ments. Athens, so celebrated later, was one of the principal ones.[1]
These events, these revolutions, calamitous in appearance, were in reality to produce great benefits. Greece, already impregnated with the learning of the Phœnicians, which she had obtained and elaborated, afterward received that of the Egyptians and elaborated it still further. A man born in the heart of Thrace, but carried in his childhood into Egypt through the desire for knowledge,[2] returned to his country with one of the Egyptian colonies, to kindle there the new light. He was initiated into all the mysteries of religion and science: he surpassed, said Pausanias, all those who had preceded him, by the beauty of his verse, the sublimity of his chants, and the profoundness of his knowledge in the art of healing and of appeasing the gods.[3] This was Orpheus: he took this name from that of his doctrine[4] which aimed to cure and to save by knowledge.
I should greatly overstep the limits that I have prescribed for this discourse if I should recall in detail all that Greece owed to this celebrated man. The mythological tradition has consecrated in a brilliant allegory the efforts which he made to restore to men the truth which they had lost. His love for Eurydice, so much sung by the poets, is but the symbol of the divine science for which he longed.[5] The name of this mysterious spouse, whom he vainly wished to return to the light, signified only the doctrine of the true science, the teaching of what is beautiful and veritable, by which he tried to enrich the earth. But
- ↑ Plat., in Tim. Dial. Theopomp. apud Euseb., Præp. Evan., l. x., c. 10. Diod. Sicul., l. i., initio.
- ↑ Diodor. Sicul., l. i., initio.
- ↑ Pausan., Bœot., p. 768.
- ↑ This word is Egyptian and Phœnician alike. It is composed of the words אור (aur), light, and רפא (rophœ), cure, salvation.
- ↑ Eurydice, in Greek Εὐρυδίκη, comes from the Phœnician words ראח (rohe), vision, clearness, evidence, and דכ (dich), that which demonstrates or teaches: these two words are preceded by the Greek adverb εὖ, which expresses all that is good, happy, and perfect in its kind.
