Orpheus or the Soteriological Reform of the Dionysian Mysteries1

In this paper, I present Orphism as a written reform of the myth of Dionysus and its ritual manifestations, perhaps initiated and influenced by Onomacritos, who acted as interpreter and editor, in the context of, and under the influence of, Attic synoecism; this last refers not only to a process of administrative unification mythically inspired by the figure and deeds of Theseus, but also to the political will to maintain the loyalty of the rural dēmoi to the urban oikos, with all the challenges and vicissitudes of life and conflict at the margins of society, during the tyranny, the democratic regime and the dissolution of the autonomy of the polis and the conflicts in the relations linking the centre and the periphery during the Hellenistic period. In support of the working hypothesis, a hermeneutic methodology is applied, reading ancient sources and making ad hoc use of Greek etymology in those cases where the reading suggests possible alternative interpretations. The final outcome of this hermeneutic exercise shows possible links between the Orphic ritual and the political and editorial activities of Pisistratus and Onomacritos. The conclusion reached is that, the principal characteristic of the Orphic reform of the Dionysian myth and ritual seems to be its soteriological content.


Introduction
The figure of Orpheus emerges from its own narrative, marked not only by the ambivalence and dialectics of Dionysus and other deities of mystery (Demeter, Persephone), but also as guardian of a reputation in constant conflict with religion, literature and history.
In classical sources, he earns praise as a god and cultural hero, but at the same time, he is shown against a sordid shadow, a sad reflection of the gifts and superior qualities attributed to him by his apologists. For some, he is the greatest poet, creator of music and founder of all the mysteries 3 , while for others, he is a vulgar zitherist 4 , lacking those conditions of value which Homer, with poetic mastery, had attributed to aretē, the essential virtues of Mycenic heroes. This stamp of ambiguity and lack of coherence in the image and prestige of Orpheus has come down to us through philology, philosophy and the comparative history of religion, with the same efficiency as the mask of the budding tragic actor: the same cloak of otherness, but showing a constantly varying state of mind, according to the needs of the drama.
Over the last two centuries, philological studies have been true to this strange tradition, on some occasions dithyrambic and on others parodic or indifferent, depending nearly always on the interpretative possibilities which are opened up by each discovery of new epigraphic, historical or literary sources. Thus, from the end of the 19 th century up until the 1930s, the apologetic tendency was uppermost, exaggerating and distorting the figure of Orpheus at the cost of obvious anachronisms; this trend had begun during the Renaissance, driven by his appearance in modern drama and his rapid emergence in opera as from the 17 th century 5 .
However, from 1930 on, philological and historical research became cautious about exaggerated interpretations of Orpheus and his influence. Nonetheless, from the 1960s, this attitude, which had become hypercritical, began to change again due to new archaeological finds, especially the Derveni Papyrus. Judging by current enthusiasm, it would seem prudent to remember the position of Aristotle who habitually put scare quotes around the name of Orpheus 6 and everything regarding his possible influence on the mysteries and on Greek philosophy. In what follows, I will present a brief excursus, based on classical sources and recent research, on the myth of Orpheus, the basic doctrine attributed to him and the aetiology or possible socio-political components of it.

Mythos 7
The narrative of the Orpheus myth unfolds in four basic mythemes 8 : 6 Aristotle On the Generatio of Animals 734a 16 Ross,prudently speaks of "the so-called poems of Orpheus." 7 For the mythos, doctrine and related aspects, I follow the classical sources: Pindar fr. 139, 11-12 T 56 Kern, Pythians, IV, him strumming a lyre, nearly always in a rural setting, surrounded by animals -including big cats -who listen to him attentively, as portrayed by the sculptor Luca Della Robbia on the bell tower in Florence, or by the composition of a 3 rd century AD mosaic from Tarsus in Turkey, now found in the Archaeological Museum in Palermo, Sicily. b. Argonaut In the classical catalogues, Orpheus appears third in the list of the Argos's crew, after Jason and Tiphys. As we know from the two stories by Apollonius of Rhodes and Apollodorus 12 , the Argos sails for Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. Orpheus's participation in this maritime expedition is essential. His magic powers in music and communication with the sacred determine his role as priest-magician on the expedition.
On the voyage, Orpheus has three roles: 1) to set the beat for the oarsmen with his music13; 2) in his priestly role, to hold a ritual for the crew of the ship 14  the forces of nature and calm the fears of the heroes on the ship, above all to protect them, with the sounds of his marvellous lyre, from the fatal seduction of the sirens who are consummate singers. c. Katabasis But the most famous of Orpheus's scenes, for many reasons, is his descent into Hades in search of his wife Eurydice, which began to acquire its iconographic status with the vivid and moving description by Vergil in the fourth book of the Georgics, and later by Ovid in his Metamorphosis 15 .
Eurydice was a nymph or daughter of Apollo. In one scene, which is reminiscent of other similar ones in Greek mythology, she is walking on the banks of a river in Thrace when she is assaulted by Aristaeus (doctor, seer, beekeeper and also son of Apollo and the nymph Cyrene) who attempts to rape her. Fleeing, Eurydice is bitten by a snake and dies: "While the newly wedded bride was walking through the grass, with a crowd of naiads as her companions, she was killed, by a bite on her ankle, from a snake, sheltering there" 16 .
Orpheus, unable to accept the death of his wife, conceives a bold plan to enter and descend into Hades to bring her back, trusting to his magical-priestly powers.

Theological-soteriological Ekdosis 26
The so-called Orphic 'religion', or the Orphic 'mysteries', seems to set itself apart from its foundational (Eleusinian-Dionysian) narratives through an act of writing-edition. In ekdotic spirit, it sets out a new order of the pantheon but, above all, it passes the epiphanic-entheogenic 27 experiences of the Greek mysteries through the weft of writing. Formally bound by the epic form, it aims to introduce into the intimacy of an esoteric brotherhood the formalism of public religion, pure image and poetic word, yet separated from the mysterium; the latter was associated with the epopteia, the theophanies which perturbed sensory perception, leading the mystēs to renew the fertility aitiai (causes) and agricultural festivals until he became an epoptēs, someone who has "contemplated." In this way, the psyche, through mystic or entheogenic experience, rooted in the sōma, kept the body of the oikos bound to a topos, a chthonic space ancestrallyand naturalistically!-linked to the germinal and sustaining powers of the 'earth.' But the ekdotic will of Orphism aims to convey the experience of the 'mysterium' through poetic syntax and morphology 28 , an (ekdotic) editorial act to be read, memorized and from whose understanding to derive the guarantee of knowledge, truth, a 'revelation' about death, the miasmas inherited from an archetypal atrocity and 26 ἔκδοσις, ekdosis, giving forth, the action of giving, the action of giving (daughters) in marriage; to let; as a loan. έκ , adverb meaning outside, and δόσις, the action of giving, bequeathing or handing over. Here, I use the word in the technical sense of edition or publication of thought, in the manner of Aristotle, who appeared before his audience with a 'written' text, which presupposed (unlike the Socratic-Platonic dialogue) that the author had already replied -in the text -to the possible questions from the audience, because the 'editorial' act presupposed that the author-editor is the audience. See Hector D'Agostino, Onomacriti. Testimonia et fragmenta (Pisa: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, 2007) XXIV. 27 Entheogenic, literally en (within) theos (god) gen-, (root from gennaō, to originate and genos, origin); thus, "god withn" or "the divine made manifest within", following the technical sense attributed by  lustral 'grace' which would erase the stigmas left by that ancestral stain. This would seem to be the major difference, or the spirit of theological and soteriological reform, between 'Orphism', lato sensu and the earlier Greek mysteries. The textual dimension reorganizes the mythos symbolism, no longer as legitimizing an agricultural chthonic ritual -albeit containing Olympian 'solar' or incarnated chthonic elements 29 as in the Eleusinian and Dionysian cult -but as the word made symbolon, sufficient in itself to give an account of divine truth, as a book 30 .
Thus a 'secret' knowledge is instituted, but it is no longer the mystery truth of traditional ritual, which must not be communicated outside the orgiastic context; rather, it sets up the convention of a theological language which offers salvation (soteria) in exchange for acceptance of its discursive codes 31 , protected by secrecy 32 and isolating the initiate in a sect 33 , separated from the binding structure of the oikos and, therefore, assuming a certain autonomy as regards legislation. Lacking the ecclesiastic organization associated with the official religious calendar, its celebrants, no longer hierophants but Orpheotelests, carried out their calls to 'salvation' in an itinerant manner, especially in the vicinity of elite and other urban oikia.
The supposition of this ekdotic -or ekdoticizing -spirit inspires interest because it gives a new meaning to the hieroi logoi, previously used to refer to poets who talked with the gods -and, as we know, those who talked with the gods (theologoi) were Homer and Hesiod -for these Orpheotelests may well be called 'theologians', not in the sense of the classic poets, but in the ekdotic sense of a specialist who creates discourses about the sacred. In this way, the so-called 'Orphic' movement would have carried out a theological, soteriological ekdosis of the Dionysian mysteries and, possibly, of the Greek mysteries in general.
a. Doctrine 34 The doctrine attributed to Orpheus is, like his image, 29 As we can see in the Eleusinian and Dionysian cults. 30  difficult to identify. Despite the fame of so-called 'Orphism' or of the 'orphicoi' as a religious or philosophical movement, the theoretical corpus of a coherent and stable organization is nowhere to be found among the currently available epigraphic evidence 35 . Nonetheless, the doctrinal elements which it has been possible clearly to identify are of the utmost importance for sociology and religious history.
Their themes seem to pertain to a re-reading of the myth of Dionysus and its mystery practices, a reordering of Hesiod's Theogony and, at a later date, explanations and interpretations taken from pre-Socratic philosophy. 36 40 , take him by surprise, kill him and cut him to pieces.
Then they cook his flesh in a pot over a tripod 41 , and after roasting it on a spit, eat it in a theophagic banquet. But the heart (or phallus) of the boy-god is rescued by the goddess Rhea (or Athena, according to a different version), who puts his limbs together again, after which he resuscitates 42 .
Seeing this horrible spectacle, Zeus strikes the Titans with a thunderbolt. From their ashes is born the human race 43 .
Human nature, then, is essentially evil, due to its titanic content, but it contains a divine spark because the remains of Dionysus were amongst the ashes. This anthropogenic event forms the basis for the account of a dualistic doctrine which conceives of the human being as composed of two realities: the body (sōma) and the soul (psychē) 44 . The soul is of Dionysian origin, divine. But the body is titanic, earthly, perishable and impure 45 . In this morphology, the psyche is locked in the body like a prison or tomb (sēma), from which it must escape and save itself. Plato says: "... in the present, we are dead and the body is for us a tomb (σήμα)...) 46 . But the same etymon, sōma (σωμα) also means "corpse" 47 .
The doctrine, then, becomes clearer. The soul is united to the body as a consequence of a prior murder 48 , a grave sin against the divinity: a son of Zeus (Διός, in the genitive). It has been stained 49 by the stigma of the death of a god. But the soul can be saved through a teletē 50 , a ritual in which, after a number of lustral practices of purification, it relives the passion and death of the god. Thus, a doctrine of salvation (soteriology) for the soul 51 is construed, which requires first a cathartic process, purifying of the 'sinning matter', and above all, an initiation into the Dionysian mysteries; a knowledge which was acquired by the living person, to be used as password and cartography 52 in Hades.
The teletē, then, implied a promise of salvation 53  What awaited the uninitiated (amyetri) was to be reincarnated indefinitely in human beings or animals 57 , unless he entered the brotherhood of the initiates. The teletē, then, holds 'revealed' truth, like a kind of scatological password for the soul, and like scriptural gnosis which only the mystai (initiates) could discover; knowledge, in the final analysis, as alētheia 58 , 'memory' of revelation through a sacred text (hieros logoi?) as we can read in the best known Orphic formulae: "I shall sing for the knowledgeable, close the doors to the profane" and "I shall speak for those for whom it is right, close the doors to the profane" 59 .
But purification obtained through cult technē had to be maintained with orphikos bios 60 , which meant a pure life, with very clear taboos against anything which could stain the soul. This implied puritan conduct, watchful against bodily appetites. In particular, this prescription is reflected in diet which is not only vegetarian but has specific restrictions within that regime. The rejection of meat can be understood as a consequence of the central mytheme: its consumption is a kind of anthropophagy, titanic conduct. But the restrictions within the regime are harder to explain, such as the taboo on eating broad beans 61  In synthesis, it can be said that so-called "Orphism" is a doctrine of salvation, with cult practices, for some, 'mysteries', in which lustrations and secret liturgy were performed.

Aetiology
For the purposes of this paper, I will use aetiology in the sense of what is referred to as "cause", or the conditions which enable us to understand an image, an event or a cult practice 63 . When a condition has a clearly causal meaning in the explanation, in our case, of an element of the mythos or of the ritual or of a political practice, it can be called aition.
Using this hermeneutic resource, I shall attempt to show the aition within the mythic narration itself, the information obtained from primary sources about the Orphic teletē and the psychosocial and political context in which this religious reform took place. The notion of aitia may be useful, methodologically, for establishing possible links between the vicissitudes of power in the polis and daily forms of worship. In the case of the 'Orphic' religion, this resource will be particularly helpful, since it represents a radical reform of mystery practices through a teleological discourse which distances it from polytheism and brings it close to henotheism (due to the centrality of Zeus and his role as liberator, sōtēr), thus creating a very propitious ethos for the arrival of the first monotheism in the Mediterranean (in a descriptive, not evaluative, sense). a. Orpheus. Like his alter ego Dionysus, Orpheus is a foreign god, coming perhaps from Thrace. Some sources mention his passing through Egypt where he would have come into contact with the Osirian mysteries and their funeral rites 64 .
There are also evident similarities to near-eastern deities, for example, the river-god, or the doctor-god Zalmoxis, from Thrace itself. His very name is noteworthy. Although the etymology is 63 Although, in current medical usage, it refers to the cause of illness, it etymology (αιτία) links it diachronically, first with mythos as the 'cause' or explanation of an event or phenomenon (for example the cycle of the seasons, or the domestication of cereals in the myth of Demeter-Persephone; or the culture of the vine and wine in the myth of Dionysus); then with aitia, as the 'cause' of a transgression or offence in the legal sense, and finally, it passes into Hippocratic medicine in the V century BCE, with the sense it has today. I will use the words aetiology, aitia and aition in the general sense mentioned above. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: los ideales de la cultura griega (México: F.C.E, 1.985), 160 sees, in the famous and obscure fragment from Anaximander, the transition of the word aitia, from mythic-juridical 'causality' to naturalistic causality: "... so they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice in accordance with the ordering of time". Simplicius Phys. 24, 13 Diels 12 A 9. 64 Cf. Diodorus of Sicily, 1, 96, 4-5.
strange, it could suggest the verbal action of "separating" and connotations of lack, orphanhood, 'chthonic darkness' 65 .
It is the name of someone who has experienced death but has returned to life through his own dissolution. This is a pathos 'genealogically' linked with shamanism, not only in the Mediterranean but, possibly, also in most of the world 66 .
There is a magical cartography which sets out three levels of reality: heaven, earth and the underworld. The aspiring shaman, whose role will later be, in general, that of chief priest, doctor and judge, must begin the initiation process on earth, from the sacred space designated for the ceremony. Then he descends into the underworld, along an axis mundi or central shaft, where he undergoes processes of derealisation and bodily fragmentation and observes the horrors of the spirit world. If he gets past this part of the process, his parts are reunited and the initiand will ascend to heaven where he finds all the images and realities of protecting spirits and the structure of the world 67 . On his return, he is someone who has knowledge 68 , he is a shaman.
In line with the above, Orpheus seems to be a mythic figure with survivals of shamanic magic 69 , although his name, according to classical sources, appears in historical narratives which go no further back than the VI century BCE, since he is not mentioned by Homer or Hesiod 70 .
b. Philosophical-religious syncretism. The Derveni Papyrus, discovered in 1962 in a funeral pyre near Thessalonica, is the oldest and most complete source of its length on the subject of the cosmogony considered Orphic 71 and makes the legitimizing move to a philosophical discourse on it. Through the use of the written medium 72 , the events of the creation and the divine genealogies canonically established by Hesiod 73 are modified 74 .
The first point is the reorganization of the pantheon so that Zeus not only governs from on high, but, through his son Dionysus as his successor 75 76 , while the 'phenomenology' of the other deities is radically reduced, leading to a kind of henotheism 77 not to say monotheism. 78 Zeus sōtēr (σωτήρ), 'saviour' 79 , is subtly insinuating himself through the suffering, the passion of his son Dionysus. This soteriological desire for salvation may be explained with reference to the pre-Socratic notion of logos. In order to sustain the body-soul dualism, it appeals to Heraclitean oppositions: "... immortals, mortals; mortals, immortals ... the former living the latter's death and the latter dying the former's life" 80  between what is known as 'Orphism' and philosophy. But it is perhaps not going too far to think that, among these relations, that of Orphic written exegesis is the one which has drunk most deeply from the fountains of the philosophical knowledge of its time 87 .
c. Synoecism. Among aetiological considerations, synoecism has a special place, as a hypothesis, in the hermeneutics of the mysteries which I am carrying out in a cycle of lectures about ancient Greek religiosity 88 . I wish here only to make brief mention of the fact that the word synoecism refers to the complex process of unification of Attica which began mythically with Theseus and historically from the VII and VI centuries BCE 89 I have attempted to relate this major socio-historical process with the configuration of cult practices, above all those of the mysteries, to see whether their morphology and function reflect the internal and external political needs of the polis. In this regard also, 'Orphism' shows great complexity. Regardless of whether or not we accept the foundational roles of Orpheus 90 , or even the existence of an Orphic movement 91 , it is clear from the primary sources 92  In the second half of the VI century, the tyrant Pisistratus conceived the project of editing the poetry of Homer and Hesiod 94 and the oracles of Mousaios who, as we know, appears in the mythography as friend and follower of Orpheus and who is, moreover, son of the bard, Eumolpos. It seems that the person responsible for this ekdotic editorial work was Onomacritos 95 .  The division established by the taxon: public religiosity / private religiosity defined by different dates (and places) in the official calendar, which, in its turn, corresponds to the spring-autumn-winter seasonal cycle, is resolved by an implicit third element, originating perhaps in private ritual and legitimized in the publicly known mythos in agrarian festivals. This third element is Dionysus, both in the Eleusinian mysteries and in the Dionysian mysteries themselves. In the civic processions in spring, he appears as . He is the patriarchal authority ('solar') over the polis introduced into (private) mystic experience in order, from there, to exercise symbolic control over the social margins. In the Dionysian festivals, above all in the Choes, Dionysus appears as a god of wine which has matured, of the vine which has been 'cooked' by underground fermentation and opens huge pithoi (of wine) for the consumption exclusively of the men.
Pisistratus kept nearly all the regulations concerning religious matters going and made them official 105 . But before this, during his first ten-year exile, he became rich as a trader in the gold and silver mines of Thrace. There he must have learnt about the shamanic practices of Zalmoxis 106 and, on its home territory, about the Orphic religion.
With the knowledge of Onomacritos and his possible political interests as well as the psycho-social conditions of the polis at that time, the reform of Dionysism begins to take shape, textually; one reform which leads perhaps to a 102 As son of Zeus and Demeter. 103 See Callimachus fr. 43 Pfeiffer. 104 It should be remembered that the teletai of the major Demeter-Persephone mysteries were held in the city of Eleusis (on the periphery of Athens), at night, by torchlight. And the Dionysian orgies were held in the mountains (periphery) during the winter (dark, 'lunar'). But, mutatis mutandis, the public component of these mysteries was held showily and noisily in Athens, perhaps since the time of Solon, at least as far as its regulation is concerned, but possibly earlier, associated with or produced during the process of Attic synoecism. 105 We know that VI century Athens was dominated by Pisistratus and his sons, although there is no epigraphic evidence for the making of laws in this period. This may be due to a stasis in the legislative activity of the Ekklesia. However, an inscription from the end of the century relates to regulation of the Eleusinian mysteries. It should be remembered that Hippias, son of Pisistratus, was expelled from Athens between 511 and 510 BCE. See Sickinger, 53; De la Nuez Pérez, 103. 106 According to Herodotus 4, 94 A.D. Godley, the Thracians believed that they did not die, but that "the dead went to the god Zalmoxis", who may have been the bear-god of a secret brotherhood. See Loisy,35. conservative line for the dēmos 107 (and also the aristoi).
This is a personal, liturgical line, subject now to the discourse of a theology which is neither epiphanic nor orgiastic and lacks the political-emotional influences of the bacchanalia 108 . This line became a kind of itinerant priesthood, the Orpheotelests 109 , which, as had happened with the Eleusinian hierophants and the clergy of the Dionysian celebrations and liturgies, gradually degenerated into explicit forms of exploitation and profane handling of the access to the priesthood and the lustral activities they offered, especially to the oikos of the elite, to purify them of their wicked actions and give them passwords or 'indulgences' for a better stay in Hades, in exchange for ample monetary remuneration. Plato, in the Republic 110 , seems to refer to these so-called Orpheotelests (priests of Dionysus) who threatened terrible suffering to those who did not heed them. Comparatively speaking, this is not a mystery religion or cult, like the Eleusinian or Dionysian mysteries, characterized by the liminality of rites of passage which do not set up a dialectic of exclusion with respect to epiphany and public festivals; it is rather a new form of political ethos, based on the closed dialectic of an exclusive binary opposition, taking the ideological form of a brotherhood or group which has privileged access to secret, written 107 But in another way less conservative (in tragedy) the seal of religion would be evident, not only in the general sense of being "the confession of democracy," as Bachofen, 212 has wisely suggested, but also in the qualitative aspect of an intention to purify through the tragic emotions aroused by the theatrical performances. See Richard Seaford, "Sophocles and the mysteries," Hermes 3 (1994): 275. Tragedy could also reflect the political opposition dēmoi / aristoi, or masses / elite of Athenian democracy: the educated who write or speak for the uneducated dēmos. Josiah Ober and Barry Strauss, "Drama, Political Rhetoric, and Discourse of Athenian Democracy," in John J. Winkler, F. Zeitlin, Nothing to do with Dionysos?: Athenian drama in its social context (Princeton University Press, 1992), 238 ff. For a linguistic-psychological approach to the tensions affecting the polis, especially the danger of kinēsis politeia, (political revolution), see Thucydides III 82ff Dent (especially III, 83.1). 108 "The Greeks lacked a salvation complex" Kerenyi. La religión Antigua, 202. After the foundational writing of the soteriological reform of the mysteries by Onomacritos, the cult and its itinerant manifestations uttered by the Orpheotelests, undergoes great changes. For Colli, for example, these changes are of a reactionary nature: in the second half of the V century, we find written poetry, asceticism and vegetarianism (corresponding to Euripides's time): in the first half of the IV century BCE, books, magic, punishments beyond the grave for the impure (mocked by Plato); in the second half: magic and charlatanism ( here we find, for example, the picturesque passage by Demosthenes: On the crown 18, 259-260 Vince. 109 See Theophrastus The Characters 16, 11-13. 110 362e-365a Burnet. revelations; it lacks the 'therapeutic' option of a third element (as in the Eleusinian mysteries, in which Dionysus is that third element which offers a way out of the binary dialectic of exclusion between the public and private spheres) being the only 'good' choice possible, with Zeus as the supreme deity who governs through his son Dionysus 111 and his invocations. Apparently, it is here no longer a matter of a mystery ritual which turns to writing to validate its truth as mythos 112 , but the textual legitimization of an Apollonian-tyrannical power, a logos politicos, disseminated as mythos, as soteriological reform perhaps 113 , through the ekdotic-administrative functions of Onomacritos during the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons. This religious reform represents a new form of "economy of salvation" 114 , made more radical by its distance from the naturalistic dimensions of the mysteries and more subtle when read as a binary grammar which situates it despotically amongst the necessities of an imperial vocation of the polis. This Orphic Zeus is a true tyrant, not so much in the popular sense of Zeus as all-powerful, but rather having the power of Uranus 115 .

Conclusions
The information which today we know as "Orphism" 111 It should be remembered that Solon had established Apollo Patroos (a solar adjustment based on Helios) for the descent of the citizens of Athens. In the Homeric period, solarisation is based on Zeus. However, the cult of Pythian Apollo (a solar incarnation of Zeus) had already been introduced by Pisistratus as a political measure. See Mirian Valdés, "El culto de Apolo Patroos en las fratrías," Gerión, 12 (1994) 45-61. 112 Robertson has pointed out what he considers to be the error of considering the Orphic teletai to be a category in comparative religious history. According to this author, the traditional mystery teletai officiated in public worship like festivals in which the theme of the earth's fertility is reproduced. In the case of Orphism, with a mythos written or reproduced ad hoc for the purpose of validating a teletē, this comparative condition does not hold. See Noel Robertson, "Orphic mysteries and dionysiac ritual," in Cosmopoulos, 220-221. This idea of the rite as a naturalistic base for the myth had already been expounded by Loisy,21. 113 There is a change of faith, based on the notion that "human nature is fundamentally corrupt" See Otto, 180 114 Loisy, 20. 115 Colli points out that by the V century sectarian reaction and doctrinal decadence were evident. Plato, Protagoras 316d, for example, speaks of the "devotees of Orpheus and Mousaios"; Theophrastus describes the Orpheotelests, priests of Orpheus, The Characters, 16, 11/13. A writer in the V century AD gives an idea of how popular Orphism was and of its degradation: "Well, an old woman, for twenty mites or a pint of wine will spin you an Orphic spell..." Athanasius of Alexandria., cod. Reg. 1993 fr. 317 (fr. 822 B.; M. 26. 1320) See Jimenez San Cristobal, Los rituales, 608.
suggests a soteriological reform of the Dionysian mysteries and, perhaps, of the Greek mysteries in general, possibly initiated under the influence of Attic synoecism.
It is a reform which shows a shift or transition in the historical ethos of classical culture (based on valuing and caring for the sōma or body, which allowed expansion and orgiastic pleasure in the psychē, as its prolongation or epiphenomenon most famously exemplified in Dionysian mania) towards caring for the soul, which demanded condemning the body and its desires, for the sake of the promise of a perfect form of pleasure, purified pleasure, in the hereafter.
From the myth of Dionysus, comes the mytheme of his suffering in the various urban epidemics in which he is seen to be rejected or persecuted, his dreadful death at the hands of the Titans and his resurrection thanks to divine will. The suffering and death of Orpheus are akin to those of his alter ego, Dionysus. The knowledge of life and death which he has acquired is not transmitted through the experience of the Dionysian orgy, but through the text-word, in the sense of divine 'revelation.' This word, as logos of a mythos, conserves its 'mysterious' character. But part of the mystery is understood through 'textual' interpretation. The central mytheme states that the wrongdoing of the Titans against the deity has been passed on to humans. But also a part of Dionysus. We find a precedent of guilt along with hope of salvation. Guilt requires expiation through a 'good life' Salvation requires 'revelation,' encrypted in the word, the key to avoiding wandering and getting lost in the afterlife.
It could be the path towards a personal god, who was at the same time the only god, who ruled over the others. A god for tyranny? A god for the dēmos? A god for democracy?