THE most important literary document extant on Orphic ceremonial is a fragment of the Cretans of Euripides, preserved for us by Porphyry in his treatise on ‘Abstinence from Animal Food’ a passage Porphyry says he had ‘almost forgotten to mention.’
From an allusion in Aristophanes to ‘Cretan monodies and unhallowed marriages’ it seems probable that the Cretans dealt with the hapless wedlock of Pasiphae, The fragment, Porphyry tells us, was spoken by the chorus of Cretan mystics who have come to the palace of Minos. It is possible they may have come to purify it from the recent pollution.
The mystics by the mouth of their leader make full and definite confession of the faith, or rather acknowledgement of the ritual acts, by which a man became a ‘Bacchos,’ and they add a statement of the nature of the life he was thereafter bound to lead.
Though our source is a poetical one, we learn from it, perhaps to our surprise, that to become a ‘Bacchos’ it was necessary to do a good deal more than dance enthusiastically upon the mountains. The confession runs as follows:
‘Lord of Europa’s Tyrian line,
Zeus-born, who boldest at thy feet
The hundred citadels of Crete,
I seek to thee from that dim shrine,
Hoofed by the Quick and Carven Beam,
By Chalyb steel and wild bull’s blood
In flawless joints of cypress wood
Made steadfast. There in one pure stream
My days have run, the servant I,
Initiate, of Idaean Jove;
Where midnight Zagreus roves, I rove;
I have endured his thunder-cry:
Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts;
Held the Great Mother’s mountain flame;
I am Set Free and named by name
A Bacchos of the Mailed Priests.
Robed in pure white I have borne me clean
From man’s vile birth and coffined clay,
And exiled from my lips alway
Touch of all meat where Life hath been.’
