Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

PHILOSOPH. BOOK I.

...But those who assign its invention to the barbarians also bring forward Orpheus the Thracian, as having been a philosopher, and a very ancient one at that. Diogenes? n. ed 365. see?. Lactantius, book of Divine Institutions 7, and On the Anger and woman [in] book IV. 8. Truly, whether he who devised such things about the gods should be called a philosopher, I do not know. Let those, certainly, who wish it so, see by what name he is to be judged, who ascribes to the gods vices that are rarely committed even by base and flagitious men. It is rumored, however, that he was torn apart by women and perished. But from that epigram which is inscribed at Dium in Macedonia, it is known that he perished by a thunderbolt, where he is also asserted to have been buried by the Muses.

The Muses buried here the Thracian Orpheus of the golden lyre,
Whom high-thundering Zeus slew with a smoky bolt. that is,
The Aonides placed here the Thracian, pierced by a glowing thunderbolt,
Along with his golden lyre.

barbarians

Gymnosophists

They also explain the customs and institutions of those individuals who say that the barbarians were the princes of philosophy. They say that the Gymnosophists and Druids philosophize obscurely and through maxims: that the gods are to be worshipped, nothing evil is to be done, and courage is to be practiced. Clitarchus asserts in his twelfth book that the former are also contemptuous of death. Chaldeans The Chaldeans are occupied with the accounts and predictions of astronomy. Magi Lambert. p? drom? f. 77. The Magi are devoted to the worship of the gods, and offer prayers and vows and sacrifices to them, as if they alone were heard by them; they discourse about the substance and generation of the gods; they likewise consider them to be fire, earth, and water; they reprehend signs and statues, and especially disprove the errors of those who say the gods are male and female. They speak of justice, and consider it inequitable and impious to bury [the dead] with fire. It is just for a mother to be joined to her son, as Sotion says in the twenty-third book. Furthermore, [they treat of] divination and prediction...