savage, appearance. It was the opinion of Lobeck that the Orphic poems, in which the legend first comes into literature, were the work of Onomacritus.[1] On the other hand, Müller argued that the myth was really archaic, although it had passed through the hands of Onomacritus. On the strength of the boast of the Delphian priests that they possessed the grave in which the fragments of the god were buried, Müller believed that Onomacritus received the story from Delphi.[2] Müller writes, "The way in which these Orphics went to work with ancient myths can be most distinctly seen in the mythus of the tearing asunder of Bacchus, which, at all events, passed through the hands of Onomacritus, an organiser of Dionysian orgies, according to Pausanias, an author of Orphean poems also, and therefore, in all probability, an Orphicus."
The words of Pausanias are (viii. 37, 3), "Onomacritus, taking from Homer the name of the Titans, established Dionysiac orgies, and represented the Titans as the authors of the sorrows of the god."
Now it is perhaps impossible to decide with certainty whether, as Lobeck held, Onomacritus "adapted" the myth, and the Delphians received it into their religion, with rites purposely meant to resemble those of Osiris in Egypt, or whether Müller more correctly maintains that Onomacritus, on the other hand, brought an old temple mystery and "sacred chapter" into the light of literature. But it may very plausibly be maintained that a myth so wild, and so analogous in its most brutal
