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" But after Olen, Pamphus and Orpheus made verfes." This 

 laft famous poet, Orpheus *, is faid to have written in the time 

 of Hercules, and confequently forty years, at leafl, before the 

 Trojan war. Diogenes Laertius, in his Procemium, page 3, 

 has theie words — ISou youv Trapa. fjuv 'Adrivawig ysyovB. Mova-ccTo;, Trtxpa, 

 Se @rif2a.ioig Aivog, &c. " Mufazus was confpicuous among the 

 " Athenians, Linus among the Thebans, and the former, fon 

 " of Eumolpus, is faid to have firft treated in poetry the 

 " genealogy of the Gods, and of the fphere. He is reported 

 " alfo to have faid that all things fprang from one, and into 

 " that one would be refolved. He is thought to have died in 

 " the time of Phalaris." 



Innumerable other fuch authorities might be produced, 

 which are certainly of confiderable weight, though not abfo- 

 lutely conclulive againll the opinion of Herodotus, who, from 



the 



* Some moderns, relying on the authority of Ariftotle as quoted by Cicero, have gone far 

 beyond Herodotus refpe<5ling Orpheus, pofitively denying, not, like our hiftorian, that he was 

 prior to Homer, but that any fuch man ever exifted. The words of Cicero, De Natura Deo- 

 ?um. Lib. i. Cap. j8, page 429, are " Orpheum poetam docet Arifloteles nunquam fuifle, et 

 " hoc Orphicum carmen Pythagorei ferunt cujufdam fuifle Cercopis." The treatife of 

 Ariftotle here alluded to is loft, but that philofopher probably meant no more than that 

 the Orphic verfes attributed to this ancient fage were not wtitten by him, or, perhaps, 

 that Orpheus never was a poet, in either of which fenfes Ariftotle feems to coincide with 

 the opinion of Herodotus. The coUeflion which has come down to our times is certainly 

 of very high antiquity, and, excepting fome interpolations inferred by the pious zeal of the 

 early Chriftians, probably exifted in the time of Herodotus, whofe judgment, refpefling 

 the priority of Homer, may be fuppofed to hjve been founded on a critical examination of 

 thefe very poems, Indeed it feems to be the generally received opinion that, however 



ancient the Orphic collet^lion may be, it is, in effeft, a very ancient forgery. For a full 



and learned account of Orphsus, vide_^Cudworth's Intelleftual Syftem, page 294, &c. 



