its becoming utterly extinct. The men by whom this arduous task was accomplished were the last of the disciples of Plato ; men who, though they lived in a base pilTwv Xoyiov pLvarucMg Trapadtdojice, ravra IIf-$ayopa£ 'S-ev cpyiacrS-eig ev Ai(37]&poig tolq Qpciiaotg, AyXiotyanov reXe- rag [AtTadidovTog, tjv Trepi Qtwv (Totyictv Tcapa HaXXioTrrjg r?]g /.irjTpoc £7uvv(r6r]. Proclus in Tim. lib. v. p. 291.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29340548_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
