Orphic Tablets and Hymns ca. 400 BCE–300 BCE

Orpheus is one the most familiar figures from Greek mythology but also one of the most mysterious. His priests were denounced as charlatans by the philosopher Plato in classical Greece, yet the figure of Orpheus was used as a bulwark against the threat Christianity posed to the last followers of traditional Greek religion in the Roman Empire. Orpheus is the hero of a large body of myths, ranging from his invention of music to his descent to and return from the underworld. Less well known is Orpheus's role as the mythical founder of religious initiations that constitute a secret aspect of ancient Greek religion and the credit granted to him as the pseudepigraphic author of a vast body of poetry. Poems and hymns stretching from the origins of Greek civilization to the beginning of the Middle Ages in the Byzantine Empire have been attributed to the mythical figure of Orpheus. A sampling of these texts are examined here—the verses from the golden tablets that were buried in the graves of Orphic initiates and a corpus of Orphic hymns from the Roman Empire. Both sets of texts attest to the development of the Orphic cult throughout Greco-Roman history.