chapter 10 the monism of darkness and the dualism of limit and ...

106 CHAPTER 10
28. The manuscripts have KÚfiÓÔÓ but Zoegas’ emendation is obvious. When
Cronos is put in the supreme position (as in Pherecydes) then his name
hints at Time. When, by contrast, the Titan of Mythology is also present,
then Chronus at the beginning of the sequence is not Cronos. The Orphic
teachings in all variations certainly comprised the myths about Cronos. Cf.
Orphic Argonautica v. 426.
29. Ovid presents this theory of first principles and aboriginal beginnings also
as a symbolic interpretation of the double-faced god Ianus. Fasti I 103 sqq.:
the god is speaking:
Me Chaos antiqui, nam sum res prisca, vocabant.
Aspice, quam longi temporis acta canam.
Lucidus hic aer, et quae tria corpora restant,
ignis, aquae, tellus, unus acervus erant.
Ut semel haec rerum secessit lite suarum
inque novas abiit massa soluta domos,
altum flamma petit; proprior locus aera cepit:
sederunt medio terra fretumque solo.
Tunc ego, qui fueram globus (= Empedocles’ Sphairos) et sine
imagine moles,
in faciem redii dignaque membra deo.
...
117 Quicquid ubique vides, caelum, mare, nubila, terras,
omnia sunt nostra clausa patentque manu.
Me penes est unum vasti custodia mundi,
et ius vertendi cardinis omne meum est.
Here the transition from the formlessness of primaeval Indeterminacy
(\AappleÂÈÚ›·) to the present World-Order is an internal development that
accords with the Monism of Darkness. In the Metamorphoses, on the other
hand, the creative deus et melior natura seem to come from the outside, but
the subject is not clarified. A Neopythagorean Dualistic Conception of first
principles may be implied, though my interpretation in the text above, with
Phanes as offspring of Darkness, is more plausible. The third principle
mentioned in the Timaeus (the Demiurgue) constitutes a symbolic scheme
that ultimately is reducible to the orthodox classic Pythagorean Dualism.
30. In a fragment from Euripides Hypsipyle (409 B.C.) the early Orphic
doctrine seems to be resonant; Fr. 57 (p. 59 Arnim) = OF 2. (The
interpretation of Cataudella, Sulla “Teogonia” di Antifane e sui frammenti
del “Piritoo” di Euripide, Athenaeum 10 (1932), p. 263-4 is erroneous):