ABSTRACT
Orphic belief, as it was finally expressed in the multi-volume creation story or Rhapsodies of late antiquity, held that this world would have been a better place but for a thwarting of the original design. The Orphic creation story, like others, proceeded from phantasmagorical beginnings to the triumph of Zeus, but represented Zeus as intending a further and final development. For he begot a successor god and even enthroned him while still a boy: this was Dionysus son of Persephone, herself both Zeus’ own daughter and his queen. The ruination of this plan by the Titans leaves us with the same imperfect world under Zeus, and with Persephone and Dionysus as we know them, respectively queen of the underworld and lord of wine and its all-toofleeting happiness. Yet knowledge of the plan is redemptive for one who passes from this life to the next, to the realm of Persephone. Orphic believers also acted out their faith in ritual, as prescribed in other books. Such then is the picture as we see it later – after the Rhapsodies were compiled from a mass of pre-existing material, no earlier than the second century BC, possibly much later.
