484.

(2) Hermias in Phaedr. ap. Lobeck, i. 493.

(3) Suidas s. v. Phanes.

Nothing can be easier or more delusive than to explain all this wild
part of the Orphic cosmogony as an allegorical veil of any modern ideas
we choose to select. But why the "allegory" should closely imitate the
rough guesses of uncivilised peoples, Ahts, Diggers, Zunis, Cahrocs,
it is less easy to explain. We can readily imagine African or American
tribes who were accustomed to revere bulls, rams, snakes, and so forth,
ascribing the heads of all their various animal patrons to the deity of
their confederation. We can easily see how such races as practise the
savage rites of puberty should attribute to the first being the special
organs of Phanes. But on the Neo-Platonic hypothesis that Orpheus was a
seer of Neo-Platonic opinions, we do not see why he should have
veiled his ideas under so savage an allegory. This part of the Orphic
speculation is left in judicious silence by some modern commentators,
such as M. Darmesteter in Les Cosmogonies Aryennes.(1) Indeed, if we
choose to regard Apollonius Rhodius, an Alexandrine poet writing in a
highly civilised age, as the representative of Orphicism, it is easy
to mask and pass by the more stern and characteristic fortresses of
the Orphic divine. The theriomorphic Phanes is a much less "Aryan" and
agreeable object than the glorious golden-winged Eros, the love-god of
Apollonius Rhodius and Aristophanes.(2)

(1) Essais Orientaux, p. 166.

(2) Argonautica, 1-12; Aves, 693.

On the whole, the Orphic fragments appear to contain survivals of savage
myths of the origin of things blended with purer speculations. The
savage ideas are finally explained by late philosophers as allegorical
veils and vestments of philosophy; but the interpretation is arbitrary,
and varies with the taste and fancy of each interpreter. Meanwhile the
coincidence of the wilder elements with the speculations native to races
in the lowest grades of civilisation is undeniable. This opinion is
confirmed by the Greek myths of the origin of Man. These, too, coincide
with the various absurd conjectures of savages.

In studying the various Greek local legends of the origin of Man, we
encounter the difficulty of separating them from the myths of heroes,
which it will be more convenient to treat separately. This difficulty we
have already met in our treatment of savage traditions of the beginnings
of the race. Thus we saw that amo