アテナゴラスにおける「オルフェウス教」伝承

抄録

In his work Legatio pro Christianis, the Christian apologist Athenagoras of Athens (floruit in the latter half of the second century A. D.) quotes some passages from a theogony which he ascribes to the legendary poet Orpheus. Athenagoras gives no detailed information about the sources he is using but later the Neo-Platonist philosopher Damascius (5.-6. century A. D.) quotes a parallel, but substantially longer, text from an Orphic theogony and names as his source "(the Orphic theology) according to Hieronymus and Hellanicus." In the collections of Orphic fragments (Kern and Bernabe, to name the most important ones), the testimony of Athenagoras and that of Damascius are arranged in the same chapter and presented together as the testimony transmitted by "Hieronymus and Hellanicus." Although neither of these two names is mentioned by Athenagoras, scholars have generally accepted this view, and M. L. West too speaks of "Hieronyman theogony" in his influential work, The Orphic Poems (1983), even when discussing Athenagoras. In other words, Damascius is in this traditional understanding the absolute primary source, whereas Athenagoras provides only supplementary information, if any. This understanding implies that Athenagoras and Damascius are using essentially the same text (and it goes back to a certain "Hieronymus and Hellanicus"). In my opinion, this is not the case. The reasons are as follows: 1. Most importantly, a textual comparison between the shorter quotation in Athenagoras and the longer one in Damascius shows that it is much more reasonable to assume that the latter expanded the former than to assume that the former summarized the latter. 2. Athenagoras is some three centuries older than Damascius. Historical precedence should be taken into account, if not unconditionally. 3. Orphic traditions seem to have been very active and productive in the late antiquity. The expansion of Damascius' version is explicable enough. 4. "Hieronymus and Hellanicus": Damascius himself suspects that the two might in fact have been one and the same person. A doxography transmitted by two authors seemed strange enough to him. Such an exceptional attribution suggests a complicated background for the text Damascius referred to and therefore a relatively later stage of its development and/or its possible contamination. To conclude, the testimonies of Athenagoras and Damascius are not to be treated as an established and fixed package, so to speak, but one should recognize their internal historical development. Athenagoras is no less a primary source for studying Orphic traditions than Damascius.