Good Works Translation from Ancient Greek

This page translates Kern fragment 221 from the Orphic Sacred Discourses in Twenty-Four Rhapsodies. The witness is Proclus on Plato's Republic, reading Plato's Phaedo as a guarded disclosure of secret teachings: human life in a guard, the soul's purified and unpurified lots, symbolic rites, Hades roads, Dionysiac tokens, and Titanic faults.

Translation

Kern Fr. 221 — The Secret Guard and the Symbolic Roads

Proclus says that Plato, in the Phaedo, reveals the teaching spoken in secret: that we human beings are in a kind of guard. Plato reveres this teaching with fitting silence.

He also bears witness to the rites, speaking of the different lots of the soul as it goes to Hades, purified or unpurified. He infers the divisions and the three roads from sacred and ancestral ordinances. All these things are full of symbolic contemplation: the ascents and descents that are celebrated among the poets, the so-called Dionysiac tokens and Titanic faults, the three roads in Hades, the wandering, and all things of that kind.

Therefore Plato himself would not entirely dishonor such myth-making. Rather, he considered it unsuited to the educational purpose of the young, and for this reason he hands down the patterns of theology in forms proportioned to the characters of those being educated.

Colophon

This Good Works translation was made from Otto Kern's Orphicorum fragmenta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922), fr. 221, 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. 221 — Proclus

Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Republic:

δηλοῖ (sc. ὁ Πλάτων) δὲ ἐν Φαίδωνι (62 b; 69 c; 108 a; v. fragments 5 and 7) τό τε ἐν ἀπορρήτοις λεγόμενον, ὡς ἔν τινι φρουρᾶι ἐσμεν οἱ ἄνθρωποι, σιγῆι τῆι πρεπούσηι σέβων, καὶ τὰς τελετὰς μαρτυρόμενος τῶν διαφόρων λήξεων τῆς ψυχῆς κεκαθαρμένης τε καὶ ἀκαθάρτου εἰς Ἅιδου ἀπιούσης, καὶ τάς τε σχίσεις αὖ καὶ τὰς τριόδους ἀπὸ τῶν ὁσίων καὶ τῶν πατρίων θεσμῶν τεκμαιρόμενος, ἃ δὴ τῆς συμβολικῆς ἅπαντα θεωρίας ἐστὶ μεστά, καὶ τῶν παρὰ τοῖς ποιηταῖς θρυλουμένων ἀνόδων τε καὶ καθόδων, τῶν τε Διονυσιακῶν συνθημάτων καὶ τῶν Τιτανικῶν ἁμαρτημάτων λεγομένων, καὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου τριόδων καὶ τῆς πλάνης καὶ τῶν τοιούτων ἁπάντων. ὥστ' οὐδ' ἂν αὐτὸς παντελῶς ἀτιμάσειεν τὴν τοιαύτην μυθοποιΐαν, ἀλλ' ὡς πρὸς τὴν παιδευτικὴν τῶν νέων προαίρεσιν ἀλλοτρίαν αὐτὴν ὑπείληφεν· καὶ διὰ ταῦτα τοὺς τῆς θεολογίας τύπους συμμέτρους τοῖς τῶν παιδευτικῶν ἥθεσιν παραδίδωσιν.