Excerpt from Orpheus: A General History of Religions
Why docs the name of Orpheus, "the first of the world"s singers," as Lefrane de Pompignan called him, appear on the title-page of this volume? Because he was not merely "the first singer," though the Greeks knew of poems by him which they held to be much earlier than those of Homer. Orpheus was also, to the ancients, the theologian par excellence, founder of those mysteries which ensured the salvation of mankind, and no less essential to it as the interpreter of the gods. Horace designates him thus: Sneer interpresque deonmi. He it was who revealed first to the Thracians and afterwards to the other Greeks the necessary knowledge of things divine. True, he never existed ; but this is of little moment. Orphism existed and, as Jules Girard has justly said, it was the most interesting fact in the religious history of the Greeks. It was something more, something still better.
Not only did Orphism enter deeply into the literature, philosophy and art of the ancient world; it survived them. The figure of Orpheus charming the beasts with his lvre is the only mythological motive which appears and recurs in the Christian paintings of the catacombs. The fathers of the church were persuaded that Orpheus was the disciple of Moses.
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