Orpheus Author:George Robert Stow Mead Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. ORPHIC WORKS. The Logia. I Have already in the last chapter spoken of several Syntheses or Symphonies of the L,ogia of the great teachers of classical a... more »ntiquity. Now a Logion is a " great saying," and it has precisely the same meaning as Maha-vakyam, the technical term applied to the twelve great mystical utterances of the Upanishads, such as " That art Thou," etc. These L,ogia were universally recognised as words of wisdom, and were the most sacred legacies of the sages to humanity. They were collected together and formed the most precious " deposits" (SiaOyKai) of the various nations, the same term being also given to the Christian Bible. Thus Herodotus calls Onomacritus a "depository of oracles " (Siaflt'nyv xpwv-uv), the word carrying the meaning of " one who arranges," corresponding to the term Vyasa in Sanskrit.These collections of Logia were then generally called " deposits," the word also bearing the meaning of " testaments " as containing the divine will or dispensation. The same word is used by Strabo (x. 482) of the Laws of I/ycurgus, and ecclesiastical writers refer to the canonical books as ivSidOfroi (Eusebius, CAron., p. 990). Hence it is that the commentators or arrangers of these scriptures are called 8ia0eYai, the name applied by Herodotus to Onomacritus. Grotius declares that the term (Saftj/oj) was applied by the Orphics and Pythagoreans to such sacred laws (c/. Jablonski, 397)- These collections were also called Sacred Utterances ('lepol Aoyoi), and Clemens Alexan- drinus refers to one such saying of Orpheus as " that truly sacred utterance" (jbv Oits itpbv 6yov—L,obeck, op. ctt., p. 714). Secret Works. Such books were very carefully guarded and were the secret scriptures or bibles of many states. Cicero (De Div., i. 44) speaks of such...« less