Good Works Translation from Ancient Greek

This page translates Kern fragment 222 from the Orphic Sacred Discourses in Twenty-Four Rhapsodies. The witness is Proclus on Plato's Republic, arguing that Plato took his underworld arrangements from Orpheus: purification and gentler fate at Acheron, punishment in Tartarus, and the doctrine of transmigrations.

Translation

Kern Fr. 222 — Acheron and Cold Tartarus

Proclus says that Plato also took other things from Orpheus and made myths from them. For example, he took the teaching that people are purified in Acheron and obtain a certain good lot:

Those who purify themselves beneath the rays of the Sun,
when they die again, have a gentler fate
in a beautiful meadow around deep-flowing Acheron.

He also took the teaching that people are punished in Tartarus:

But those who have done unjust things beneath the rays of the Sun,
violent ones, are led down under the slab of Cocytus,
into cold Tartarus.

Through these lines, Proclus says, Plato plainly appears to have received the arrangements concerning the lots below the earth, just as he also received those concerning transmigrations. If Plato arranges these things while following Orpheus, is it not ridiculous, Proclus says, though he refrains from calling it unlawful, to drag down the leader of such doctrines, doctrines by which Plato's philosophy differs from all the others, into irrational animals and to make him the soul of a swan?

Plato himself, in the Timaeus, says that the guidance concerning divine things is trustworthy, even though it is spoken without likely arguments or demonstrations, because it comes from one who knows through divine inspiration, especially about the gods as fathers. If anyone is father of theogony among the Greeks, Proclus says, it is the one to whom Plato himself, when he intends to hand down theogony, traces back the truth about it through the first transmitters.

Colophon

This Good Works translation was made from Otto Kern's Orphicorum fragmenta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922), fr. 222, in the section headed "Hieroi logoi en rhapsodiais ka'." Kern's numbering is retained.

The source witness translated here is Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Republic, as printed by Kern.

Source Text

Kern Fr. 222 — Proclus

Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Republic:

ἐπεὶ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα παρ' Ὀρφέως (sc. ὁ Πλάτων) ἐμυθολόγησεν λαβών, οἷον ὅτι ἐν τῶι Ἀχέροντι καθαίρονται καὶ τυγχάνουσιν εὐμοιρίας τινός·

οἳ μὲν κ' εὐαγέωσιν ὑπ' αὐγὰς ἠελίοιο,
αὖτις ἀποφθίμενοι μαλακώτερον οἶτον ἔχουσιν
ἐν καλῶι λειμῶνι βαθύρροον ἀμφ' Ἀχέροντα,

καὶ ὅτι κολάζονται ἐν τῶι Ταρτάρωι·

οἱ δ' ἄδικα ῥέξαντες ὑπ' αὐγὰς ἠελίοιο
ὑβρισταὶ κατάγονται ὑπὸ πλάκα Κωκυτοῖο
Τάρταρον ἐς κρυόεντα.

διὰ γὰρ τούτων σαφῶς τὰς Πλατωνικὰς διατάξεις περὶ τῶν ὑπὸ γῆς λήξεων φαίνεται παραλαβών, ὥσπερ καὶ τὰς περὶ τῶν μετεμψυχώσεων. εἰ δὲ ταῦτα ἑπόμενος Ὀρφεῖ διατάττει Πλάτων, ἆρ' οὐ γελοῖόν ἐστιν -- ἀφίημι γὰρ ἀθέμιτον λέγειν -- τὸν τῶν τοιούτων ἡγεμόνα δογμάτων, οἷς ἡ Πλάτωνος φιλοσοφία διαφέρει τῶν ἄλλων ἁπασῶν, εἰς ἄλογα ζῶια κατάγειν καὶ κύκνου ψυχὴν ποιεῖν; οὗ καὶ τὴν περὶ τῶν θείων ὑφήγησιν αὐτὸς ἐν Τιμαίωι πιστὴν εἶναί φησιν καίπερ ἄνευ τε εἰκότων λόγων καὶ ἀποδείξεων λεγομένην, ὡς δι' ἐνθεασμὸν εἰδότος μάλιστα τὰ τῶν θεῶν πατέρων ὄντων, εἴ τις ἔστιν τῆς θεογονίας τοῖς Ἕλλησιν πατήρ, ἣν αὐτὸς παραδοῦναι προθέμενος ἐπὶ τοὺς παραδόντας πρώτους ἀνάγει τὴν περὶ αὐτῆς ἀλήθειαν.