The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
However that may be, it appears certain, notwithstanding this schism, that the cult of the Thracians dominated Greece for a long time. The new source of poetry opened at Delphi and on Mount Parnassus, destined in time to become so celebrated, remained at first somewhat unknown. It is worthy of observation that Hesiod, born in the village of Ascra, a short distance from Delphi, makes no mention either of the oracle or of the temple of Apollo. All that he said of this city, which he named Pytho, has reference to the stone which Saturn had swallowed, believing to devour his son. * Homer does not mention this Pytho in the Iliad;
* Dionysus, in Greek AiowJo-os, comes from the word At6s, irregular genitive of Zeis, the living God, and of N6os, mind or understanding. The Phoenician roots of these words are tfK, B", or E"« {ash, ish, or aish). Unique Being, and 13 (nd) the motive principle, the movement. These two roots, contracted, form the word N6os, which signifies literally the principle of being, and figuratively, the understanding.
Demeter, in Greek Aij/i^rep, comes from the ancient Greek Aij/u, the earth, united to the word Mrep, mother. The Phoenician roots are ni (dam) and BIO (mdt), the former expressing all that which is formed by aggregation of similar parts; and the latter, all that which varies the form and gives it generative movement.
' Bailly, Essai sur les Fables, ch. 15. Court de Gobelin expressly says, that the sacred mountain of Thrace was consecrated to Bacchus. Monde prim., t. ix., p. 49. Now, it is generally known that Parnassus of the Greeks was consecrated to Apollo.
' Theog., v. 500.
1 8 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras he mentions in the Odyssey an oracle delivered by Apollo upon Parnassus. For a long time, the peoples of Greece, accustomed to receive from the ancient motmtains of Thrace both their oracles and their instructions, turned toward that country and neglected the new sacred motont. This is why the most ancient traditions place in Thrace, with the supremacy of cult and sacerdotalism, the cradle of the most famous poets and that of the Muses who had inspired them: Orpheus, Musseus, Thamyris, and Eumolpus were Thracians. Pieria, where the Muses were bom, was a mountain of Thrace; and when, at length, it was a question of rendering to the gods a severe and orthodox cult, it was said that it was necessary to imitate the Thracians, or, as one would say in French, ihraciser*
Besides it must be observed, that at the epoch when the temple of Delphi was founded, the new cult, presented to the Greeks under the name of the universal Olen, tended to unite Apollo and Diana, or the sun and the moon, under the same symbolic figure, and to make of it only one and the same object of adoration, under the name of CEtolinos, that is to say. Sun-moon.] It was proclaimed that the middle of the earth, its paternal and maternal umbilicus, was found placed exactly on the spot where the new sacred city was built, which was called for this mystical reason fCEtolinos is composed, by contraction, of two words which appear to belong to one of the Thracian dialects. CEto-Kyros signifies the rtiling stm, among the Scythians, according to Herodotus (1. iv., 59). Helena signified the moon, among the Dorians. It is from this last word, deprived of its article he, that the Latins have made Luna.
* The Greek word Or^kv, Thrace, in passing into the Ionian dialect ©prfl, has furnished the following expressions: SpijaKos, a devotee, 9in]aKela, devotion, ffpvirKTiiiti, I adore with devotion. These words, diverted from their real sense and used ironically after the cult of Thrace had yielded to that of Delphi, were applied to ideas of superstition and even of fanaticism. The point of considering the Thracians as schismatics was even reached, and the word iSef^oOpriffKela composed to express a heresy, a cult particular to those who practised it, and separated from orthodoxy.
The Essence and Form of Poetry 19
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.