The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

Orpheus, who felt by his own experience, perhaps, the great disadvantage that he had here, of presenting the truth to men before they might be in condition to receive it, instituted the divine mysteries; an admirable school where the initiate, conducted from one degree to another, slowly prepared and tried, received the share of light in proportion to the strength of his intelligence, and gently enlightened, without risk of being dazzled, attained to virtue, wisdom, and truth. There has been but one opinion in antiquity concerning the utility of the mysteries, before dissolution had stained its precincts and corrupted its aim. All the sages, even Socrates, have praised this institution, ' the honour of which has been constantly attributed to Orpheus. ^ It is not improbable that this sage had found the model in Egypt and that he himself had been initiated, as Moses ^ and Pythagoras'" had been before and after him; but in this case an imitation was equivalent to a creation.

I have said that after the appearance of Orpheus, poetry had lost its unity: as divided as the cult, it had sustained its vicissitudes. Entirely theosophical in its principle, and calm as the Divinity which inspired it, it had taken in the midst of the opposed sects a passionate character which it had not had previously. The priests, who used it to uphold their opinions, had found, instead of the real inspiration, that sort of physical exaltation which results from the

' Plat., In Phadon. Ibid., In Panegyr. Aristot., Rket., 1. ii., c. 24. Isocr., Paneg. Cicero, De Leg., 1. ii. Plutar., De Isid. Paus., In Phoc, etc. ' TModoret, Therapeut. 3 Philo, De Vitd Mosis, 1. i. <Jamblic., ZJe Vitd Pythag.,c. 2. ApuL, Florid., ii. Diog. Laert., 1. viii.

28 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras 3fire of passions, whose movement and fleeting splendour entrance the vulgar.

Vying with each other they had brought forth a mass of theological systems, had multiplied the allegorical fables concerning the universe, and had drowned, as it were, the unity of the Divinity in the vain and minute distinction of its infinite faculties; and as each composed in his own dialect and in pursiiance of his own caprice, each devised unceasingly new names for the same beings, according as they believed they caught a glimpse of a certain new virtue in these beings that another had not expressed, it came to pass that not only were the gods multiplied by the distinction of their faculties, but still more by the diversity of names employed in expressing them.

Very soon there was not a city nor a town in Greece, that did not have, or at least believed that it had, its own particular god.

If one had carefvilly examined this prodigious number of divinities, one would have clearly seen that they could be reduced, by elimination, to a small number and would finally end by being mingled in a sole Universal Being; but that was very difficult for people, flattered, moreover, by a system which compared the condition of the gods with theirs, and offered them thus, protectors and patrons so much the more accessible as they were less occupied and less powerful.

' Vainly, therefore, the Egyptian colony established at Athens presented to the adoration of this people imbued with the prejudice of polytheism, the sovereign of the gods under the title of the Most-High'; the veneration of this people was turned wholly towards Minerva, who became its patron under the name of Athena, ^ as Juno was that of Argos, •» Ceres, that of Eleusis, Phigalia, Methydrium, * etc.