265 
merits ” * which have been handed down to us. Aristotle gives 
the following as the conception of Orpheus respecting the 
Supreme Being : — 
Jove is the First. Jove the Thunderer is the last. 
Jove is the head. Jove is the middle. By him were all 
things made. 
Jove is male. Immortal Jove is female. 
Jove is the foundation of the earth, and of the starry 
heavens. 
Jove is the king. He is the author of universal life. 
All things are united in the vast body of Jove.f 
32. Proclus quotes another fragment, which seems to contain 
a mixture of the mundane egg theory and a conception of Deity 
somewhat resembling the four-faced figure described by the 
Prophet Ezekiel, as he writes : — “Orpheus has the following 
theological speculation in allusion to Phanes. The first God 
bears within himself the heads of these animals, many and 
single- an ox, a serpent, and a lion ; and these sprang from 
the primeval egg, in which the animal is seminally contained.” 
* It is impossible to assign any date to the extant writings ascribed to 
Orpheus, such as the Theogony, the series of Hymns attributed to him, the 
treatise termed Lithira, and the epic poem Argonautica. By some he 
is supposed to have lived before the Trojan war ; and Clement, Bishop of 
Alexandria, in the second century, asserts that many fragments of his works 
are to be found interwoven with the Homeric poems. Some fragments of 
the hymns ascribed to him are thought to indicate an acquaintance with the 
doctrine of the Trinity under the names of Phanes, Uranus, and Cronus • 
but this is rather doubtful, as they are found for the most part in writers of 
a 'jf ^7 . e period, and there is reason to question their genuineness. 
tit is an undoubted feet that the great dramatists of the Greeks, who 
might be supposed to indulge in poetical license more than the philosophers 
have expressed themselves respecting the Godhead for more in accordance 
Avith Kevelation than the other learned writers of their nation. Take for 
example the nature of the Creator as so finely expressed by Sophocles in the 
following lines : — 
There is one God, in truth there is but One, 
Who made the heavens and the broad earth beneath, 
The glancing waves of ocean, and the winds ; 
But many of us mortals err in heart, 
And set up for a solace in our woes, 
Images of the gods in stone and brass, 
Or figures carved in gold or ivory ; 
And, furnishing for these, our handiworks, 
Both sacrifice and rite magnificent, 
We think that thus tee do a pious work. 
Sophoc. Fragm. 
Even in the present day, these words of the heathen poet are not without 
their application, in the case of some who appear to underrate the claims of 
Christian philosophy. 
. VOL. X. 
U 
