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 Orpheus and the
Roots of Platonism

Algis U zdavinys
 © The Matheson Trust, 2011

The Matheson Trust

PO Box 336
56 Gloucester Road
London SW7 4UB, UK

www.themathcsontrust.org

ISBN: 978 1 908092 07 6 paper

All rights reserved. No part efthis publication

may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in anyjom1 or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, plwtocopying, recording, or othenuise,
without tire prior written pem1ission of the Publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

Cover: Detail from a Gracco·Roman vase, 2nd-3rd century CE.

 CONTENTS

Preface ........................................ix
I. A Model of Unitive Madness ..................... 1
II. Socratic Madness .............................5
III. Socrates as Seer and Saviour ................... 9
IV. Philosophy, Prophecy, Priesthood ................ 17
V. Scribal Prophethood ...........................19
VI. Eastern and Greek Prophethood .................21
VII.Inside the Cultic Madness of the Prophets ........25
VIII. E gyptian Priesthood ........................32
IX. Orpheus as Prophet ..........................37
X . Orpheus and the Pythagorean Tradition .......... .41
XI. Orpheus and Apollo ..........................44
XII. The Orphic Revolution .......................47
XIII. Knowledge into Death .......................52
XIV. Telestic Restoration ..........................58
XV. The Lyre of Orpheus ..........................61
XVI. The Cosmic Unfolding of the One ..............64
 Orpheus and the Roots efPlatonism

XVI I. Recollection and Cyclic Regression ...... .. .. . 68

XV III. Orphic and Platonic Forms ................. 72
XIX. The Method of Philosophical Catharsis......... 76
XX. Deification of the Egyptian rnitiate-Philosopher... 79
XXI. From Homer to Hermetic Secrecy ..... .... .... 84
XXII. Into the Mysteries......................... 89
XXIII. Beyond the Tomb ........................ 93
XXIV. Conclusion . . . ........ . . . . . ... .... ....... 97

VIII
 PREFACE

1l1e present book is closely related to that famous Pre-Socratic

fragment about the bow and the lyre, where their "back­
strctched" or "retroflex" harmony (palintonos harmonia) is
said to depict the tense inner cohesion of a diverging unity.
111c same authority, Heraclitus of Ephesus, employs a Greek
pun to show how in the bow itself, one of whose names is bios,
both the name of life and the act of death coexist. Orpheus, as
a mythical hero-indeed, one of the famed Argonauts-stands
right at the centre of these junctions. So it is no wonder that
this book shares in that harmonious tension: a tension rooted
in the nature of the lyre and the bow, whose products may be
piercing sounds or slaying arrows.
Here, we have first a tension within the author, who is in­
toxicated with his theme and yet committed to carry out his
exposition in a discursive and academic manner. We can al­
most feel his plight: having in mind the "tremendous contem­
plation of the divine truth and beauty", which would merit
either a bakchic outburst or a "supra-noetic metaphysical si­
lence", he is forcing himself to compose a "scientific" treatise.
Having heard the music of Orpheus' lyre, he is trying to con­
vey as best as he can the unspeakable beauty of those notes in
an all too earthly human language.
Second, as a direct consequence of the first, there is ten­
sion for the reader as he tries to follow the argument itself:
strands of myth and mythic lore mix with dense epistemo­
logical and metaphysical discussion; abstruse Egyptian and
Babylonian sources stand next to conventional Greek philo­
sophical and 21st century academic references. The thing is

IX
 Preface

said, yet not fully; inadequately expressed with an almost

deliberate disdain for exactitude on a plane which becomes
redundant in the light of spiritual vision. This book moves
uneasily between the apophatic and the cataphatic: trying to
say something, saying something, hinting at something else,
then finally keeping silent, finding itself lost for words, leav­
ing the doors thrown open to a different understanding.
Then we find a third sort of tension, springing from the
duality at the heart of the subject: Orpheus is a strange hero,
one who has music and singing for weapons. He is a seer and
tragic lover, yet a crucial figure in the history of philosophy.
His place in the history of Greek religion and thought is still,
even in specialised circles, something of a riddle, enigmatic
and vague.
This book, densely packed with references, challenges,
and subtle invitations, is a recapitulation or a critical reas­
sessment of ancient and contemporary literature devoted to
Orpheus, the "paradigmatic itinerant seer", "the Theologian",
"the Saviour". It gives special attention to his relations with
both the Egyptian and the Platonic tradition. At the heart of
this book we have a glimpse into the substance, nature and
development of the Orphic mysteries, but the reader must
be warned: this is not a history of Orphism, and this is no
ordinary scholarly monograph. Those who approach this
book with respect for the ancient mysteries, humbly trying
to understand why our ancestors across cultures unfailingly
gave to Plato the epithet of "Divine" (Divus Plato, or Aflatun
al-Ilahi, as the Arabs used to call him), hoping for that "epis­
temic and hermeneutical illumination mediated by the holy
light of myths and symbols," such will find a treasure here:
not a wealth of answers to be sure, but a wealth of mystagogic
insights and intimations, sparks perhaps of that "fiery beauty
of truth" contemplated by the author.
The brief earthly transit of Algis Uzdavinys started in Lith­
uania in 1962. He completed his studies in Vilnius, gradu­
ating from the former State Art Institute of Lithuania, now
Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, where he would eventually

X
 Algis Uidavinys

become head of the Department of Humanities. Uzdavinys

was widely respected as a prolific author in Lithuania and
abroad. He was renowned as a translator into Russian and
Lithuanian of Ancient Egyptian and Greek texts, of Tradi­
tionalist works by Frithjof Schuon and Martin Lings, and he
was active as well as an art critic and author of numerous
articles and monographs (a list of his books can be found
at the end of this volume). His interest in traditional doc­
trines would eventually take him around the world and to
Jordan and Egypt, where he met living representatives of the
Prophetic chain of wisdom embodied in the Q,ur'an and the
Sunna. These would foster and orient his research projects
until his untimely death in 2010. Not long before his passing
and after he had completed this, his final book, he told his
wife: "I have nothing else to say." As someone who devoted
his life to the understanding and cultivation of the Divine, Al­
gis Uzdavinys must surely be taken as evidence of the ancient
Greek saying "whom the Gods love, die young."
Like the Homeric epics, the current work is formed by
twenty-four untitled chapters. Given the character of the
book, less informative than mystagogic, and less systematic
than symphonic, we have preferred to leave the brief chapters
as they are, adding titles for ease of refere.nce only in the table
of contents.
Five major sections may be discerned in the book: chapters
I-III deal with inspired madness in general, and with Socratic
mania in particular; IV-VIII with the relations between phi­
losophy, prophecy and priesthood, considering Middle East­
ern, Egyptian and Greek traditions in general; chapters IX­
XII narrow the scope to the figure of Orpheus as a prophet,
considering his place in the Pythagorean tradition and in the
development of Greek philosophy; chapters XIII-XVII touch
on some of the deepest aspects of Orphic symbolism, consid­
ering the Orphic bakcheia (initiatic rites) and way of life (the
bios Orphikos); chapters XVIII-XXII relate all the above to
the history of Greek wisdom-philosophy, from Homer down
to Hermeticism with special attention to Plato's theories and

xi
 Orpheus and the Roots ofPlatonism

their Egyptian associations. The book concludes with a chap­

ter on the realities beyond the tomb (XXIII), followed by
a surrender of all arguments and a moving self-disclosure
(XXIV). Silence reigns pregnant with mystical resonance.

Juan Acevedo
Director
The Matheson Trust
 ORPHEUS AND THE ROOTS
OF PLATONISM

Melancholy and the awakening of one's genius are inseparable, say

the texts. Yet for most of us there is much sadness and little genius,
little consolation of philosophy, only the melancholic stare-what to
do, what to do. . . . Here our melancholy is trying to make knowl­
edge, trying to see through. But the truth is that the melancholy is the
knowledge; the poison is the antidote. This would be the senex's most
destructive insight: our senex order rests on senex madness. Our or­
der is itselfa madness. 1
* * *

To this we may add the conclusion. It seems that, whether there is or

is not a one, both that one and the others alike are and are not, and
appear and do not appear to be, all manner ofthings in all manner
of ways, with respect to themselves and to one another. 2

In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates argues paradoxically that "our

greatest blessings come to us by way of madness" (ta megi,sta
ton agathon hemin gignetai dia manias: Phaedr. 244a). The four

1. The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire, introduced and edited by

Thomas Moore (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 212 & 215.
2. Plato, Parmenides 166b. tr. F. M. Cornford, 71,e Collected Dialor;ues of
Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1989), p. 956.
 Orpheus and the Roots ef Platonism

kinds of divine inspiration, or madness, are viewed as a divine

gift provided by the Muses, Dionysus, Apollo and Aphrodite
(or Eros) respectively. In the same dialogue, the "divine ban­
quet" is depicted as a metaphysical place of contemplation
and vision. For Plato, the contemplation (theoria) of the eter­
nal Ideas transcends our rational ability to comprehend and
analyse these Ideas discursively.
The desperate longing for this paradigmatic contempla­
tion is imagined as a yearning for wings and the regained
ability to fly to the divine banquet. Accordingly, this pressing
desire is the desire for wholeness, for noetic integrity, and for
one's true divine identity provided by dialectical searching,
philosophical recollection and erotic madness. The hierar­
chically organized troops of gods are led by Zeus. They lack
both jealousy and passion, being involved neither in plots,
nor in heavenly wars:

The gods have no need for madness, let alone erotic madness;
hence the gods are not philosophers. It is not surprising,
then, that the gods seem to have no need for logos (let alone
for rhetoric). Although there is a certain amount of noise in
the heavens, there is no reference whatsoever to there being
any discourse among the gods or between gods and men. 3

Therefore the Platonic philosopher, as the madman who

nurtures wings, is the dialectically transformed "speaker"
(the fallen soul encharmed by the magic of logos) whose ap­
parently mad desire and erotike mania are not so much direct­
ly sent from the gods as sparkling from within as a desire for
the divine banquet and for wisdom. But the three other kinds
of madness discussed in Plato's Phaedrus, namely, poetic (poi­
etike mania) telestic (telestike mania), and prophetic or mantic
madness (mantike mania) indeed are sent by the gods.

3. Charles L. Griswold, Seif-Knowledge in Plato's Phaedrus (New Haven

and London: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 97.

2
 Algis Uidavinys

1l1e Muses are specified as the source of the poetic inspi­

ration and of the three forms of madness; "the poetic sort
seems to be the closest to Socratic-Platonic philosophizing
and hence to be its most complex antagonist," as Charles
Griswold remarks. 4
The telestic madness is anagogic, and leads the soul to its
forgotten origins through the theurgic rites of ascent or other
sacramental means of purification. The inspired telestic lit­
urgies (telestike, hieratike telesiourgia, theophoria) are not nec­
essarily to be regarded straightforwardly as "operations on
the gods", thus deliberately and incorrectly equating the ani­
mated cultic statues located in the context of particular ritual
communications with the invisible metaphysical principles
themselves. Otherwise, tacitly or not, the polemical prem­
ises for a certain iconoclastic bias are maintained. And so
H.J. Blumenthal puts too much weight on the verb theour­
gein, supposing that one who docs theia erga is one who oper­
ates on the gods, thereby making theurgy a nonsense. 5
The mantic inspiration, or prophetic madness, which alleg­
edly produces countless benefits, is evoked and evidenced,
first of all, by the prophetesses at Delphi, thus recalling the
close connection between the Apollonian shrine at Delphi
and the philosophical self-knowledge required by Plato's
Socrates. According to Griswold, "Socratic prophecy seems
to combine the human techne of division or dissection with
the divinely given techne of madness; that is, it somewhat
combines ... madness and sophrosyne."6
The Apollonian prophecy is inseparable from philosophiz­
ing and, hence, from rhetoric in its expanded general sense,
showing and leading souls by persuasion or imperative-like
a sacrificial priest, using the dialectical art of definition, divi-

4. Ibid., p. 77,
5. H.J. Blumenthal, "From ku-ru-so-wo-ko to thcougos: word to ritual,"
in Soul and Intellect: Studies in Plotinw nnd Later Platonism (Aldcrshot:
Ashgatc, Variorum, 1993), XI, p. 6.
6. Charles L. Griswold, ibid., p. 76.

3
 Orpheus and the Roots efPlato11imi

sion and collection. Yet neither is the sacrificer to be viewed

as a paradigm of theological understanding, nor the user of
the art of rhetoric made subject to his own enchanting pow­
er of persuasion. However, they may become types of self­
duped "believers" or acquire the ideologically tinctured, and
therefore very "orthodox", ability to talk about "truth"-or
virtually any subject-and so become "difficult to be with".
As Griswold correctly observes, Plato's Socrates

seems to fear the canonization of a biblos. That is, the written

word lets us persuade ourselves too easily that we are in irrefu­
table possession of the truth, while in fact we are not.It fa­
cilitates our tendency to become dogmatists or zealots rather
than philosophers.... Under these condjtions philosophy
can have the same corrupting influence that sophistry does
or worse.7

However, academic paranoia differs from prophetic mad­

ness. The so-called prophets (theomanteis, manteis theoi, or Ar­
istotle's sibullai kai bakides kai hoi entheoi pantos: Prob!. 954a.36)
fall into enthusiasmos, the state of a particular "inspired ec­
stasy", and utter truths of which they themselves presumably
know nothing. Hence, being entheos means that the body
has a god or a daimon within, just as the Egyptian animated
statue has a manifestation (ba) of a god (neter) within. Simi­
larly, empsuchos means that both the physical human body
and the cultic body (the hieratic statue or the entire sanc­
tuary, itself full of images, statues and hieroglyphs) have an
animating, life-giving and self-moving principle-namely, a
soul (psuche)-inside them.
Orpheus is an example of one who has all these four kinds
of inspiration or madness according to Hermeias the Alexan­
drian Neoplatonist, whose commentary on Plato's Phaedrus
reflects the views of his master Syrianus. 8 Since these four ma-

1. Ibid., pp. 207 & 208.

8. Anne Sheppard, The I11Jlue11ce of Hermeins on Marsilio Ficino's Doctrine

4
 Algis Uzdavinys

niai assist the soul in its ascent and return to its noetic father­
land, Hermeias maintains that poetry and music are able to
bring the disordered parts of the soul into order.The hieratic
rites and sacramental mysteries of Dionysus make the soul
whole and noetically active. Subse quently, the prophetic in­
spiration (mantike mania) is provided by Apollo and gathers
the soul together into its own unity.
Hermeias regards the charioteer in the Phaedrus myth as
the noetic part of the soul and the charioteer's head as the
"one within the soul", or the soul's ineffable henadic summit
which alone may be united with the One. Thus, finally, as
Anne Sheppard explains, "the inspiration of love takes the
unified soul and joins the one within the soul to the gods and
to intelligible beauty."9

II

Perhaps with a certain measure of irony, Socrates was viewed

by the majority of Athenians as a chatterer, an idle talker
(alolesches). But this alleged idle talker obeyed and followed
his god Apollo. He philosophized in the streets on the god's
behalf, and preached a kind of "spiritual pederasty" that
leads the lovers (eirastes) of youths to the ideocentric love of
Platonic truth and beauty. In this respect, Socrates is neither
a "typical representative of the Greek Enlightenment", nor
the "intellectual leader of Athenian intellectuals", as influen­
tial Western scholars would claim until recently, " ...nor did
he discourse, like most others, about the nature of the uni­
verse, investigating what the experts call 'cosmos' ....Those
who did so he showed up as idiots," according to Xenophon
(Mem. 1.1.11).

of Inspiration, Journal of Lhc Warburg and Counauld Institutes, 43, 1980,

p. 105.
9. Ibid., p. 106.

5
 Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism

Initially acting as a typical idle talker, Socrates realizes

himself as a moralist. Strictly speaking, the man who is per­
suaded by nothing in him except the proposition which ap­
pears to him the best when he reasons about it (Grit. 46b) is
no metaphysician either, though Apollo commanded him (as
he "supposed and assumed") to live philosophizing, examin­
ing himself and others (Ap. 28e). Socrates saw his own work
in "philosophizing", that is, in summoning all citizens (but
especially wealthy youths of aristocratic origins) to perfect
their soul, as a sort of socio-political mission following the
god's command and acting on the god's behalf. Therefore,
his performance of thus understood "dialectical" work (er­
gon) can be imagined as a form of piety in service (latreia) to
the god. Gregory Vlastos argues:

Were it not for that divine command that first reached

Socrates through the report Chaerepon brought back from
Delphi there is no reason to believe that he would have ever
become a street philosopher. If what Socrates wants is part­
ners in elenctic argument, why should he not keep to those
in whose company he had sought and found his eudaimon­
ist theory-congenial and accomplished fellow seekers after
moral truth? Why should he take to the streets, forcing him­
self on people who have neither taste nor talent for philoso­
phy, trying to talk them into submitting to a therapy they do
not think they need? 10

There is no explanation other than a supposed divine com­

mand (be it just literary topos or some inner experience)
or Socrates' own wild presumption, keeping in mind that
Socrates was no mystic in any conventional religious sense,
but rather a zealous social worker and rationalizing moralist
serving his god for the benefit of his fellow Athenians. This

10. Gregory Vlastos, Socratic Piety, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), pp. 558-59.

6
 Algis Uzdavinys

"madman's theatre" is nevertheless regarded as a revolution­

ary project: "

And it is of the essence of his rationalist programme in the­

ology to assume that the entailment of virtue by wisdom
binds gods no less than men. He could not have tolerated
a double-standard morality, one for men, another for the
gods .... Fully supernatural though they are, Socrates' gods
could still strike his pious contemporaries as rationalist fab-
• '
ncat1ons .... II

Socrates undoubtedly regarded his own "rationalism" and

his leap from epistemological ignorance to public political
and moral expertise as devised by the daimonion, the super·
natural guide. His own front door was adorned, as A.H. Arm­
strong relates, by "an unshaped stone called Apollo of the
Ways and another stone called a Herm with a head at the top
and a phallus halfway down, which Socrates would tend at
the proper time like every other Athenian householder" . 12
In this respect he was quite traditional, although his pre­
sumably esoteric side (if this curious aspect of Socrates is
not invented by Plato's dramatic imagination) is close to the
madness of Orpheus, the divinely inspired mythical singer.
In the context of traditional Hellenic culture, Orphism and
Pythagoreanism may be viewed as a "small sectarian move­
ment". Alternatively, Orphism may be presented as a new
spiritual programme of radically revised anthropology and
of both cosmic and personal soteriology, partly derived from
Egyptian and Anatolian sources. In either case, the Orphic
doctrines sharply differ from those of early Hellenic (the so­
called Homeric and pre-Homeric) spirituality.

LI. Ibid., PP· 545 & 547·

12.A.H. Armstrong, "The Ancient and Continuing Pieties of the Greek
World," in Classical Mediterranean Spirituality: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, ed.
A.H. Armstrong (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 68.

7
 Orpheus and the Roots <ifPlatonism

The main Orphic doctrine follows the pattern already es­

tablished in the Pyramid Texts, asserting that the royal soul has
its goal in unity with the divine through ascent and recollec­
tion. With considerable modifications, this anagogic scenario
became an integral part of Platonism, whose adherents prac­
tised rising up to the heights of philosophical contemplation
through the anagogic power of eros, and were able to reach
the noetic Sun by a combination of dialectical and telestic
means. In short, Orphism maintained that the human soul is
immortal and is subject to divine judgement:

The divine in us is an actual being, a daimon or spirit, which

has fallen as a result of some primeval sin and is entrapped
in a series of earthly bodies, which may be animal and plant
as well as human. It can escape from the "sorrowful weary
wheel", the cycle of reincarnation, by following the Orphic
way of life, which involved, besides rituals and incantations,
an absolute prohibition of eating flesh.... 13

The somewhat clumsy Socrates hardly fits the much de­

manding Orphic ideals, although he nevertheless functions
in Plato's Symposium as an Orpheus figu re, being presented
as a literary double of Phanes. The self-manifested Phanes of
the Orphic cosmogonies should be described as Protogonos
(the first-born, tantamount to the noetic light which appears
from the egg of ineffable darkness), whose other name is the
demiurgic Eros. 14 He carries within himself the seed of the
gods and copulates with himself like the Egyptian Atum.
Sara Rappe emphasizes "the centrality of Orphic symbol­
ism in the Symposium as a whole", arguing that there is good
reason to attribute the allegorizing use of Orphic material to

13. !bid., p. 99.

14. Sara Rappe, ReadingNeoplatonism: Non-discursive thinking in the texts <if
Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000), p. 150.

8
 Algis Uzdauinys

Plato himself, and not only to Syrianus, Proclus, Damascius

or Olympiodorus. She says:

The Orphic mystery purports to be an esoteric tradition, one

that liberates people from the petrifying conventions of the
mass sex-gender machine. Its purpose is to re-create the sub­
ject, to wrench him away from the public fiction in which he
bas hitherto been schooled....The Orphic myth promises
a return to the undifferentiated state before sexual identity
arises, promising to deliver us back inside the egg to become
in the Lacanian sense, hommelettes. But of course, this is a
delusional aspiration, as the myth makes clear, and it is in
fact a self-destructive delusion .... In my reading of the Or­
phic cosmology in Plato's Symposium, I have emphasized its
function as an etiology for human consciousness, prior to its
regeneration by philosophy. This is the exoteric mind that
desperately requires enlightenment but because of its condi­
tioning, all too rarely seeks it. 1-'

III

The alleged correspondences between Socrates and Orpheus,

or rather, between Plato and Orpheus, are explored by Pro­
clus, to whom an esoteric interpretation of Plato's dialogues
is tantamount to the initiatory Orphic doctrine. Accordingly,
the Orphic Phanes (like the E gyptian Atum-Ra) shows forth
the soul as an image (eikon) of the shining divine Intellect.
The recognition of the pharaonic imago dei (tut neter in the
Egyptian royal theology ) and of its restored Osirian whole­
ness (the right Eye of Horus made sound) itself constitutes
a sort of initiation that enables the soul's access to the divine
realm.
Rappe claims that since the time of Syrianus, either Or­
phism is attached to metaphysics in order to transform the

m. Ibid., pp. 152 & 155.

9
 Orpheus and the Roots ofPlatonism

Neoplatonic doctrine into ritual, or the language of meta­

physics is grafted on to a traditional Orphic narrative. 16 How­
ever, such theurgic convergency is initially based on Egyptian
hermeneutical and cultic patterns. She argues as follows:

The "Rhapsodic Theogony" ends with a famous hymn to

Zeus, in which his identity as the coincidentia oppositorum is
revealed .... This vision of the world of Zeus gives us a kind
of mirror of the Prodan universe, in which each being is an
all, and all beings are in each .... The multiple states of being,
each level mutually reflecting all of the others, proliferate as
a hall of mirrors. It is this great world of mutual interpenetra­
tion endlessly expanding as a single drama, that the Orphic
theogony captures. And not surprisingly, this vision is ex­
actly the mythic equivalent of Proclus' central metaphysical
views.17

Proclus' assertion that all Hellenic theolo gy ultimately

derives from Orphic mystagogy (Plat. Theol. 1.5.25) 18 may be
regarded as a normative and paradigmatic claim of his philo­
sophical hermeneutics. Thus, Orpheus constitutes the arche­
typal mark of his metaphysical topography. In this particular
sense, the name and image of Orpheus function more like the
theological arche, like the canonized philosophical hupostasis,
than as an unquestioned and factual person of ancient his­
tory. This imaginative assertion of Proclus, though belong­
ing to the realm of semi-mythic genealogies, is shared by the
countless followers of the ancient Hellenic tradition and con­
stitutes one of its main etiological kernels. Consequently, it is
this image of the esoteric Orpheus that counts, not one pro­
vided by the modern academic interpretations that present

16. Ibid., p. 164.

11. Ibid., p. 160.
18. Algis Uzdavinys, Introduction, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of
Pythagorean and Platonic PhilosophJ, ed. Algis Uzdavinys (Bloomington, IN:
World Wisdom, 2004), pp. XXIV-XXV.

10
 Algis Uidavinys

their hypothetical contructions as an ultimate truth about a

given tradition in place of the self-representations, theologi­
cal images and myths used by adherents of the tradition.
For the late Platonic tradition, the "fighters"-those be­
longing to the "sacred race" (hieragenea)-defend, according
to Syrianus, "the best and most beautiful of philosophies",
namely, the Kronian way of life (In Meta ph. 91.8ff). 19 These
intellectual defenders of tradition recognized themselves as
forming a link in a golden Platonic chain, claiming that in­
wardly all human beings are divine and, therefore, must be­
come conscious of this inherent divinity. The anagogic tra­
dition of a journey within consists in an unbroken chain of
divinely inspired teachers, who both taught and practised
the revealed Platonic mysteries. As Polyrnnia Athanassiadi
remarks:

In a society in which political propagandists had raised the

principle of imperial legitimacy to a metaphysical level, the
Neoplatonists came effortlessly to evolve and spread a dynas­
tic theology. Indeed by the time of Damascius, the history of
the caste had acquired its own mythology as well, for the crea•
tion of which all sorts of forged genealogies were mobilised. 20

The prototypal "winged souls" of the Neoplatonic "golden

chain" (chruse seira) were Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato. But
already by the end of the fourth century AD, Porphyry, Iam­
blichus, Syrianus, Proclus and many others were regarded as
divine. Garth Fowden has this to say:

Likewise HierokJes described Ammonios as "divinely pos­

sessed (enthousiasas) with longing for the true goal of philoso­
phy". Reflection on theological and philosophical truths was

19. Polymnia Athanassiadi, "Persecution and Response in Late Pagan·

ism: The Evidence of Damascius," in 'lhe Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol.
CXlll, 1993, p. 6.
20. Ibid., p. 5.

11
 Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism

indeed widely accepted as a prerequisite of divinisation. Pro­

d us ... asserts that immersion in the mysteries of Platonic
philosophy could result in divine possession, like a "Dionysi­
ac frenzy"; and Olympiodorus listed four Platonic dialogues
(Timaeus, Respublica, Phaedrus, Theaetetus) which in his opin­
ion illustrated these Platonikoi enthousiasmoi. 21

According to this tradition (paradosis), Plato himself re­

ceived the complete science of the gods from Pythagorean
and Orphic writings. The science of dialectic advocated by
Plato is not found in the Orphico-Pythagorean theology, but
both Orphism and Pythagoreanism (whatever these ambiva­
lent terms may mean for different audiences) are viewed as
being based on the ancient Egyptian and Babylonian revela­
tions. The divine Plato only gave it scientific form, combining
"the revelatory style of Pythagoreanism with the demonstra­
tive method of Socrates". 22
Hence, in this respect Socrates' approach is demonstrative
(apodeiktikon) rather than revelatory. Now Syrianus, the spirit­
ual guide of both Hermeias and Proclus, not only proclaimed
the harmony (sumphonia) between Orpheus, Pythagoras and
Plato, but also depicted Socrates as a kind of saviour-the
divine avatar sent down to the world of becoming in order to
bring the fallen souls back to the divine banquet (Hermeias,
In Phaedr. I.1-5). This soteriological function of Socrates is
modelled on the analogous function of Orpheus, though the
initial meaning of the term soteria is related to the realm of
public sponsorship, social benefits and graces provided by
local patrons and divinized heroes. In the Hellenistic Greek
world, any benefactor (euergetes) may be recognized and hon­
oured as a saviour (soter). 23

21. Garth Fowden, "The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antique Society," in
The Journal ofHellenic Studies, vol. CII, 1982, p. 35.
22. Dominic J. 0' Meara, Pythagoras Revived: Mathematics and Philosophy
in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 148.
23. G.W. Bowersock, 'Toe Imperial Cult: Perceptions and Persistence,"
in Jewish and Christian Seif-Definition, Vo/.3: Self-Definition in the Graeco-

12
 Algis Uzdavinys

However, in a metaphysical sense, the ability to save-the

soul's immortalization or alleged "homecoming"-is the func­
tion and privilege of the benevolent gods. For example, the
Chaldean Hekate as the "life-giving womb" and "lightning­
receiving womb" (or as a formless fire, aneideon pur, visible
throughout the cosmos) is indispensable for those seeking
salvation: "Soteriologically minded philosophers and theur­
gists, who wished to assure the rising of their own souls, later
advanced the idea that Hekate, by controlling the crossing of
the boundary between humanity and divinity, either could
aid the ascent or could force the descent of the soul."24
The divine-like souls of true philosophers are not entirely
cut off from participation in contemplation of the Ideas. In
a certain metaphorical sense, they still follow the heavenly
retinue depicted in Plato's Phaedrus. They are "companions
of the gods" (opadous theon andras), like the idealized and
mythologized Socrates of Syrianus and Proclus. In short,
Socrates is understood as an instrument of divine will. His
system of pedagogy presumably belongs to the soteriological
"golden chain" of Homer and Orpheus, and his philosophy is
no less than a divinely inspired beneficial madness.
Both Orpheus and Socrates are presented as spiritual
guides, that is, as inspired mystagogues able to reveal the
ultimate vision of the Ideas, a vision regarded as initiation
into the highest mysteries. Before starting his interpretation
of the Phaedrus myth, Proclus explains: "These things are
said by Socrates in the Phaedrus when he is clearly inspired
(entho usiazon) and dealing with mystic matters" (Plat. Theo!.
IV.5, 18.23-25). And the citharist Orpheus, like Chiron the
Centaur, half-brother of Zeus, "in a certain way embodies the
mythical guide of souls most purely", as Ilsetraut Hadot says,

Roman World, ed. Ben F. Mayer and E.P. Sanders (London: SCM Press,
1982 ), p. 171.
24. Sarah lies Johnston, Hekate Soteira: A Study of Hekate's Roles in the
Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature (Atlama: Scholars Press, 1990), p. 38.

13
 Orpheus and the Roots efPlatonism

"preparing a direct and material correspondence between

music and wisdom."25
But philosophy is the highest art and highest music, as
Plato's Socrates himself acknowledges (Phaed. 61a). Conse­
quently, the exemplary poets and singers are entheoi, inspired
ones, al though feebly translated as "inspired", the Greek
word entheos loses its literal force, according to Vlastos. 26 And
Socrates is god-possessed (katechomenos); even more: "I am
a seer (mantis)," he says (Phaedr. 242c), since the Greek term
mantis may be rendered as "diviner" or "prophet". In a sense
it is "god himself (ho theos autos) who speaks to us through
them" (Ion. 234.d.3-4), since the possessed speakers "know
nothing of the things they speak".
The Greek entheos literally means "within is a god" or "in
god". This indwelling theos (not unlike the Egyptian ba .in its
simulated sacred receptacle) speaks from the person (or from
the animated cultic statue) in a strange voice, sometimes re­
sembling the so-called "language of the birds" or the primor­
dial noise of the creative sound. The most common Greek
terms for this or similar states are mania (madness, frenzy,
inspiration) and ekstasis (to stand [or be] outside oneself).
Every seer, filled by the ritually ignited and conventionally
performed frenzy, stands in a special relationship to the de­
ity, because the words he utters presuppose either the telestic
madness of Dionysus, or the prophetic madness of Apollo.
But what about knowledge which is not human in its ori­
gin? Strictly speaking, this knowledge presupposes that the
speaker himself knows nothing. According to Vlastos:

In Socrates' view the effect of the god's entry into the poet
is to drive out the poet's mind: when the god is in him the
poet is "out of his mind", ekphron, or "intelligence is no longer

25. Ilsetraut Hadot, ''The Spiritual Guide," in Classical Mediterranean

Spirituality: Egyptian, Greek, Romnn, ed. A.H. Armstrong (London: Rout·
ledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 440.
26. Gregory Vlastos, Socratic Piety, p. 549.

14
 Algis Uzdavinys

present in him"; so he may find himself saying many things

which are admirable (pol/a kai kala) and true without knowing
what he is saying ...it is because he is like the diviner that
the inspired poet is "out of his mind" .... For Socrates, di­
viners, seers, oracle-givers and poets are all in the same boat.
All of chem in his view are know-nothings, or rather, worse:
unaware of their sorry epistemic state, they set themselves up
as repositories of wisdom emanating from a divine, all-wise
source. What they say may be true; but even when it is true,
they are in no position to discern what there is in it that is
crue. 27

They convey truth to the extent that they repeat the divine
voice which may serve as a truth-speaking kathegemon, the one
who leads and who shows the way, and may deceive as Agam­
emnon allegedly was deceived by Zeus, although Proclus is
cager to explain this deception kata ten aporrheton theorian,
that is, according to the esoteric (or secret, unspoken, myste­
rious) mode of seeing. This is so, because the revealed myths
and hieratic customs may be "educational" (paideutikoi), or
appropriate for the young, and "more divinely inspired" (en·
theastikoteroi), that is, "more philosophical" (philosophoteroi)
and appropriate for the initiates (Proclus, In Remp. I.79.5-
18). As Robert Lamberton points out:

When Proclus discusses the differences between Homer and

Plato, he presents Homer as "inspired" and "ecstatic", an
author who offers a direct revelation and is in contact with
absolute truth. Plato is seen as coming later to the same in­
formation and treating it differently, "establishing it solidly
by the irrefutable methods of systematic thought" [In Remp.
I.171-17 2].28

21. lbid., pp. 550 & 551.

28. Robert Lamberton, Homer the 111eologia11: Neoplatonist Allegorical
Reading and the Growth of the Epic 'Tradition, (Berkcle)': University of
California Press, 1986), p. 194.

15
 Orpheus and the Roots ofPlatonism

The Greek word for god (theos) is itself related to the act of
the seer. The divine revelation may be received in the form of
myth (muthos). Such a myth is to be used properly, because
its surface is only a "veil" or "screen" (parapetasma), behind
which another, metaphysical truth lies awaiting its inspired
hermeneus. Even Homer's blindness is regarded as a divinely
established symbol that points to the dark and transcenden­
tal character of Homer's vision. 1n this respect, Proclus ar­
gues that Socrates (the literary personage of Plato's Republic),
in fact, is deceived regarding "the way in which myths repre­
sent the truth". 29
So what does it mean to be a seer-both the teller of myths
and the inspired interpreter of the revealed myth? As Walter
Burkert explains the Greek terms:

... an interpreted sign is thesphaton, the seer is theoprotos, and

what he does is a theiazein or ent/zeazein . ... Insofar as the seer
speaks in an abnormal state, he requires in turn someone who
formulates his utterances, the prophetes. The word for seer
itself, mantis, is connected with the Indo-European root for
mental power, and is also related to mania, madness. 30

Be that as it may, the Platonic philosophy is viewed by Pro­

clus as divine philosophy, because it "shone forth" (eklamp­
sai) for the first time "through the good grace of the gods". 31
Therefore, its amazing noetic tradition repeats the dazzling
appearance of Phancs, the Orphic Atum, whose primaeval
"shining forth" from the ineffable darkness constitutes the
noetic pleroma, the mound of Heliopolis. Accordingly, the
ineffable Night is the Egg from which the solar bird sprang
forth on the first morning-in illo tempore.

29. Ibid., p. 196.

30. Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, tr. John Raffan (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, i2000), p. 112.
31. John Glucker, Antiochus and the late Academy (Gottingen: Vanden­
hoeck and Ruprecht, 1978), p. 312.

16
 Algi.s Uzdauinys

IV

Proclus presents Socrates' "celebration" of the realm beyond

the heavens (huperouranios topos) as a "symbolic description"
(sumbolike apangelia). He says that "the mode which aims to
speak of the divine by means of symbols is Orphic and gen­
erally appropriate to those who write about divine myths"
(Plat. 1heol. I.4.10.6ff). Consequently, the myth narrated in
Plato's Phaedrus is taken "to be not only inspired but also
telestic, which for him means theurgic".32
Hence, Proclus interprets the images and events of the
Phaedrus myth in terms of theurgy, arguing that the realm
beyond the heavens where the Ideas are to be contemplated
corresponds to the three Orphic Nights. Anne Sheppard con­
siders that Syrianus, the spiritual guide of Proclus, "did not
distinguish between the inspired, theurgic mode of discourse
on the one hand and the symbolic, Orphic mode on the
other". 33 Even for Proclus (in spite of his advanced technical
terminology), the prophetic madness, philosophical frenzy,
theurgic rites and their allegorical or symbolic interpretation
constitute a single metaphysical set of references related to
the way in which the soul ascends to the noetic realm, whence
it may be reunited with the highest reality.
In relation to this exposition of the Orphic and Platonic
aids to recollection, "which form a continual initiation into
the perfect mystic vision" (Phaedr. 249c), one may wonder
what it means to be possessed by a god, or to be a prophet
in the wider context of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian
cultures.
Arguing that the Greek verb gignosko (from which derives
gnosis, knowledge) in early times is often combined with verbs
of seeing ( though "vision", in this case, may be understood as

32. Anne Sheppard, "Plato's Phacdrus in the Thcologia Platonica,"

.
m Proclus ct la Theologi.c platoniciennc, ed. A. Ph. Scgonds and C. SLecl,
(Leuven: University Press; Paris: Les Belles Lcttrcs, 2000), p. 419.
33. Ibid., p. 422.

17
 Orpheus and the Roots ofPlator1ism

an exceptional supra-normal faculty), J. Gonda attempts to

place the oracular soothsayers and poets on the same footing
as prophets and philosophers. 34 In Greece, the specific sanc­
tuary or holy place where the gods are thought to be present
and may offer counsel is called chresterion or manteion, and
rendered as oraculum by the Romans. In these places, like in
the Syrian and Mesopotamian temples, the god speaks di­
rectly from a priest or a prophet who enters the state of pos·
session (enthousiasmos).
Hence, a prophet, as an inspired seer, somewhat emptied of
himself and "filled with the god" (being a possessed entlzousi·
astes), is a representative of the speaking deity. Even if this
attribution is sometimes just a literary convention turned into
a compelling promise of an act of salvation, the magic power
was thought to be inherent in the mighty word of any suc·
cessful demagogue. Whether or not we would like to describe
this mythically determined oracular performer and possessed
speaker as an inspired public teacher or as a prophet (the
Greek prophetes who relates cult legends at festivals),35 the
prophecy itself may be defined as a perpetual confirmation of
particular cosmological, epistemological and socio-political
principles sustained through a ritually performed exegesis.
Even the ancient Hebrew "prophet" (nabi), in its initial con·
text, may appear simply "as a courier for an important letter
passed between two politically interested parties, perhaps co·
conspirators of some sort". 36

34. J. Gonda, The Vision of the Vedic Poets (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal Publishers, 1984), pp. 24 & 14.
35. Ibid., p. 14.
36. Joel Sweek, "Inquiring for the State in the Ancient Near East:
Delineating Political Location," in Magic and Divination in the Ancient World,
ed. Leda Ciraolo and Jonathan Seidel (Leiden: Brill/Styx, 2002), p. 55.

18
 Algis Uzdavinys

What, then, is prophecy? The use of this very concept is con­

troversial, mainly due to a Judaeo-Christian theological bias
and the related "romantic perception of the biblical prophets
as tormented individuals of great literary talent" .37
The almost unquestioned dogma of prophetic revelation as
an epistemological category embodied in the book is a scribal
construct of Mesopotamian origin. The post-exilic religious
bureaucrats of Second Temple Judaism decided that the only
way in which the divine Patron can speak to His vassals (the
Israelites as His contractual slaves and warriors) was through
the written text. Karel van der Toorn discusses the rhetoric
of prophetic revelation in connection with the legitimizing
construction of the prophetic experience, with the increasing
emphasis on writing as the primary and privileged vehicle of
prophecy. He writes:

When prophecy became primarily a literary genre, the proph­

ets were posthumously transformed into authors ....When
the Hebrew scribes adopted the revelation paradigm in con­
nection with the prophetic literature, they took the vision
(hawn) to be the classic mode of prophetic revelation. That
is why the rubrics of the prophetic books often use the ter­
minology of the visionary experience as the technical vocab­
ulary for prophecy, even for prophets whose oracles do not
refer to any vision.... The novelty of the scribal construct of
prophecy as a revelation lies in the reference to written texts.
The scribes developed the notion of the prophet as a scribe,
and of his message as a secret revealed by heavenly figures,
to legitimize the fact that the prophets had become books.38

37. Karel van dcr Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making ef the Hebrew Bible
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 190.
38. Ibid., pp . .231 & 232.

19
 Orpheus and the Roots <ifPlatonism

In this case, God (the mighty Patron of the chosen zealots)

is presented as speaking only through the written text, itself
now attached to the prestigious taklimtu category of Babylo­
nian writings. The Akkadian word taklimtu (literally mean­
ing "demonstration") stands for "revelation" and "preserves
a reminiscence of the time in which revelation was primarily
thought of as a visual experience".39 The premise of the Baby­
lonian cuneiform literature is that, unless revealed, wisdom
(nemequ) remains hidden, thus constituting a conception of
esoteric knowledge and interest in the "broad understand­
ing" (uznu rapashtu) and "profound wisdom" (hasisu palku)
of the Deep, attributed to the apkallu sages, which assisted
the emergence of the revelation paradigm; a paradigm that
asserted the authority of the written tradition perpetuated by
the learned expert (ummanu mudu) who guarded the secret
lore of the great gods (ummanu mudu nasir piri.shti iii rabuti).40
Scribal wisdom itself (along with the broad comprehen­
sion of "secret things") is god-given. The privileged texts
"from the mouth of Ea" (sha pi Ea) may be witnessed as "the
writings of Ea" (shitru sha Ea). It was held that Ea dictated
his revelations to Adepa, the legendary apkallu sage, one of
the "seven brilliant apkallus, puradu-fish of the sea". 41 Oannes­
Adapa transmitted this wisdom of Ea (nemeq Ea) through
the subsequent written tradition. Adapa's patron Ea is called
be! nemeqi, the Lord of Wisdom. The exceptional value of
his wisdom is recognized by the sixteenth century BC text
on behalf of the early Kassite ruler: "May Ea, the god of the
depths, grant him perfect wisdom" (Ea bel naghim nemeqam
lis/zklilshu). 42

39. Ibid., p. 212.

40. Ronald F.G. SwecL, "The Sage in Akkadian LiteraLUre: A Philological
Study," in 11,e Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. John G. Gammie
and Leo G. Perdue (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), p. 60.
41. Shlomo lzre'cl, Adapa and the South Wind: Language Has the Power <if
life and Death (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2001), p. 4.
42. Ronald F.G. Sweet, ibid., p. 52.

20
 Algis Uidauinys

Similarly, Marduk provides deep understanding (uznu)

and intelligence (hasisu), and Nabu, the heavenly Scribe who
knows everything, brings forth wise teachings (ihzi nemeqi).
Van der Toorn describes the situation when the written tradi­
tion of the Mesopotamian scribes supplanted the oral tradi­
tion and, as a consequence, faced the problem of legitimacy
and authority. He writes:

TI,e scribes found their new source of authority in the con­

cept of divine revelation. Through the construct of an ante­
diluvian revelation from Ea to the apkallus, transmitted in an
unbroken chain of sages, scribes, and scholars, the written
tradition could claim a legitimacy issuing from the gods. In
support of the theory that the revelation paradigm was an
answer to a legitimacy problem, one can point to the emer­
gence of the rhetoric of secrecy. At about the same time that
the Mesopotamian scribes and scholars began to speak of the
tradition as having been revealed, they started to emphasize
its secret nature.43

VI

And so, what about the prophets themselves? Are they "proph­
ets" in the sense of seers-the beholders of divine epiphanies
at festivals with their splendid processions, portable divine
images and barques? Let us remember that the Greek word
theoria initially meant contemplation of the gods at their fes­
tivals, before it started to mean the beholding of the well­
ordered Pythagorean cosmos or the Platonic Ideas. Are the
prophets "messengers" in the sense of heralds, announcers,
ceremonial declaimers in the manner of reciters who perform
the lraditional poems and myths at the annual festivals? Or

43. Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making ef the Hebrew
Bible, p. 219.

21
 Orpheus and the Roots efPlatonism

are they the professional actors on the stage of the Dionysiac

theatre?
Modern Western convention tends to emphasize the "inner
experience", "spontaneous inspiration", and the "moral edu­
cational" pedigree of the imagined "prophetic" human-divine
communication, though this kind of theologically asserted
communication may be simply a matter of cultural definition
and classification. The proposed taxonomy engages a divi­
sion of social and metaphysical roles that may be performed.
There is no single equivalent of the Greek words "prophet"
(prophetes) and "prophecy" (propheteia) in the ancient Near
Eastern languages. In addition, the word "prophecy" is liable
to a certain semantic confusion, since it is commonly equated
with foretelling the future. Nevertheless, prophecy may be
defined as a process of communication-not unlike a well-or­
ganized royal "postal service", prominent in the Achaemenid
Persian empire, when the conception of angelic messengers
started to emerge. According to Martti Nissinen, this consist­
ed of the divine sender of the message, the message (classi­
fied as "revelation") itself, the transmitter of the message (the
prophet as postal officer and courier), and the recipient of the
message, usually the king. 44 Nissinen comments:

The Mesopotamian sources include two distinguishable types

of texts, both of which have been characterized as "proph­
ecy": 1) the verbal messages, allegedly sent by a deity and
transmitted by a human intermediary to the addressee, and 2)
the "Akkadian Prophecies", also called "apocalypses", which
predict historical events, mostly exeventu. 45

In a sense, the prophet is the mouthpiece of a deity when

the message to be transmitted is not initially a "written docu­
ment" (or a material cuneiform tablet brought from the divine

44. Martti Nissincn, References to Prophecy in Neo-Assy rian Sources

(Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1998), p. 6.
45. Ibid., p. 7.

22
 Algis Uzdavinys

counsel), but an oral command, advice or reproach, later pre­

sented to the addressee in the written form of a manifesto-like
dispatch. When reference is made to the spoken word (abutu,
dibbu) of a deity in the Neo-Assyrian sources, the speaking de­
ity is either Ishtar or Mallissu, the main goddess of prophecy. 46
Among the words which imply prophetic activity, two are
important: mahhu, derived from mahu, "to be in a frenzy, to
become mad", and raggimu, derived from ragamu, "to shout,
to proclaim". Consequently, the Assyrian raggimu is the "pro­
nouncer" or "speaker", and the muhhum is a type of madman,
like the Hebrew meshugga, "a term occasionally used as a syn­
onym for nabi". 47
All these terms may be used as synonyms and contrasted
to the baru-the reader of the divine script of the cosmos and
interpreter of the signs inscribed on the livers of sacrificial
animals. The baru (haruspex) is viewed as belonging to the
"golden chain" of transmission beginning with the Sumer­
ian king Enmeduranki, the ultimate prototype of the Hebrew
Enoch. Enmeduranki, the ruler of Sippar, was brought to the
assembly (puhru) of the gods by Shamash and Adad. There
he was seated on a golden throne and the divine secrets were
revealed to him. The gods gave (iddinu) him the tablet of the
gods (tuppi ilani, that is, the "divine book") which contained
the "secret science". As Helge Kvanvig points out: "The tab­
let emphasizes the esoteric character of the divine wisdom
revealed to Enmeduranki."48
The Assyrian prophecies are inseparable from the royal
ideology, since the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the "kingdom
of heaven" are interconnected through the power of Ishtar,
represented by the sacred tree. The cult oflshtar (the goddess
herself viewed as the "breath" of Ashur, analogous to the later

46. Ibid., p. 10.

47. Abraham Malamat, Mari and the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p. 66.
48. IIclgc S. Kvanvig, Roots qfApocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background
efthe Enoch Figure and qfthe Son oJ Man (Ncukirchcn-Vluyn: Neukirchcncr
Verlag), 1988, p. 188.

23
 Orpheus and the Roots ofPlatonism

Gnostic Sophia) constitutes the Assyrian esoteric doctrine of

salvation. In the universalized imperial context, prophecy,
mysticism and royal ideology are inseparable. Gilgamesh is
the prototype of the perfect Assyrian king, and Ishtar is the
divine mother who gives birth to him. No wonder, then, that
one of the Assyrian prophetesses (ragi.ntu) "identifies herself
with Gilgamesh roaming the desert in search of eternal life".49
As Simo Parpola relates:

For a spiritually pure person, union with God was believed

to be possible not only in death but in life as well. This belief
provides the doctrinal basis of Assyrian prophecy: when filled
with divine spirit, the prophet not only becomes a seat for
the Goddess but actually one with her, and thus can foresee
future things.... The purpose of the act-which certainly
was the culmination of a long process of spiritual prepara­
tion-was to turn the devotee into a living image of Ishtar:
an androgynous person totally beyond the passions of flesh. 50

Let us explore the following analogy: both the god-cho-

sen Assyrian king and the devotee of Ishtar play the role of
Ashur's son or of Mullissu's son. Likewise, the Neoplatonic
mystic may seek to be integrated into the universal hyposta­
sis of Hekate Soteira or Athena Soteira. Ishtar as "virgin of
light" marks the presence of God (Ashshur, the only, universal
God, viewed as "the totality of gods", gabbu ilani Ashshur).51
At the same time, Ishtar is the word of God and the way of
salvation. As a rule, the Assyrian prophets belong to the cul­
tic community of Ishtar's devotees (assinnu, nash pilaqqi) and
share their esoteric mystical lore concerning the ascent and
salvation of the soul. 52

49. Simo Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (Helsinki: Helsinki University

Press, the Neo-Assyrian Texl Corpus Project, 1997), p. L.
50. Ibid., p. XXXIV.
51. Ibid., pp. XXI & LXXXI.
52. Ibid., p. XLVII.

24
 Algis Uzdavinys

Similarly, theurgic clivination in Neoplatonism may be re­

garded as a means of ascent and unification-"standing out­
side" of one's normal state of consciousness, that is, in ecstasis
and frenzy. This entails an all-consuming presence of the di­
vine as the inspired theurgist is seized by the invading god.
This divine invasion may be equated to the active irruption
of the dazzling noetic light within the purified recipient, or
rather, in his mirror-like phantasia. Emma Clarke explains the
matter as follows:

lamblichus argues that the imagination is manipulated by

the gods and receives divine phantasmata during inspiration.
He consistently describes god-sent visions as phanta.smata or
phantasiai . ...Porphyry writes that people themselves "imag­
ine" (phantawntai) or "are divinely inspired according to their
imaginative faculty" (kata to phantastikon theiawusin), whereas
Iamblichus insists that the imagination is affected from the
outside-divine power "illuminates with a divine light the ae­
therial and luciform vehicle surrounding the soul, from which
divine visions occupy the imaginative faculty in us, driven by
the will of the gods.... "An inspired individual is not think­
ing or using his imagination-his imagination is being made
use of by the gods. Left to its own devices, untouched by the
gods, the imagination produces mere (human) phantasms
which have no place in the process of inspiration....The im­
agination is therefore valued only as a passive receptacle of
divine visions.53

VII

The prophetic messages attributed to the accredited Babylo­

nian prophets, including those who served in various temples
and those perceived as madmen, Abraham Malamat relates

53. Emma C. Clarke, lamblichus' De Mysteriis: A Manifesto ofthe Miraculous

(Aldcrshot: Ashgatc, 2001), pp. 84 & 85.

25
 Orpheus and the Roots ofPlatonism

to the category of "intuitive prophecy". 54 Since the so-called

"scientific" Akkadian divination practised by the barum is de­
scribed as both typical and rational, the "intuitive divination"
attested at Mari seems to be both atypical and irrational. 55
But this observation is not entirely correct. In certain cases,
prophecy may be described in terms of ceremonial rhetoric­
the human calls and divine answers which demand the tak­
ing of important political decisions. To categorize this con­
ventional dialectical play as "intuitive" means to be under
the spell of an exalted Western romanticism. This influential
theory of aesthetics invents and cherishes the "spontaneous
inner experiences" of exceptional individuals, deliberately
forgetting the ritualized literary background of such "spon­
taneous" social concerns.
The Neo-Assyrian and Mari texts, however, present the
local prophets (apilum, muhhum, nabum, raggimu) as those
who receive divine messages involuntarily: the messages are
not regarded as invented or created by the muhhum. Lester
Crabbe states: "When prophets speak openly in a temple,
this looks like spontaneous spirit possession: the spirit comes
upon them, and they become a mouthpiece for the deity."56
Or do they believe this is so and need this belief literally as
it stands, along with the "ecstatic testimony" and the subse­
quent "theatrical performance"? The stereotypical language
of this seemingly spontaneous play amounts to a strategically
managed language which functions as the hermeneutic of
the myth, as the reconfirmation of the temple tradition, of its
socio-economic premises, expectations, hopes and dreams.
As a rule, the contemporary cosmic geography and its pecu-

54. Abraham Malamal, Mari and the Bible, pp. 59-82. (Ch. 6: "lnLuiLivc
Prophecy - A General Survey," originally published in: A. MaJamat, Mari
and the Early Israelite Experience, 1992, pp. 79-86).
55. Ibid., p. 60.
56. Lester L. Crabbe, "Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy from an Anlhro·
pologieal Perspcclive," in Prophecy in its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Meso·
potamian, Biblical, and Arabian Perspectives, ed. Martti Nissinen (Atlanta:
Society of Biblical LiLcraturc, 2000), p. 18.

26
 Algis Uidavi11ys

[iarities are involved. Therefore, "it is often difficult to distin­

guish between actual prophetic oracles and literary prophe­
cies created by scribes."57 No wonder the prophets themselves
arc sometimes viewed as scribes whose speeches or reports
are not performed in public as the standards of the sacred
"revelatory theatre" and of epic consciousness would require.
Instead, they are composed as oracular collections and royal
inscriptions. 58
In the Mesopotamian city of Mari (eighteenth century sc)
the mediators between the heavenly divine assembly (puhru)
and the earthly royal court bear the titles of apilum/apiltum
("answerers"), muhhum/muhhutum ("ecstatics"), assinnum
("cult singers"), and nabum ("ones called"). The messages
they bring from the gods (Dagan, Addu of Halab, Shamash,
Marduk, Nergal) and the goddesses (Annunitum, Diritum,
Hishametum, Ninhursgga, Ishtar) are taken seriously by the
political authorities, although these prophetic messages arc
subordinated to other means of divine communication.59
Accordingly, the identity of the prophet cannot be taken
as a guarantee for the validity and truth of the prophecy pro·
nounccd, or "shouted" (ragamu), presumably in a state of real
or solemnly feigned frenzy. But a possession cult par excellence
and the related professionalization of prophecy pertain to the
domain and supervision of Ishtar. Van der Toorn writes:

Ishtar was deemed capable to produce, by way of ecstasy, a

metamorphosis in her worshipers. Men might be turned into
women, and women were made to behave as men.... There is

57. ibid., p. 25.

58. David L. Petersen, "Defining Prophecy and Prophetic Literature,"
in Prophecy in its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical, and
Arabian Perspectives, ed. Martti Nissincn (Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, :2000), p. 42.
59. l lerbcn B. Huffmon, "A Company of Prophets: Mari, Assyria,
Israe l," in Prophecy in its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical,
and Arabian Perspectives, ed. Martti Nissincn (ALlama: Society of Biblical
LiLcraturc, 2000), p. 49.

27
 Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism

evidence that at least some of the Neo-Assyrian prophetesses

were in reality men, or rather self-castrated transvestites. Their
outward appearance was interpreted as a display of Ishtar's
transforming powers. Possessed by the divine, they were the
obvious persons to become mouthpieces of the gods.60

Their prophetic utterances were not metaphysical slo­

gans or theological shahadas, as the modern esoteric dreamer
would tend to imagine, but the utterances of a deity, revealed
while standing in the temple before the animated hieratic stat­
ue. In the name of a particular god an oracle is delivered by
the temple servant, or rather the deity (Dagan, for instance)
opens the mouth of and speaks from within his image. Van
der Toorn comments on this rite as follows:

The Old Babylonian gods grant prophetic revelations only in

the sanctuary.Dreams may occur at other places, but proph­
ecy, properly speaking, is confined to the temple .... When
a god speaks directly through the mouth of a prophet, the
latter utters the prophecy first in the temple. The prophet
(apilum or apilturn) "rises" (itbi) or "stands" (i.w.t) to deliver
the divine message in the temple. The ecstatic (muhhum), coo,
receives the revelation in a sanctuary; this is the place where
he or she gets into a frenzy (immahi, immahu), utters loud
cries (shitassu), and gives the oracle. When a prophet delivers
an oracle outside the sanctuary, at the residence of the royal
deputy for instance, he repeats an oracle revealed to him in
the sanctuary. For that reason the prophet presents himself
as a messenger of the god (DN ishpuranni): he transmits the
message (temum), which he receives at an earlier scage.61

60. Karel van derToom, "Mesopotamian Prophecy between Immanence

and Transcendence: A Comparison of Old Babylonian and Nco·Assyrian
Prophecy," in Prophecy in its Ancient Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian,
Biblical, and Arabian Perspectives, ed. Martti Nissinen (Atlanta: Society of
Biblical Literature, 2000 ), p. 79.
61. Ibid., p. 80.

28
 Algis Uidavinys

This means that the "house of god" is the most suitable

place for these continuing encounters with the divine and the
forthcoming revelations. And revelation itself is to a certain
extent the standard cultic procedure in the "audience hall"
of the Lord. It is performed in the divine palace (since the
temple is a deity's household and palace) whose ceremonial
patterns follow the established framework of the private and
official life of the royalty (although, metaphysically speaking,
the opposite is true).
Therefore, in accordance with the rules of cultic etiquette,
the prophet is positioned in front of the hieratic statue as the
servant or herald stands before the king. He stands-or rather
lies in prostration-and listens. The Mesopotamian hieratic
statue-that of the enthroned deity in full regalia, seated in
the holy of holies-is not a religious picture, but an icon im­
bued with a god's essential powers and endowed with divine
radiance. The divine form (bunnannu) or image (salam, salmu)
is not manufactured by human artists, whose hands are sym­
bolically cut off with a tamarisk sword, but ritually conceived
by the gods themselves and born in a special workshop, the
bit mummi. 62 Yet a clear distinction is maintained between the
god and his statue, 63 which serves as a means to make the de­
ity visible on earth.
In this respect, the entire temple complex functions, meta­
phorically speaking, like a "nuclear power station" that pro­
vides all material and spiritual sustenance for the surround­
ing land and its inhabitants, viewed respectively as a deity's
private fief and vassals. The animated image is presumed able
to perceive what happens in the earthly realm, to reign over
the kingdom, communicate through the court messengers

62. Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, The Mesopotamian God Image, From Womb
to Tomb, Journal of the American Oriental Society 123, 1, 2003, p. 153.
63. Michael B. Dick, "Prophetic Parodies of Making the Cult Image,"
in Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making ef the Cult Image in the Ancient
Near East, ed. Michael B. Dick (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), p.
33.

29
 Orpheus and the Roots efPlatonism

(apostles) and consume victuals. The mouth washing ritual

activates the statue's noetic and perceptive functions, as An­
gelika Berlejung remarks: "The ritual thus enabled it to be­
come the pure epiphany of its god and to be a fully interact­
ing and communicating partner for the king, the priests and
the faithful."64
When the prophet speaks in the name of a god in the tem­
ple, he makes himself an extension of the god whose holy
face he contemplates. When he has this privilege, neither is
the statue's face veiled, nor the statue itself hidden behind
a screen.65 In a parallel fashion, the divine Pythagoras used
to speak from behind a curtain, thus imitating the oracular
statue. It is, therefore, no surprise that Pythagoras "imitated
the Orphic mode of writing"66 and his disciples looked upon
all his utterances as the oracles of God. 67
This encounter with the divine statue (veiled or otherwise)
is the ultimate paradigm for mystical longing, contemplation
and union by means of liturgical communications, including
sound, smell and vision. To Plato's "madness" corresponds
the Orphic "frenzy" (oistros), as Peter Kingsley observes;68
and, we might add, to the Orphic frenzy corresponds the
Mesopotamian prophetic madness (entering into a trance,
immahu), experienced in the form of ecstasy before the salmu.
The cultic scenario of prophetic frenzy apparently explains
why traditional skills of divination should be related to this
soul-transforming, illuminating and elevating standing in the

64. Angelika Bcrlcjung, "Washing the Mouth: The Consecration of Di­

vine Images in Mesopotamia," in 'The Image and the Book.: Iconic Cults, Ani­
co11ism, and the Rise ef Book. Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed.
Karel van dcr Toom (Lcuven: Uitgcvcrij Peeters, 1997), p. 72.
65. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library: An Anthology ofAncient Writ­
ings Which Relate to Pythagoras and Pythagorean Philosophy, compiled a11d
translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, ed. David R. Fidclcr (Grand Rap­
ids: Phancs Press, 1987), p. 74 (Iamblichus, Vil. Pyth. 17).
66. Ibid., p. 95 (Iamblichus, Vit. Pyth. 28).
67. Ibid., p. 145 (Diogenes Lacrtius, The Life efPytlwgoras).
68. Peter Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles
and Pythagorean Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 261-62.

30
 A/gis Uzdavinys

place where the divine presence is manifested. For Iambli­

chus, the Syrian Neoplatonist, divination (manlike) and the­
urgic ascension (anagoge) coincide. He argues: "Only divine
mantic prediction (he theia mantike), therefore, conjoined with
the gods, truly imparts to us a share in divine life, partaking
as it does in the foreknowledge and the intellections of the
gods, and renders us, in truth, divine" (De myster. 289.3-5). 69
Hence, the "emptied" prophet is the theurgic receptacle
filled with the divine light and life emanating from the seeing
and speaking deity. This real or imagined theophany implies
the prophet's annihilation (in the sense of the Sufi.Jana) and
God's exaltation. As Van der Toorn observes:

There is no room for misunderstanding as co who is speaking.

That is why we never find, in any of the reports describing
a prophecy delivered in the temple, a phrase identifying the
divine speaker.... The only time the prophet finds it neces­
sary to say that god so-and-so has sent him (DN ishpuranni)
is when the prophecy is transmitted to someone outside the
sanctuary. 70

Eventually, the Neo-Assyrian prophets themselves became

like interiorized and portable sanctuaries, and not bound to
the presence of the material divine image in order to estab­
lish contact with the gods. Although images and statues were
their cultic receptacles and symbolic bodies, these gods at the
same time permanently resided in heaven, and consequently,
they could also be praised inwardly, within the human body­
temple. Hence, a message from the god or a revelation may
occur outside the sanctuary. In late antiquity, a similar at­
titude became prominent among the Neoplatonists, namely,

69. lamblichus De mysteriis, Lr. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon and

Jackson P. Hcrshbcll (Atlanta: Society of Biblica.l Literature, 2003), p. 347.
70. Karel van dcr Toorn, Mesopotamian Prophecy between Immanence and
Transcendence: A Comparison of Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian Prophecy, p.
82.

31
 Orpheus and the Roots <ifPlatonism

that "the prophetic spirit cannot be confined to one place

only, but is present in the whole cosmos being co-extensive
with God."71
However, sometimes it seems that only the "professional
madmen" can receive such messages and afterwards come to
the aid of the king to whom all prophecies within the em­
pire presumably are addressed, or at least indirectly concern.
These prophecies promise the intervention of the gods and
their mighty support from heaven. As Van der Toorn remarks:

Whereas the Old Babylonian gods secure the success of the

king by their presence on earth, as auxiliaries of his army, the
Neo-Assyrian deities influence the outcome of political and
military conflict by an intervention from heaven. In the Old
Babylonian prophecies, the battle in which the gods become
involved remains within the human horizon; in the Neo-As­
syrian texts, however, the battle takes on cosmic dimensions. 72

VIII

Let us turn briefly to the Egyptian priestly titles and their

functions. In Late Period Egypt, it seems that the rules of pu­
rity were imposed upon the population at large, and not only
the serving priests and ascetics. Therefore, the Romanized
Hermetic description of Egypt as the templum totius mundi­
the temple of the whole world-is to a certain extent justified.
Cultic purification is a necessary condition for entering
the house of the god (hut-neter), located in the centre of the
divine household (per-neter), and becoming the god's proph­
et-the royal deputy and "deified" performer of sacramental
union. In the temple liturgy, the name of the deity is uttered

71. Polymnia Athanassiadi, "Philosophers and Oracles: Shifts of

Authority in Lale Paganism," Bywntion: Revue intemationalc des Etudcs
bywntines, Bruxelles, LXII, 1992, p. 58
72. Karel van dcr Toom, ibid., p. 84.

32
 Algis Uzdavinys

loudly and then followed by the self-presentation of the en­

tering priest.
The purified priests play the role of both the king and the
gods themselves, thus the temple liturgy is turned into a type
of theurgy. But neither the priests nor the animated cult im­
ages are the gods as they are in their transcendent metaphysi­
cal realm. Rather, they serve as vehicles for the divine irradia­
tion, communication and contextual presence: "In the temple
liturgy the self-presentation consists mainly of affirmations of
the type 'I am the god such and such,' usually a divine inter­
mediary such as Toot, Shu, Horus, but also Isis and Nephtys,
occasionally preceded by the affirmation that the entering
priest is indeed pure." 73
The Egyptian priests are designated as hemu-neter, "serv­
ants of the god", like the servants of household staff. 74 As
Ronald Williams remarks, the title hemu-neter was applied to
a grade of temple priest, and was rendered by the Greek term
prophetes, "the interpreter of the divine will". 75 More exactly,
the higher priests of the E gyptian temple were divided into
the categories of hem-neter (prophet) and uab (priest, the pure
one). Consequently, the term prophetes denoted a certain par­
ticular liturgical function and also served as a designation of
the higher priestly class (hiereis), itself divided into five sub­
categories.
According to John Gee, during the daily temple liturgy the
officiant pronounces two statements of identity. While taking
lhe incense burner, he says: "I am a priest and I am pure," and
during the ritual of "undoing the white cloth", he says: "I am

73. Robert Meyer, "Magical Ascesis and Moral Purity in Ancient Egypt,"
in Transformations ofthe inner Seifin Ancient Religions, ed. Jan Assmann and
Guy G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 1999), p. 59.
74. Jan Assmann, 77ze Search.for God in Ancient Egypt, tr. David Lorton
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 29.
75. Ronald J. Williams, "T11e Sage in Egyptian Literature," in 77,e Sage
in Israel and the Anc-ient Near East, ed. John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), p. 26.

33
 Orpheus and the Root.refPlatonism

a prophet; it is the king who has commanded me to see the

god."76
The title hem-neter is conventionally expressed in Greek as
prophetes, and uab as hiereus. The statements ink uab (I am a
priest) and ink hem-neter (I am a prophet) indicate the two
main levels of the temple hierarchy. All priests belonged to
the uab category because they were the "purified ones", but
some of them were selected or appointed as the prophets­
the spokesmen of the gods. As Christiane Zivie-Coche ob­
serves:

The clergy of Arnun had a "first prophet" who was at the sum­
mit of the hierarchy, as well as a second, third, and fourth
prophet, each the sole holder of his rank, and then a mass of
undifferentiated prophets. In principle, only the first prophet
had access to the holy of holies, while the others, accompa·
nied by lector-priests or ritualises, whose specialty was read­
ing the papyrus rolls, stopped at the hall of offerings. 77

All priests were simply officially appointed substitutes for

the pharaoh, or rather, vehicles and instruments that reacti­
vated his delegated powers, like the so-called ushabty figures
which enabled the deceased Egyptian to participate in the
obligatory liturgical work in the afterlife, instead of other­
wise missing it. In this respect, the pharaoh is regarded as
virtually the sole and omnipresent Priest of the state. He is
the chief Mystagogue of his administrative apparatus and the
singular Mystic, contemplating (in principle or in fact) the
radiant face of his divine Patron-Father. And why? Because
the pharaoh symbolizes and represents humanity as a whole:
"The king is the sole terrestrial being qualified to communi-

76. John Gee, "Prophets, lniliation and the Egyplian Temple," Journal
efthe Societyfor the Study efEgyptian Antiquities 31, 2004, p. 97.
77. Francoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coehe, Gods and Men in
Egypt: 3000 BCE lo 395 CE, tr. David Lorton (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 2004), p. 103.

34
 Algi.s Uzdauinys

cate with the gods because ... the sacred communication

cannot take place between a god and a merely human being,
but only between god and god."78
The pharaoh, as the titulary son of Ra, is able to delegate
his power of cultic communication to the temple staff. In
such circumstances all constitutive elements of the telestic
performance must be symbolic, since "everything in this sa­
cred game becomes a kind of hieroglyph," according to Jan
Assmann:

It is in the role of the king that the priest is able to assume

the role of a god. He plays the god because a cultic spell is
divine utterance. The cultic scene, therefore, implies three lev­
els of symbolization: 1) a priest confronting a statue; 2) the
king confronting a god; 3) a god (whose role is played by
the king represented by the priest) conversing with another
god.... This tripartite system of religious symbolization is
reminiscent of Greek mystery religions which are reported to
imply the same three kinds of symbolic expression: 1) drome­
non (what is to be done: action); 2) deiknumenon (what is to
be shown: representation); 3) legomenon (what is to be said:
language). 79

To be initiated into royal service and be offered the sta­

tus of cultic substitute for the son of Ra means to acquire

78. Jan Assmann, "Semiosis and Interpretation in Ancient Egyptian

Ritual," in Interpretation in Religi.on, ed. Shlomo Biderman and Ben-Ami
Scharfstcin (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), p. 92.
79. Ibid., p. 94. The tripartite system, in the Egyptian case, has three
modes of symbolic expression: 1) an action of the priest offering something;
2) pictoral representation of the pharaoh before the god on temple walls
and in ritual papyri; 3) language (liturgical formulae and interpretations).
According to Jan Assmann: "The temple relicfs of the Late period reflect a full­
fledged tradition of ritual exegesis, a culture of interpretation ... applied
not co texts-as in the more-or-less contemporaneous Alexandrian and
Jewish institutions of interpretation-but to pictures. However, this culture
of interpretation is anything but a symptom of Hellenistic influence; on the
contrary, it is deeply rooted in the Egyptian cult" (ibid., p.99).

35
 Orpheus and the Roots ofPlatonism

the position and rank of prophet in the sense of the Graeco­

Egyptian prophetes. Only by being initiated as the servant of
god (hem-neter) can one enter into the temple as the "living
servant of Ra" (hem ankh en ra) in order to see all forms of the
god and all secret things.
The purpose of this initiation (bes) consists in seeing the
deity, that is, in gazing at the image (sekhem, tut) of the god.
The watcher (like the Platonic theoros) is to be united with the
god's ba (manifestation, godlike radiance) in the tremendous
contemplation of the divine truth and beauty.
Likewise in Neoplatonism, the dialectical and telestic be­
coming like the divine (homoiosin) leads to unification (he ar­
rhetos henosis) with the god through the contemplation of his
animated statue, for the telestic art makes the statues in the
here below (ta tede agalmata) to be like the gods by means of
symbols and mysterious theurgic tokens (dia tinon sumbolon
kai aporrheton sunthematon: Proclus, In Grat. 51, p.19, 12ff).80
For Proclus, the true divine madness is to be equated with
(or located in) the "one of the soul", the henadic summit of
one's psychic and noetic topography by means of which the
theurgist is united with the One. 81 Through the divine ma­
niai-be it "prophetic madness according to Truth", "erotic
madness according to Beauty", or "poetical madness accord­
ing to divine Symmetry" -the philosopher's soul is linked to
the gods, and "this form of life is that of the ultimate mystical
experience of the ultimate unification."82
The threshold of the holy of holies in the Egyptian temple
may be equated with that of the huperouranios topos in Plato's
Phaedrus, though strictly speaking, the dark inner sanctuary
represents the symbolic mound of noetic "creation" in the
darkness of Nun. The "prophetic" path leading to liturgic
and theurgic unification (later romanticized as a democrat·

80. R.M. van den Berg, Proclus' Hym11s: Essays, Translations, Commentary
(Leiden: Brill, 2001), p. 81.
01. /bid., p. 63.
82. Ibid., p. u6.

36
 Algis Uidavinys

ic and personal unio mystica) is closed for ordinary mortals,

but open for the living pharaoh and his initiates-both the
vindicated and blessed dead (maa kheru) and purified living
priests, the formal cultic prototypes of the Platonic philoso­
phers and mystics. Lanny Bell states: ''The wooden doors of
the sanctuary shrine, which enclosed the divine image, were
called the 'doors of heaven'. At their opening, ritual partici­
pants were projected into the realm of the divine." 83 Here, in
the temple's "interior" (khenu), all the energy of the divine
bau that animates the hieratic statues, reliefs and the entire
temple is concentrated.
Some nineteenth century scholars may be wrong in imag­
ining the prophet (first of all, the Jewish political moralist
and inspired demagogue) as "an exceptional individual and a
religious genius",84 that is, an extraordinary personality who
has miraculous inner experiences. In most cases, however, an­
cient "prophethood" is more like a job appointment-either
by the king, or by the patron deity-for the official temple
ritual performance and the royal court service. Be that as it
may, the prophet (although de Jure only a humble servant)
had an opportunity (or rather, a job requirement) to visit the
divine house and see its amazing beauties, or even encounter
and glimpse the face of the god himself.

IX

Just as the ancient Near Eastern conception of "prophecy"

and "prophethood" (often presented as an instrumental so­
cio-political construct with distinctive literary genres and so­
tcriological implications) may mean different things in dif-

83. Lanny Bell The New Kingdom "Divine" Temple: The E:mmple ef Luxor,
Temples of Ancient EgypL, ed. Byron E. Shafer (London: 1.B. Tauris,
200 5), p. 134.
84. FriLz SLOlz , "Dimensions and Transformalions of Purification Ideas,"
in Transjonnations ef the Inner Seif in Ancient Religions, ed. Jan Assmann and
Guy G. SLroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 1999), p. 215.

37
 Orpheus and the Roots efPlatonism

ferent contexts, so Orpheus may be "all things to all men",

according to the deliberately disorienting assertion made by
M.L. West, for whom there is only Orphic literature, not Or­
phism or the Orphics. 85 Standing as a great academic sha­
man of an astonishing modern Western inanity as regards the
Orphic bakcheia, West can speak only about "the fashion for
claiming Orpheus as an authority", since "the history of Or­
phism is the history of that fashion."86
Although a figure of myth and the preferred name for met·
aphysical auctoritas in telestic and esoteric matters, Orpheus
nonetheless appears as a prophet and mystagogue, presum­
ably the "first" to reveal the meaning of the mysteries and
rituals of initiation (teletai). Since Orphism is an ascetic and
telestic way of life, W.K.C. Guthrie surmises that Orpheus
did not have a new and entirely distinct species of religion to
offer, but rather an esoteric modification and reinterpretation
of traditional mythologies, a reformation of Dionysiac energy
in the direction of Apollonian sanity: "Those who found it
congenial might take him for their prophet, live the Orphic
life and call themselves Orphics."87
Famous for his charms and incantations (pharmaka, epo­
dai), Orpheus appears in countless legendary stories as the
son of the solar Apollo and the muse Calliope or as a devoted
worshipper of Apollo. Accordingly, Orpheus makes Helios
the same as Apollo and Dionysus, though as a giver of or­
acles and a prophet he always was "companion of Apollo"
(Apollonos hetairon). 88 Subsequently, Dionysus sent the Mae­
nads against him and he was torn to pieces like the Egyptian
Osiris.

85. M.L. West, 1he Orphic Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. 2.
86. Ibid., p. 3.
87. W. K.C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study ef the Orphic
Movement, with a new Foreword by Larry J. Alderink, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993), p. 9·
Sil. Ibid., p. 42.

38
 Algis Uidavinys

In this respect, however, it needs to be remembered that

the "much-labored contrast" between Dionysian and Apol­
lonian dimensions in ancient Mediterranean culture "belongs
to German speculation", as A.H. Armstrong rightly observes,
rather than to the actual realm of Hellenic piety. 89
The philosophical "ecstasy" may be sober and passionless,
and the utmost "madness" like a supra-noetic metaphysical
silence. In a certain sense, the prophetic and poetic frenzy
somewhat resembles the epistemic and hermeneutic illumi­
nation mediated by the holy light of myths and symbols.
These myths-Orphic, Hesiodic and Homeric-may cause a
state of Bacchic ecstasy because of their theurgical quality. 90
1herefore, Proclus prays to the Muses that they should bring
him to ecstasy through the noeric myths of the sages (noerois
me sophon bakcheusate muthois: Hymns 3.11). And he turns to
Athena, the sober patroness of Platonic philosophy, saying:
"Give my soul holy light from your sacred myths and wisdom
and lore" (Hymns 7.33f).91
As the paradigmatic lyre player and liturgical singer, Or­
pheus was also a theologos and theourgos of sorts. According to
some versions of his death, Orpheus was a victim of a thun·
derbolt from Zeus, since, in a similar way as Prometheus, he
taught men things unknown to them before, expounding the
mysteries of the soul's descent and ascent.
TI1e lyre and the decapitated head of the murdered Or­
pheus were thrown into a river and floated across to the island
of Lesbos. The temple of Bakchus (the Orphic Dionysus) was
built at the spot where the singing and prophesying head of
Orpheus was buried. TI1e miraculous lyre had been dedicated
at the temple of Apollo, and the singing head became famous
as a giver of oracles and prophecies. 92

89. A. I I. Armstrong, 7/,e Ancient and Continuing Pieties ofthe Greek World,
p. 87.
90. R.M. van den Berg, Proclus' Hymns, p. 101.
91. Ibid., p. JOO.
92. W. K.C. Guthrie, Orpheus nnd Greek Religion, p. 35.

39
 Orpheus and the Roots ofPlatonism

And so, is Orpheus a "prophet " in the trivial sense of a per­

son (or a symbol) who foretells the future, or in the sense of
the theological administrator and authority in covenants and
treaties of the Israelite politico-military enterprises? In both
cases, prophecy is an integral part of the divination whose
fundamental cosmological premises and logic are based on
the ancient ideology of Near Eastern royalty. Consequently,
prophecy is a form of divination along with dreams and vi­
sions, as Nissinen indicates: "In the ancient Near East ...the
primary function of all divination was ... the conviction of
the identity, capacity and legitimacy of the ruler and the jus­
tification and limitation of his ... power, based on the com­
munication between the ruler and the god(s)."93
Nissinen argues that any definition of prophecy (not just
in the widespread cases of literary manifestos and fictions) is
a scholarly construct.94 And a written prophecy is always a
scribed construct.The very notion of the human being able
to function as a substitute for the animated and speaking di­
vine statue or as an autonomous mouthpiece of the deity is
the outcome of particular socio-historical forms and versions
of the covenantal patronship.Nissinen writes:

According to Liddel and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon,

propheteia is equivalent to the "gift of interpreting the will of
gods" and propheteuo to being an "interpreter of the gods",
whereas prophetes is "one who speaks for a God and interprets
his will to man", or, generally, an "interpreter".... If the word
"prophecy", then, can be agreed to denote primarily the activ­
ity of transmitting and interpreting the divine will, it can be
used as a general concept of related activities in the ancient

93. Manti Nissinen, "Whal is Prophecy? An AncienL Near Eastern

Perspective," in Inspired Speech: Prophecy in the Ancient Near East: Essays in
Honor of Herbert B. Hujfmon, ed. John Kaltncr and Louis SLulman (New
York: Continuum, 2004), p. 21.
94. Ibid., p. 25.

40
 Algis Uidavinys

and the modern worlds, independently of its biblical roots

and religious affiliations. 95

According to the Hellenic tradition, Pythagoras published

his writings in the name of Orpheus. Moreover, like the Or­
phic initiate, Pythagoras has descended to Hades and re­
turned, coming back through the Delphic sanctuary. There­
fore Kingsley surmises that Orpheus, as the inspired mysta­
gogue, "would seem originally to have had the power to fetch
the dead back to life", 96 or rather, to lead the dead (meaning
the transformed initiates) "into the day of the noetic life of
Atum-Ra", or even to "the primeval time before there was any
duality".97 This is a state where Atum, instead of having two
eyes (like the paradigmatic Pythagorean dyad), is one-eyed.
But the prevailing religious and moral attitudes of the Greeks
presumably suppressed Orpheus' initial success and turned
it into failure.
Likewise, the (elletu) Ishtar, the prototype of the Orphic
Persephone, elevates the soul and reintegrates it into the "Py­
thagorean" decad of the Assyrian sacred tree. This reintegra­
tion is analogous to the baqa of the Sufis. Being the image of
God (like the macrocosmic fullness of the noetic cosmos, the
collective of demiurgic archetypes) and the image of the per­
fect man (etlu gitmalu, the microcosmic fullness of the king­
initiate-philosopher as a son of God), it is the noetic constel­
lation of divine attributes. 'TI1e descent and ascent of Ishtar

95. Ibid., pp. 19 & .20.

96. Peter Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles
and Pythagorean Tradition, p. 2.26.
9_7. H. te Vclde, "Relations and Conflicts between Egyptian Gods,
panicularly in the Divine Ennead of Heliopolis," in
Stmggles ofGods: Papers
of the Groningen Work Groupfor the Study of the History ofReligions, ed. H.G.
_
Kippenbcrg in association with H.J.W. Drijvcrs and Y. Kuiper (Berlin:
Mouton Publishers, 1984), p. .250.

41
 Orpheus and the Roots ofPlatonism

had outlined the way for salvation, depicted in terms of the

body-like royal tree and the seven-stepped ziggurat tower.98
And the "numerical" sacred tree of Ishtar itself can be viewed
as a graphic representation of both the divine council (ilani
rabuti) and "cosmic man" as "the human incarnation of the
almighty God, Ashur".99
According to the ritualized requirement of archetypal auc­
toritas, the early Pythagoreans used to attribute to the proph­
et Orpheus their own works on the soul's soteria (salvation),
focused on the figure and fate of Persephone, analogous to
the Babylonian and Assyrian Ishtar. And Plato allegedly
paraphrased Orpheus and the Orphic literature throughout,
according to Olympiodorus' remark: pantachou gar ho Platon
paroidei ta Orpheos, "Plato paraphrases Orpheus everywhere"
(In Phaed. 10.3.13). In this respect, Plato simply reshapes and
rationalizes the mythical and religious ideas of esoteric Or­
phism and its Bacchic mysteries of Dionysus. Therefore, Pro­
clus is not so much exaggerating when he claims that Plato
received his knowledge of divine matters from Pythagorean
and Orphic writings: ek te ton Puthagoreion kai ton Orphikon
grammaton (Plat.Theo!. 1.5; In Tim. III.160.17-161.6).IOo
Like Orpheus, Plato's Socrates is a servant of Apollo,
maintaining that the best music is philosophy. Hence, philo­
sophical talk is analogous to the prophetic song of Orpheus
or the theological hymn of "Apollo's philosophical swan who
sings that this life is a prelude to a disincarnate afterlife" . 101
The Orphic myth (or the philosophical Platonic myth)
can serve us if we obey it, following the upper road, and if
we regard it as a model for present behaviour in accordance

98. Simo Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies, p. XCV.

99. Simo Parpola, "Monotheism in Ancient Assyria," in One God or
Many? Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient World, ed. Barbara Ncvling Porter
(Chebeague, ME: Transactions of the Casco Bay Assyriological Institute,
2000), p. 190.
too. Peter Kingsley, ibid., p. 131.
101. Kath ryn A. Morgan, Myth and Philosophyfrom the Presocralics lo Plato
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 196.

42
Other documents randomly have
different content
conceive that your present will have its desired effect, and that the
sultan will look upon me with a favourable eye; and I am sure, that
if I attempt to acquit myself on this message of yours, I shall have
no power to open my mouth; and therefore I shall not only lose my
labour, but the present, which you say is so extraordinary, and shall
return home again in confusion, to tell you that your hopes are
frustrated. I have told you the consequence, and you ought to
believe me; but,” added she, “I will exert my best endeavour to
please you, and wish I may have power to ask the sultan as you
would have me; but certainly he will either laugh at me, or send me
back like a fool, or be in so great a rage, as to make us both the
victims of his fury.”
She used a great many more arguments to endeavour to make him
change his mind; but the charms of the princess Badr-oul-boudour
had made too great an impression on his heart to dissuade him from
his design. Aladdin persisted in desiring his mother to execute his
resolution, and she, as much out of tenderness as for fear he should
be guilty of a greater piece of extravagance, condescended to his
request.
As it was now late, and the time of day for going to the sultan’s
palace was past, it was put off till the next. The mother and son
talked of different matters the remaining part of the day; and
Aladdin took a great deal of pains to encourage his mother in the
task she had undertaken to go to the sultan; while she
notwithstanding all his arguments, could not persuade herself she
could ever succeed; and it must be confessed she had reason
enough to doubt. “Child,” said she to Aladdin, “if the sultan should
receive me as favourably as I wish for your sake, and should hear
my proposal with calmness, and after this kind reception should
think of asking me where lie your riches and your estate, (for he will
sooner inquire after that than your person,)—if, I say, he should ask
me the question, what answer would you have me return him?”
“Let us not be uneasy, mother,” replied Aladdin, “about what may
never happen. First, let us see how the sultan receives, and what
answer he gives you. If it should so fall out, that he desires to be
informed of all that you mention, I have thought of an answer, and
am confident that the lamp, which hath subsisted us so long, will not
fail me in time of need.”
Aladdin’s mother could not say anything against what her son then
proposed; but reflected that the lamp might be capable of doing
greater wonders than just providing victuals for them. This
consideration satisfied her, and at the same time removed all the
difficulties which might have prevented her from undertaking the
service she had promised her son with the sultan; when Aladdin who
penetrated into his mother’s thoughts, said to her, “Above all things,
mother, be sure to keep the secret, for thereon depends the success
we have to expect;” and after this caution, Aladdin and his mother
parted to go to bed. But violent love, and the great prospect of so
immense a fortune, had so much possessed the son’s thoughts, that
he could not rest as well as he could have wished. He rose at
daybreak, and went presently and awakened his mother, pressing
her to get herself dressed to go to the sultan’s palace, and to get in
first, as the grand vizier, the other viziers, and all the great officers
of state, went in to take their seats in the divan, where the sultan
always assisted in person.
Aladdin’s mother did all her son desired. She took the china dish, in
which they had put the jewels the day before, tied up in two
napkins, one finer than the other, which was tied at four comers for
more easy carriage, and set forwards for the sultan’s palace, to the
great satisfaction of Aladdin. When she came to the gates, the grand
vizier, and the other viziers and most distinguished lords of the court,
were just gone in; and, notwithstanding the crowd of people who
had business at the divan was extraordinarily great, she got into the
divan, which was a large spacious hall, the entry into which was very
magnificent. She placed herself just before the sultan, grand vizier,
and the great lords, who sat in that council, on his right and left
hand. Several causes were called, according to their order, and
pleaded and adjudged, until the time the divan generally broke up,
when the sultan rising, dismissed the council, and returned to his
apartment, attended by the grand vizier; the other viziers and
ministers of state returned, as also did all those whose business
called them thither; some pleased with gaining their causes, others
dissatisfied at the sentences pronounced against them, and some in
expectation of theirs being heard the next sitting.
Aladdin’s mother, seeing the sultan rise and retire, and all the people
go away, judged rightly that he would not come again that day, and
resolved to go home. When Aladdin saw her return with the present
designed for the sultan, he knew not at first what to think of her
success, and in the fear he was in lest she should bring him some ill
news, he had not courage enough to ask her any questions, till his
mother, who had never set foot into the sultan’s palace before, and
knew not what was every day practised there, freed him from his
embarrassment, and said to him, with a great deal of simplicity,
“Son, I have seen the sultan, and am very well persuaded he has
seen me too; for I placed myself just before him, and nothing could
hinder him from seeing me; but he was so much taken up with all
those who talked on all sides of him, that I pitied him, and wondered
at his patience in hearing them. At last I believe he was heartily
tired, for he rose up suddenly, and would not hear a great many who
were ready prepared to speak to him, but went away, at which I was
very well pleased, for indeed I began to lose all patience, and was
extremely tired with staying so long. But there is no harm done: I
will go again to-morrow; perhaps the sultan may not be so busy.”
Though Aladdin’s passion was very violent, he was forced to be
satisfied with this excuse, and to fortify himself with patience. He
had at least the satisfaction to find that his mother had got over the
greatest difficulty, which was to procure access to the sultan, and
hoped that the example of those she saw speak to him would
embolden her to acquit herself better of her commission when a
favourable opportunity offered to speak to him.
The next morning she went to the sultan’s palace with the present,
as early as the day before; but when she came there, she found the
gates of the divan shut, and understood that the council sat but
every other day, therefore she must come again the next. This news
she carried to her son, whose only relief was to guard himself with
patience. She went six times afterwards on the day appointed,
placed herself always directly before the sultan, but with as little
success as the first time, and might have perhaps come a thousand
times to as little purpose, if the sultan himself had not taken a
particular notice of her: for it is very probable that only those who
came with petitions approached the sultan, and each pleaded their
cause in its turn, and Aladdin’s mother was not one of them.
That day at last, after the council was broke up, when the sultan
was returned to his own apartment, he said to his grand vizier, “I
have for some time observed a certain woman, who comes
constantly every day that I go into council, and has something
wrapped up in a napkin: she always stands up from the beginning to
the breaking up of the council, and affects to place her self just
before me. Do you know what she wants?”
“Sir,” replied the grand vizier, who knew no more than the sultan
what she wanted, but had not a mind to seem uninformed, “your
majesty knows that women often form complaints on trifles; perhaps
this woman may come to complain to your majesty, that somebody
has sold her some bad flour, or some such trifling matter.” The sultan
was not satisfied with this answer, but replied, “If this woman comes
again next council-day, do not fail to call her, that I may hear what
she has to say.” The grand vizier, made answer by kissing his hand,
and lifting it up above his head, signifying his willingness to lose it if
he failed.
By this time, Aladdin’s mother was so much used to go to the
council, and stand before the sultan, that she did not think it any
trouble, if she could but satisfy her son that she neglected nothing
that lay in her power to please him; so the next council-day she
went to the divan, and placed herself before the sultan as usual; and
before the grand vizier had made his report of business, the sultan
perceived her, and compassionating her for having waited so long,
he said to the vizier, “Before you enter upon any business,
remember the woman I spoke to you about; bid her come near, and
let us hear and dispatch her business first.” The grand vizier
immediately called the chief of the officers, who stood ready to obey
his commands; and pointing to her, bid him go to that woman and
tell her to come before the sultan.
The chief of the officers went to Aladdin’s mother, and, at a sign he
gave her, she followed him to the foot of the sultan’s throne, where
he left her, and retired to his place by the grand vizier. Aladdin’s
mother, by the example of a great many others whom she saw
salute the sultan, bowed her head down to the carpet which covered
the steps of the throne, and remained in that posture till the sultan
bid her rise, which she had no sooner done, than the sultan said to
her, “Good woman, I have observed you to stand a long time, from
the beginning to the rising of the divan; what business brings you
here?”
At these words, Aladdin’s mother prostrated herself a second time;
and when she got up again, said, “Monarch of monarchs, before I
tell your majesty the extraordinary and almost incredible business
which brings me before your high throne, I beg of you to pardon the
boldness or rather the impudence of the demand I am going to
make, which is so uncommon, that I tremble, and am ashamed to
propose it to my sultan.” In order to give her the more freedom to
explain herself, the sultan ordered everybody to go out of the divan
but the grand vizier, and then told her that she might speak without
restraint.
Aladdin’s mother, not content with this favour of the sultan’s to save
her the trouble and confusion of speaking before so many people,
was notwithstanding for securing herself against his anger, which,
from the proposal she was going to make, she was not a little
apprehensive of; therefore resuming her discourse, she said, “I beg
of your majesty, if you should think my demand the least injurious or
offensive, to assure me first of your pardon and forgiveness.” “Well,”
replied the sultan, “I will forgive you, be it what it will, and no hurt
shall come to you: speak boldly.”
When Aladdin’s mother had taken all these precautions, for fear of
the sultan’s anger, she told him faithfully how Aladdin had seen the
princess Badroul-boudour, the violent love that fatal sight had
inspired him with, the declaration he had made to her of it when he
came home, and what representations she had made to dissuade
him from “a passion no less injurious,” said she, “to your majesty, as
sultan, than to the princess your daughter. But,” continued she, “my
son, instead of taking my advice and reflecting on his boldness, was
so obstinate as to persevere in it, and to threaten me with some
desperate act, if I refused to come and ask the princess in marriage
of your majesty; and it was not till after an extreme violence on
myself, I was forced to have this complaisance for him, for which I
beg your majesty once more to pardon not only me, but forgive
Aladdin my son, for entertaining such a rash thought as to aspire to
so high an alliance.”
The sultan hearkened to this discourse with a great deal of mildness,
without shewing the least anger or passion; but before he gave her
any answer, he asked her what she had brought tied up in that
napkin. She took the china dish, which she had set down at the foot
of the throne, before she prostrated herself before him; she untied
it, and presented it to the sultan.
The sultan’s amazement and surprise were inexpressible, when he
saw so many large, beautiful, and valuable jewels collected in one
dish. He remained for some time motionless with admiration. At last,
when he had recovered himself, he received the present from
Aladdin’s mother’s hand, and crying out in a transport of joy, “How
rich and how beautiful!” After he had admired and handled all the
jewels, one after another, he turned about to his grand vizier, and
shewing him the dish, said, “Look here, and confess that your eyes
never beheld any thing so rich and beautiful before.” The vizier was
charmed. “Well,” continued the sultan, “what sayest thou to such a
present? Is it not worthy of the princess my daughter! And ought I
not to bestow her on one who values her at so great price?”
These words put the grand vizier into a strange agitation. The sultan
had some time before signified to him his intention of bestowing the
princess his daughter on a son of his; therefore he was afraid, and
not without grounds, that the sultan, dazzled by so rich and
extraordinary a present, might change his mind. Thereupon, going
to him, and whispering him in the ear, he said to him, “Sir, I cannot
but own that the present is worthy of the princess; but I beg of your
majesty to grant me three months before you come to a resolution. I
hope, before that time, my son, on whom you have had the
goodness to look with a favourable eye, will be able to make a
nobler present than Aladdin, who is an entire stranger to your
majesty.”
The sultan, though he was very well persuaded that it was not
possible for the vizier to provide so considerable a present for his
son to make the princess, yet he hearkened to him, and granted him
that favour. So turning about to Aladdin’s mother, he said to her,
“Good woman, go home, and tell your son that I agree to the
proposal you have made me; but I cannot marry the princess my
daughter till some furniture I design for her be got ready, which
cannot be finished these three months; but at the expiration of that
time come again.”
Aladdin’s mother returned home much more overjoyed than she
could have imagined, for she looked upon her access to the sultan
as a thing impossible; and besides, she had met with a favourable
answer instead of the refusal and confusion she expected. From two
circumstances Aladdin, when he saw his mother return, judged that
she brought him good news; the one was, that she returned sooner
than ordinary; and the next was, the gaiety of her countenance.
“Well, mother,” said he to her, “may I entertain any hopes, or must I
die with despair?” When she had pulled off her veil, and had sat
herself down on the sofa by him, she said to him, “Not to keep you
long in suspense, son, I will begin by telling you, that instead of
thinking of dying, you have every reason to be very well satisfied.”
Then pursuing her discourse, she told him how that she had an
audience before everybody else, which made her come home so
soon; the precautions she had taken lest she should have displeased
the sultan, by making the proposal of marriage between him and the
princess Badr-oul-boudour, and the favourable answer she had from
the caliph’s own mouth; and that, as far as she could judge, the
present wrought that powerful effect. “But when I least expected it,”
said she, “and he was going to give me an answer, the grand vizier
whispered him in the ear, and I was afraid it might be some obstacle
to his good intentions towards us.”
Aladdin thought himself the most happy of all men, at hearing of this
news, and thanked his mother for all the pains she had taken in the
pursuit of this affair, the good success of which was of so great
importance to his peace. Though, through his impatience to enjoy
the object of his passion, three months seemed an age, yet he
disposed himself to wait with patience, relying on the sultan’s word,
which he looked upon to be irrevocable. But all that time he not only
counted the hours, days, and weeks, but every moment. When two
of the three months were passed, his mother one evening going to
light the lamp, and finding no oil in the house, went out to buy
some, and when she came into the city, found a general rejoicing.
The shops, instead of being shut up, were open, dressed with
foliage, every one striving to shew their zeal in the most
distinguished manner. The streets were crowded with officers in
habits of ceremony, mounted on horses richly caparisoned, each
attended by a great many footmen. Aladdin’s mother asked the oil-
merchant what was the meaning of all those doings. “Whence came
you, good woman,” said he, “that you don’t know that the grand
vizier’s son is to marry the princess Badr-oul-boudour, the sultan’s
daughter, to-night? She will presently return from the baths; and
these officers that you see, are to assist at the cavalcade to the
palace, where the ceremony is to be solemnised.”
This was news enough for Aladdin’s mother. She ran, till she was
quite out of breath, home to her son, who little suspected any such
thing. “Child,” cried she, “you are undone! you depend upon the
sultan’s fine promises, but they will come to nothing.” Aladdin was
terribly alarmed at these words. “Mother,” replied he, “how do you
know the sultan has been guilty of a breach of promise?” “This
night,” answered the mother, “the grand vizier’s son is to marry the
princess Badr-oul-boudour.” She then related how she had heard it;
so that from all circumstances he had no reason to doubt the truth
of what she said.
At this account, Aladdin was thunderstruck. Any other man would
have sunk under the shock; but a secret motive of jealousy soon
roused his spirits, and he bethought himself of the lamp, which had
till then been so useful to him; and without venting his rage in
empty words against the sultan, the vizier, or his son, he only said,
“Perhaps, mother, the vizier’s son may not be so happy to-night as
he promises himself: while I go into my chamber a moment, do you
go and get supper ready.” She accordingly went about it, and she
guessed that her son was going to make use of the lamp, to prevent
if possible, the consummation of the marriage.
When Aladdin had got into his chamber, he took the lamp, and
rubbed it in the same place as before, and immediately the genie
appeared, and said to him, “What wouldst thou have? I am ready to
obey thee as thy slave, and the slave of all those who have that
lamp in their hands; I and the other slaves of the lamp.” “Hear me,”
said Aladdin; “thou hast hitherto brought me whatever I wanted as
to provisions; but now I have business of the greatest importance
for thee to execute. I have demanded the princess Badr-oul-boudour
in marriage of the sultan her father: he promised her to me, but he
asked three months’ time: and instead of keeping that promise, has
this night, before the expiration of that time, married her to the
grand vizier’s son. I have just heard this, and have no doubt of it.
What I ask of you is, that as soon as the bride and bridegroom are
in bed, you bring them both hither in their bed.” “Master,” replied the
genie, “I will obey you. Have you any other commands?” “None, at
present,” answered Aladdin; and then the genie disappeared.
Aladdin went down stairs, and supped with his mother, with the
same tranquillity of mind as usual; and after supper, talked of the
princess’s marriage as of an affair wherein he had not the least
concern; and afterwards returned to his own chamber again, and
left his mother to go to bed; but he for his part, sat up till the genie
had executed his orders.
In the meantime, everything was prepared with the greatest
magnificence in the sultan’s palace, to celebrate the princess’s
nuptials; and the evening was spent with all the usual ceremonies
and great rejoicings till midnight, when the grand vizier’s son, on a
signal given him by the chief of the princess’s eunuchs, slipped away
from the company, and was introduced by that officer into the
princess’s apartment, where the nuptial bed was prepared. He went
to bed first, and in a little time after, the sultaness, accompanied by
her own women, and those of the princess, brought the bride, who,
according to the custom of new-married ladies, made great
resistance. The sultaness herself helped to undress her, put her into
bed by a kind of violence; and after having kissed her, and wished
her good night, retired with all the women, and the last who came
out shut the door.
No sooner was the door shut, but the genie, as the faithful slave of
the lamp, and punctual in executing the command of those who
possessed it, without giving the bridegroom the least time to caress
his bride, to the great amazement of them both, took up the bed,
and transported it in an instant into Aladdin’s chamber, where he set
it down.
Aladdin, who waited impatiently for this moment, did not suffer the
vizier’s son to remain long in bed with the princess. “Take this new-
married man,” said he to the genie, “and shut him up in the house of
office, and come again to-morrow morning after daybreak.” The
genie presently took the vizier’s son out of bed, and carried him in
his shirt whither Aladdin bid him; and after he had breathed upon
him, which prevented his stirring, he left him there.
Great as was Aladdin’s love for the princess Badr-oul-boudour, he did
not talk much to her when they were alone; but only said with a
passionate air, “Fear nothing, adorable princess; you are here in
safety; for, notwithstanding the violence of my passion, which your
charms have kindled, it shall never exceed the bounds of the
profound respect I owe you. If I have been forced to come to this
extremity, it is not with any intention of affronting you but to prevent
an unjust rival’s possessing you contrary to the sultan your father’s
promise in favour of me.”
The princess, who knew nothing of these particulars, gave very little
attention to what Aladdin could say. The fright and amazement of so
unexpected an adventure had put her into such a condition, that
could not get one word from her. However, he undressed himself and
got into the vizier’s son’s place, and lay with his back to the princess,
putting a sabre between himself and her, to show that he deserved
to be punished, if he attempted anything against her honour.
Aladdin, very well satisfied with having thus deprived his rival of the
happiness he had flattered himself with enjoying that night, slept
very quietly, though the princess Badr-oul-boudour never passed a
night so ill in her life; and if we consider the condition the genie left
the grand vizier’s son in, we may imagine that the new bridegroom
spent it much worse.
Aladdin had no occasion the next morning to rub the lamp to call the
genie; he came at the hour appointed, and just when he had done
dressing himself, and said to him, “I am here, master; what are your
commands?” “Go,” said Aladdin, “fetch the vizier’s son out of the
place where you left him, and put him into his bed again, and carry
it to the sultan’s palace, from whence you brought it.” The genie
presently returned with the vizier’s son. Aladdin took up his sabre,
the bridegroom was laid by the princess, and in an instant the
nuptial bed was transported into the same chamber of the palace
from whence it had been brought. But we must observe, that all this
time the genie never appeared either to the princess or the grand
vizier’s son. His hideous form would have made them die with fear.
Neither did they hear anything of the discourse between Aladdin and
him; they only perceived the motion of the bed, and their
transportation from one place to another; which we may well
imagine was enough to frighten them.
As soon as the genie had set down the nuptial-bed in its proper
place, the sultan, curious to know how the princess his daughter had
spent the wedding-night, opened the door to wish her good
morning. The grand vizier’s son, who was almost perished with cold,
by standing in his shirt all night, and had not had time to warm
himself in bed, no sooner heard the door open, but he got out of
bed, and ran into the wardrobe, where he had undressed himself the
night before.
The sultan went to the bed-side, kissed the princess between the
eyes, according to custom, wishing her a good-morrow, and asked
her smiling, how she had passed the night. But lifting up her head,
and looking at her more earnestly, he was extremely surprised to
see her so melancholy, and that neither by a blush nor any other
sign she could satisfy his curiosity. She only cast at him a sorrowful
look, expressive of great affliction or great dissatisfaction. He said a
few words to her; but finding that he could not get a word from her,
he attributed it to her modesty, and retired. Nevertheless, he
suspected that there was something extraordinary in this silence,
and thereupon went immediately to the sultaness’s apartment, and
told her in what a state he found the princess, and how she received
him. “Sir,” said the sultaness, “your majesty ought not to be
surprised at this behaviour; all new-married people always have a
reserve about them the next day; she will be quite another thing in
two or three days’ time, and then she will receive the sultan her
father as she ought; but I will go and see her,” added she; “I am
very much deceived if she receives me in the same manner.”
As soon as the sultaness was dressed, she went to the princess’s
apartment, who was still in bed. She undrew the curtain, wished her
good-morrow, and kissed her. But how great was her surprise when
she returned no answer; and looking more attentively at her, she
perceived her to be very much dejected, which made her judge that
something had happened which she did not understand. “How
comes it, child,” said the sultaness, “that you do not return my
caresses? Ought you to treat your mother after this manner? And do
you think I do not know what may have happened in your
circumstances? I am apt to believe you do not think so, and
something extraordinary has happened: come, tell me freely, and
leave me no longer in a painful suspense.”
At last the princess Badr-oul-boudour broke silence with a great
sigh, and said, “Alas! madam, most honoured mother, forgive me if I
have failed in the respect I owe you. My mind is so full of the
extraordinary things which have befallen me this night, that I have
not yet recovered my amazement and fright, and scarce know
myself.” Then she told her how the instant after she and her
husband were in bed, the bed was transposed into a dark dirty
room, where he was taken from her and carried away, where she
knew not, and she was left alone with a young man, who, after he
had said something to her, which her fright did not suffer her to
hear, laid himself down by her, in her husband’s place, but first put
his sabre between them; and in the morning her husband was
brought to her again, and the bed was transported back to her own
chamber in an instant. “All this,” said she, “was but just done, when
the sultan my father came into my chamber. I was so overwhelmed
with grief, that I had not power to make him one word of answer;
therefore I am afraid that he is offended at the manner in which I
received the honour he did me: but I hope he will forgive me, when
he knows my melancholy adventure, and the miserable state I am in
at present.”
The sultaness heard all the princess told her very patiently, but
would not believe it. “You did well, child,” said she, “not to speak of
this to your father: take care not to mention it to anybody, for you
will certainly be thought mad if you talk at this rate.” “Madam,”
replied the princess, “I can assure you I am in my right senses: ask
my husband, and he will tell you the same story.” “I will,” said the
sultaness; “but if he should talk in the same manner I shall not be
better persuaded of the truth. Come, rise, and throw off this idle
fancy; it will be a fine story indeed, if all the feasts and rejoicings in
the kingdom should be interrupted by such a vision. Do not you hear
the trumpets sounding, and drums beating, and concerts of the
finest music? Cannot all these inspire you with joy and pleasure, and
make you forget all the fancies you tell me of?” At the same time,
the sultaness called the princess’s women, and after she had seen
her get up, and set her toilet, she went to the sultan’s apartment,
and told him that her daughter had got some old notions in her
head, but that there was nothing in them.
Then she sent for the vizier’s son, to know of him something of what
the princess had told her; but he, thinking himself highly honoured
to be allied to the sultan, resolved to disguise the matter. “Son-in-
law,” said the sultaness, “are you as much infatuated as your wife?”
“Madam,” replied the vizier’s son, “may I be so bold as to ask the
reason of that question?” “Oh! that is enough,” answered the
sultaness; “I ask no more, I see you are wiser than her.”
The rejoicings lasted all that day in the palace, and the sultaness,
who never left the princess, forgot nothing to divert her, and induce
her to take part in the various diversions and shows: but she was so
struck with the idea of what had happened to her that it was easy to
see her thoughts were entirely taken up about it. Neither was the
grand vizier’s son’s affliction less, but that his ambition made him
disguise it, and nobody doubted but he was a happy bridegroom.
Aladdin, who was well acquainted with what passed in the palace,
never disputed but that the new-married couple were to lie together
again that night, notwithstanding the troublesome adventure of the
night before; and therefore, having as great an inclination to disturb
them, he had recourse to his lamp, and when the genie appeared,
and offered his services, he said to him, “The grand vizier’s son and
the princess Badr-oul-boudour are to lie together again to-night: go,
and as soon as they are in bed, bring the bed hither, as thou didst
yesterday.”
The genie obeyed Aladdin as faithfully and exactly as the day before:
the grand vizier’s son passed the night as coldly and disagreeably as
before, and the princess had the mortification again to have Aladdin
for her bedfellow, with the sabre between them. The genie,
according to Aladdin’s orders, came the next morning, and brought
the bridegroom and laid him by his bride, and then carried the bed
and new-married couple back again to the palace.
The sultan, after the reception the princess Badr-oul-boudour had
given him that day, was very anxious to know how she passed the
second night, and if she would give him the same reception, and
therefore went into her chamber as early as the morning before. The
grand vizier’s son, more ashamed and mortified with the ill success
of this last night, no sooner heard him coming, but he jumped out of
bed, and ran hastily into the wardrobe. The sultan went to the
princess’s bed-side, and after the caresses he had given her the
former morning, bid her good-morrow. “Well, daughter,” he said,
“are you in a better humour than you were yesterday morning?” Still
the princess was silent, and the sultan perceived her to be more
troubled, in greater confusion than before, and doubted not but that
something very extraordinary was the cause; but provoked that his
daughter should conceal it, he said to her in a rage, with his sabre in
his hand, “Daughter, tell me what is the matter, or I will cut off your
head immediately.”
The princess, more frightened at the menaces and tone of the
enraged sultan, than at the sight of the drawn sabre, at last broke
silence, and said, with tears in her eyes, “My dear father and sultan,
I ask your majesty’s pardon if I have offended you, and hope, that
out of your goodness and clemency you will have compassion on
me, when I have told you in what a miserable condition I have spent
this last night and the night before.”
After this preamble, which appeased and affected the sultan, she
told him what had happened to her in so moving a manner, that he,
who loved her tenderly, was most sensibly grieved. She added, “If
your majesty doubts the truth of this account, you may inform
yourself from my husband, who, I am persuaded, will tell you the
same thing.”
The sultan immediately felt all the extreme uneasiness so surprising
an adventure must have given the princess. “Daughter,” said he,
“you are very much to blame for not telling me this yesterday, since
it concerns me as much as yourself. I did not marry you with an
intention to make you miserable, but that you might enjoy all the
happiness you deserve and might hope for from a husband, who to
me seemed agreeable to you. Efface all these troublesome ideas out
of your memory; I will take care and give orders that you shall have
no more such disagreeable and insupportable nights.”
As soon as the sultan got back to his own apartment, he sent for the
grand vizier. “Vizier,” said he, “have you seen your son, and has he
not told you anything?” The vizier replied, “No.” Then the sultan
related all that the princess Badr-oul-boudour had told him, and
afterwards said, “I do not doubt but that my daughter has told me
the truth; but nevertheless I should be glad to have it confirmed by
your son; therefore go and ask him how it was.”
The grand vizier went immediately to his son, and communicated to
him what the sultan had told him, and enjoined him to conceal
nothing from him, but to tell him the whole truth. “I will disguise
nothing from you, father,” replied the son, “for indeed all that the
princess says is true; but what relates particularly to myself she
knows nothing of. After my marriage, I have passed two such nights
as are beyond imagination or expression; not to mention the fright I
was in, to feel my bed lifted up four times, and transported from one
place to another, without being able to guess how it was done. You
shall judge of the miserable condition I was in, to pass two whole
nights in nothing but my shirt, standing in a kind of privy, unable to
stir out of the place where I was put, or to make the least
movement, though I could not perceive any obstacle to prevent me.
Yet I must tell you that all this ill-usage does not in the least lessen
those sentiments of love, respect and latitude I entertain for the
princess, and of which she is so deserving; but I must confess, that
notwithstanding all the honour and splendour that attends my
marrying my sovereign’s daughter I would much rather die, than live
longer in so great an alliance, if I must undergo what I have already
endured. I do not doubt but that the princess entertains the same
sentiments, and that she will readily agree to a separation, which is
so necessary both for her repose and mine. Therefore, father, I beg
you, by the same tenderness you had for me to procure me so great
an honour, to get the sultan’s consent that our marriage may be
declared null and void.”
Notwithstanding the grand vizier’s ambition to have his son allied to
the sultan, the firm resolution he saw he had formed to be
separated from the princess, made him not think it proper to
propose to him to have a little patience for a few days, to see if this
disappointment would not have an end; but left him to go and give
the sultan an account of what he had told him, assuring him that all
was but too true. Without waiting till the sultan himself, whom he
found pretty much disposed to it, spoke of breaking the marriage, he
begged of him to give his son leave to retire from the palace;
alleging for an excuse, that it was not just that the princess should
be a moment longer exposed to so terrible a persecution upon his
son’s account.
The grand vizier found no great difficulty to obtain what he asked.
From that instant the sultan, who had determined it already, gave
orders to put a stop to all rejoicings in the palace and town, and
sent expresses to all parts of his dominions to countermand his first
orders; and in a short time all rejoicings ceased.
This sudden and unexpected change gave rise, both in the city and
kingdom, to various speculations and inquiries; but no other account
could be given of it, except that both the vizier and his son went out
of the palace very much dejected. Nobody but Aladdin knew the
secret. He rejoiced within himself for the happy success procured for
him by his lamp, which now he had no more occasion to rub to
produce the genie, to prevent the consummation of the marriage,
which he had certain information was broken off, and that his rival
had left the palace. But, what is most particular, neither the sultan
nor the grand vizier, who had forgotten Aladdin and his request, had
the least thought that he had any hand in the enchantment which
caused the dissolution of the marriage.
Nevertheless, Aladdin waited till the three months were completed,
which the sultan had appointed for the communication of the
marriage between the princess Badr-oul-boudour and himself; but
the next day sent his mother to the palace, to remind the sultan of
his promise.
Aladdin’s mother went to the palace, as her son had bid her, and
stood before the divan in the same place as before. The sultan no
sooner cast his eyes upon her, but he knew her again, and
remembered her business, and how long he had put her off;
therefore, when the grand vizier was beginning to make his report,
the sultan interrupted him, and said, “Vizier, I see the good woman
who made me the present some months hence: forbear your report
till I have heard what she has to say.” The vizier then, looking about
the divan, presently perceived Aladdin’s mother, and sent the chief of
the officers for her.
Aladdin’s mother came to the foot of the throne and prostrated
herself as usual, and when she rose up again, the sultan asked her
what she would have. “Sir,” said she, “I come to represent to your
majesty, in the name of my son, Aladdin, that the three months, at
the end of which you ordered me to come again, are expired; and to
beg you to remember your promise.”
The sultan, when he took his time to answer the request of this
good woman, the first time he saw her, little thought of hearing any
more of a marriage which he imagined must be very disagreeable to
the princess, when he only considered the meanness and poverty of
Aladdin’s mother in her dress, not above the common run; but this
summons for him to be as good as his word was somewhat
embarrassing to him; he declined giving an answer till he had
consulted his vizier, and signified to him the little inclination he had
to conclude a match for his daughter with a stranger whose fortune
he supposed to be very mean indeed.
The grand vizier freely told the sultan his thoughts on the matter,
and said to him, “In my opinion, sir, there is an infallible way for your
majesty to avoid a match so disproportionable, without giving
Aladdin, were he better known to your majesty, any cause of
complaint; which is, to set so high a value upon the princess, that
were he never so rich, he could not come up to it. This is the only
way to make him desist from so bold, not to say rash, an
undertaking, which he never weighed before he engaged in it.”
The sultan, approving of the grand vizier’s advice, turned about to
Aladdin’s mother, and after some reflection, said to her, “Good
woman, it is true sultans ought to be as good as their words, and I
am ready to keep mine, by making your son happy by the marriage
of the princess, my daughter. But as I cannot marry her without
some valuable consideration from your son, you may tell him, I will
fulfil my promise as soon as he shall send me forty basins of massy
gold, brimful of the same things you have already made me a
present of, and carried by the like number of black slaves, who shall
be led by as many young and handsome well-made white slaves, all
dressed magnificently. On these conditions, I am ready to bestow
the princess, my daughter, on him; therefore, good woman, go and
tell him so, and I will wait till you bring me his answer.”
Aladdin’s mother prostrated herself a second time before the sultan’s
throne, and retired. On her way home, she laughed within herself at
her son’s foolish imagination. “Where,” said she, “can he get so
many such large gold basins and enough of that coloured glass to fill
them? Must he go again to that subterraneous abode, the entrance
into which is stopped up, and gather them off the trees? But where
will he get so many such slaves as the sultan requires? It is
altogether out of his power, and I believe he will not be well satisfied
with my embassy this time.” When she came home, full of these
thoughts, she said to her son, “Indeed, child, I would not have you
think any farther of your marriage with the princess Badr-oul-
boudour. The sultan received me very kindly, and I believe he was
well inclined to you; but if I am not very much deceived, the grand
vizier has made him change his mind, as you will guess from what I
have to tell you. After I had represented to his majesty that the
three months were expired, and begged of him to remember his
promise, I observed that he whispered with his grand vizier before
he gave me this answer.” Then she gave her son an exact account of
what the sultan said to her, and the conditions on which he
consented to the match. Afterwards she said to him, “The sultan
expects your answer immediately; but,” continued she, laughing, “I
believe he may wait long enough.”
“Not so long, mother, as you imagine,” replied Aladdin; “the sultan is
mistaken if he thinks by this exorbitant demand to prevent my
entertaining thoughts of the princess. I expected greater difficulties,
and that he would have set a higher price upon that incomparable
princess. But I am very well pleased; his demand is but a trifle to
what I could have done for her. But while I think of satisfying his
request go and get us something for dinner, and leave the rest to
me.”
As soon as Aladdin’s mother was gone out to market, Aladdin took
up the lamp, and rubbing it, the genie appeared, and offered his
service as usual. “The sultan,” said Aladdin to him, “gives me the
princess, his daughter, in marriage; but demands first of me forty
large basins of massy gold, brimful of the fruits of the garden from
whence I took this lamp you are slave to; and these he expects to
have carried by as many black slaves, each preceded by a young
handsome well-made white slave, richly clothed. Go, and fetch me
this present as soon as possible, that I may send it to him before the
divan breaks up.” The genie told him his command should be
immediately obeyed, and disappeared.
In a little time afterwards the genie returned with forty black slaves,
each bearing on his head a basin of massy gold of twenty marks’
weight, full of pearls, diamonds, rubies and emeralds, all larger and
more beautiful than those presented to the sultan before. Each basin
was covered with a silver stuff, embroidered with flowers of gold: all
these, and the white slaves, quite filled the house, which was but a
small one, and the little court before it, and the little garden behind.
The genie asked Aladdin if he had any other commands. Aladdin
telling him that he wanted nothing farther then, the genie
disappeared.
When Aladdin’s mother came from market, she was in a great
surprise to see so many people and such vast riches. As soon as she
had laid down her provisions, she was going to pull off her veil; but
Aladdin prevented her, and said, “Mother, let us lose no time: but
before the sultan and the divan rise, I would have you return to the
palace, and go with this present, as the dowry he asked for the
princess Badr-oul-boudour, that he may judge by my diligence and
exactness of the ardent and sincere zeal I have to procure myself
the honour of this alliance.” Without waiting for his mother making a
reply, Aladdin opened the street door, and made the slaves walk out;
a white slave followed always by a black one with a basin on his
head. When they were all got out, the mother followed the last black
slave, and he shut the door, and then retired to his chamber, full of
hopes that the sultan, after this present, which was such as he
required, would at length receive him as his son-in-law.
The first white slave that went out of the house made all the people,
who were going by and saw him, stop; and before they were all got
out of the house, the streets were crowded with spectators, who ran
to see so extraordinary and noble a sight. The dress of each slave
was so rich, both for the stuff and the jewels, that those who were
dealers in them valued each at no less than a million of money;
besides the neatness and propriety of the dress, the good grace,
noble air, and delicate shape and proportion of each slave was
unparalleled; their grave walk at an equal distance from each other,
the lustre of the jewels, which were large, and curiously set in their
girdles of massy gold, in beautiful symmetry, and those ensigns of
precious stones in their hats, which were of so particular a taste, put
the crowds of spectators into so great admiration, that they could
not be weary of gazing at them, and following them with their eyes
as far as possible; but the streets were so crowded with people that
none could move out of the spot they stood on. As they were to
pass through a great many streets to go to the palace, a great part
of the city had an opportunity of seeing them. As soon as the first of
these slaves arrived at the palace gate, the porters formed
themselves into order, and took him for a king, by the richness and
magnificence of his habit, and were going to kiss the hem of his
garment; but the slave, who was instructed by the genie, prevented
them, and said, “We are only slaves; our master will appear at a
proper time.”
Then this slave, followed by the rest, advanced into the second
court, which was very spacious, and in which the sultan’s household
was ranged during the sitting of the divan. The magnificence of the
officers, who stood at the head of their troops, was very much
eclipsed by the slaves who bare Aladdin’s present, of which they
themselves made a part. Nothing was ever seen so beautiful and
brilliant in the sultan’s palace before; and all the lustre of the lords of
his court was not to be compared to them.
As the sultan, who had been informed of their march, and coming to
the palace, had given orders for them to be admitted when they
came, they met with no obstacle, but went into the divan in good
order, one part filing to the right and the other to the left. After they
had all entered, and had formed a great semicircle before the
sultan’s throne, the black slaves laid the basins on the carpet, and all
prostrated themselves, touching the carpet with their foreheads and
at the same time the white slaves did the same. When they all rose
again, the black slaves uncovered the basins, and then all stood with
their arms crossed over their breasts with great modesty.
In the meantime, Aladdin’s mother advanced to the foot of the
throne, and having paid her respects, said to the sultan, “Sir, my son
Aladdin is sensible this present, which he has sent your majesty, is
much below the princess Badr-oul-boudour’s worth; but hopes,
nevertheless, that your majesty will accept of it, and make it
agreeable to the princess, with the greater confidence that he has
endeavoured to conform to the conditions you were pleased to
impose on him.”
The sultan was not able to give the least attention to this
compliment of Aladdin’s mother. The moment he cast his eyes on the
forty basins, brimful of the most precious, brilliant, and beautiful
jewels he had ever seen, and the fourscore slaves, who appeared,
by the comeliness of their persons, and the richness and
magnificence of their dress, like so many kings, he was so struck
that he could not recover from his admiration; but, instead of
answering the compliment of Aladdin’s mother, addressed himself to
the grand vizier, who could not any more than the sultan
comprehend from whence such a profusion of riches could come.
—“Well, vizier,” said he aloud, “who do you think it can be that has
sent me so extraordinary a present, and neither of us know? Do you
think him worthy of the princess Badr-oul-boudour, my daughter?”
The vizier, notwithstanding his envy and grief to see a stranger
preferred to be the sultan’s son-in-law before his son, durst not
disguise his sentiments. It was too visible that Aladdin’s present was
more than sufficient to merit his being received into that great
alliance; therefore, adopting the sultan’s sentiments, he returned
this answer: “I am so far, sir, from having any thoughts that the
person who has made your majesty so noble a present is unworthy
of the honour you would do him, that I should be bold to say he
deserved much more, if I was not persuaded that the greatest
treasure in the world ought not to be put in a balance with the
princess, your majesty’s daughter.”—This advice was applauded by
all the lords who were then in council.
The Sultan made no longer hesitation, nor thought of informing
himself whether Aladdin was endowed with all the qualifications
requisite in one who aspired to be his son-in-law. The sight alone of
such immense riches, and Aladdin’s diligence in satisfying his
demand, without starting the least difficulty on the exorbitant
conditions he had imposed on him, easily persuaded him that he
could want nothing to render him accomplished, and such as he
desired. Therefore, to send Aladdin’s mother back with all the
satisfaction she could desire, he said to her, “Good woman, go and
tell your son that I wait to receive him with open arms and embrace
him; and the more haste he makes to come and receive the princess
my daughter from my hands, the greater pleasure he will do me.”
As soon as Aladdin’s mother retired, overjoyed as a woman in her
condition must be, to see her son raised beyond all expectations to
such great fortune, the sultan put an end to the audience for that
day; and, rising from his throne, ordered that the princess’s eunuchs
should come and carry those basins into their mistress’s apartment,
whither he went himself to examine them with her at his leisure. The
fourscore slaves were not forgotten, but were conducted into the
palace; and some time after, the sultan, telling the princess Badr-
oul-boudour of their magnificent appearance, ordered them to be
brought before her apartment, that she might see through the
lattices he exaggerated not in his account of them.
In the meantime Aladdin’s mother got home, and shewed in her air
and countenance the good news she brought her son. “My son,” said
she to him, “you have now all the reason in the world to be pleased:
you are, contrary to my expectations, arrived at the height of your
desires, and you know what I always told you. Not to keep you too
long in suspense, the sultan, with the approbation of the whole
court, has declared that you are worthy to possess the princess
Badr-oul-boudour, and waits to embrace you, and conclude your
marriage; therefore you must think of making some preparations for
that interview, that may answer the high opinion he has formed of
your person; and after the wonders I have seen you do, I am
persuaded nothing can be wanting. But I must not forget to tell you,
the sultan waits for you with great impatience, therefore lose no
time to go to him.”
Aladdin, charmed with this news, and full of the object which
possessed his soul, made his mother very little reply, but retired to
his chamber. There after he had rubbed his lamp, which had never
failed him in whatever he wished for, the obedient genie appeared.
“Genie,” said Aladdin, “I want to bathe immediately; and you must
afterwards provide me the richest and most magnificent habit ever
worn by a monarch.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth,
but the genie rendered him, as well as himself invisible, and
transported him into a bath of the finest marble of all sorts of
colours, where he was undressed, without seeing by whom, in a
neat and spacious hall. From the hall he was led to the bath, which
was of a moderate heat, and he was there rubbed and washed with
all sorts of scented water. After he had passed through several
degrees of heat, he came out, quite a different man from what he
was before. His skin was clear, white, and red, and his body
lightsome and free; and when he returned into the hall, he found
instead of his own, a suit, the magnificence of which very much
surprised him. The genie helped him to dress, and when he had
done, transported him back to his own chamber, where he asked
him if he had any other commands. “Yes,” answered Aladdin; “I
expect you should bring me as soon as possible a horse, that
surpasses in beauty and goodness the best in the sultan’s stables,
with a saddle, bridle, and housing, and other accoutrements worth a
million of money. I want also twenty slaves, as richly clothed as
those who carried the present to the sultan, to walk by my side, and
follow me, and twenty more such to go before me in two ranks.
Besides these, bring my mother six women slaves to wait on her, as
richly dressed at least as any of the princess Badr-oul-boudour’s,
each loaded with a complete suit fit for any sultaness. I want also
ten thousand pieces of gold in ten purses. Go, and make haste.”
As soon as Aladdin had given these orders, the genie disappeared,
and presently returned with the horse, the forty slaves, ten of whom
carried each a purse with one thousand pieces of gold, and six
women slaves, each carrying on her head a different dress for
Aladdin’s mother, wrapped up in a piece of silver stuff, and presented
them all to Aladdin.
Of the ten purses Aladdin took but four, which he gave to his mother,
telling her those were to supply her with necessaries; the other six
he left in the hands of the slaves who brought them, with an order
to throw them by handfuls among the people as they went to the
sultan’s palace. The six slaves who carried the purses he ordered
likewise to march before him, three on the right hand and three on
the left. Afterwards he presented the six women slaves to his
mother, telling her they were her slaves, and that the dresses they
had brought were for her use.
When Aladdin had thus settled matters, he told the genie he would
call for him when he wanted him, and thereupon the genie
disappeared. Aladdin’s thoughts now were only of answering, as
soon as possible, the desire the sultan had shown to see him. He
despatched one of the forty slaves to the palace, with an order to
address himself to the chief of the officers, to know when he might
have the honour to come and throw himself at the sultan’s feet. The
slave soon acquitted himself of his message, and brought for answer
that the sultan waited for him with impatience.
Aladdin immediately mounted his horse, and began his march in the
order we have already described: and though he was never on a
horse’s back before, he appeared with such extraordinary grace, that
the most experienced horseman would not have taken him for a
novice. The streets through which he was to pass were almost
instantly filled with an innumerable concourse of people, who made
the air echo with their acclamations, especially every time the six
slaves who carried the purses threw handfuls of gold into the air on
both sides. Neither did these acclamations and shouts of joy come
only from those who scrambled for the money, but from a superior
rank of people, who could not forbear applauding publicly Aladdin’s
generosity. Not only those who knew him once when he played in
the streets like a vagabond, did not know him again; those who saw
him but a little while before hardly knew him, so much were his
features altered: such were the effects of the lamp, as to procure by
degrees to those who possessed it perfections agreeable to the rank
the right use of it advanced them to. Much more attention was paid
to Aladdin’s person than to the pomp and magnificence of his
attendants, which had been taken notice of the day before, when
the slaves walked in procession with the present to the sultan.
Nevertheless the horse was very much admired by good judges, who
knew not how to discern his beauties, without being dazzled with
the jewels and richness of the furniture: and when the report was
everywhere spread about, that the sultan was going to give the
princess Badr-oul-boudour in marriage to him, nobody regarded his
birth; nor envied his good fortune, so worthy he seemed of it.
When he arrived at the palace, everything was prepared for his
reception; and when he came to the second gate, he would have
alighted from off his horse, agreeable to the custom observed by the
grand vizier, the generals of the armies, and governors of provinces
of the first rank; but the chief of the officers, who waited on him by
the sultan’s order, prevented him, and attended him to the council
hall, where he helped him to dismount; though Aladdin opposed him
very much, but could not prevail. The officers formed themselves
into two ranks at the entrance of the hall. The chief put Aladdin on
his right hand, and through the midst of them led him to the sultan’s
throne.
As soon as the sultan perceived Aladdin, he was no less surprised to
see him more richly and magnificently clothed than ever he had
been himself, than surprised at his good mien, fine shape, and a
certain air of unexpected grandeur, very different from the meanness
his mother appeared in.
But notwithstanding, his amazement and surprise did not hinder him
from rising off his throne and descending two or three steps quick
enough to prevent Aladdin’s throwing himself at his feet. He
embraced him with all the demonstrations of friendship. After this
civility, Aladdin would have cast himself at his feet again; but he held
him fast by the hand, and obliged him to sit between him and the
grand vizier.
Then Aladdin, resuming the discourse, said, “I receive, sir, the
honour which your majesty out of your great goodness is pleased to
confer on me; but permit me to tell you, that I have not forgotten
that I am your slave; that I know the greatness of your power, and
that I am not insensible how much my birth is below the splendour
and lustre of the high rank to which I am raised. If in any way,”
continued he, “I could have merited so favourable a reception, I
confess I owe it merely to the boldness which chance inspired in me
to raise my eyes, thoughts, and desires to the divine princess, who is
the object of my wishes. I ask your majesty’s pardon for my
rashness, but I cannot dissemble, that I should die with grief if I
should lose my hopes of seeing them accomplished.”
“My son,” answered the sultan, embracing him a second time, “you
would wrong me to doubt for a moment of my sincerity: your life
from this moment is too dear to me not to preserve it, by presenting
you with the remedy which is at my disposal. I prefer the pleasure of
seeing and hearing you before all your treasure added to mine.”
After these words the sultan gave a signal, and immediately the air
echoed with the sound of trumpets and hautboys, and other musical
instruments: and at the same time the sultan led Aladdin into a
magnificent hall, where there was prepared a noble feast. The sultan
and Aladdin ate by themselves, the grand vizier and the great lords
of the court, according to their dignity and rank, waited all the time.
The conversation turned on different subjects; but all the while the
sultan took so great a pleasure in seeing him, that he hardly ever
took his eyes off him; and throughout all their conversation Aladdin
shewed so much good sense, as confirmed the sultan in the good
opinion he had of him.
After the feast, the sultan sent for the chief judge of his capital, and
ordered him to draw up immediately a contract of marriage between
the princess Badr-oul-boudour his daughter, and Aladdin. In the
meantime the sultan and he entered into another conversation on
various subjects, in the presence of the grand vizier and the lords of
the court, who all admired the solidity of his wit, the great ease and
freedom wherewith he delivered himself, and the beautiful thoughts,
and his delicacy in expressing them.
When the judge had drawn up the contract in all the requisite forms,
the sultan asked Aladdin if he would stay in the palace and
solemnise the ceremonies of marriage that day. To which he
answered, “Sir, though great is my impatience to enjoy your
majesty’s goodness, yet I beg of you to give me leave to defer it till I
have built a palace fit to receive the princess in; I therefore desire
you to grant me a convenient spot of ground near your palace, that I
may come the more frequently to pay my respects to you, and I will
take care to have it finished with all diligence.” “Son,” said the
sultan, “take what ground you think proper; there is land enough
before my palace; but consider, I cannot then see you so soon
united with my daughter, which would complete my joy.” After these
words he embraced Aladdin again, who took his leave with as much
politeness as if he had been bred up and had always lived at court.
Aladdin mounted his horse again, and returned home in the same
order he came, with the acclamations of the people, who wished him
all happiness and prosperity. As soon as he dismounted, he retired to
his own chamber, took the lamp, and called the genie as before, who
in the usual manner made him a tender of his service. “Genie,” said
Aladdin, “I have all the reason in the world to commend your
exactness in executing hitherto punctually whatever I have asked
you to do; but now, if you have any regard for the lamp your
mistress, you must show, if possible, more zeal and diligence than
ever. I would have you build me, as soon as you can, a palace over
against and at a proper distance from the sultan’s fit to receive my
spouse, the princess Badr-oul-boudour. I leave the choice of the
materials to you, that is to say, porphyry, jasper, agate, lapis lazuli,
and the finest marble of the most varied colours, and of the rest of
the building. But I expect, that in that highest storey of this palace
you shall build me a large hall with a dome, and four equal fronts;
and that, instead of layers of bricks, the walls be made of massy
gold and silver, laid alternately; that each front shall contain six
windows, the lattices of all which, except one, must be left
unfinished and imperfect, and shall be so enriched with art and
symmetry, diamonds, rubies and emeralds, that they shall exceed
everything of the kind that has ever been in the world. I would have
an inner and outer court before this palace; and a curious garden;
but above all things take care that there be laid in a place which you
shall point out to me, a treasure of gold and silver coin. Besides, this
palace must be well provided with kitchens, and offices, store-
houses, and rooms to keep choice furniture in, for every season of
the year. I must have stables full of the finest horses, with their
equerries and grooms, and hunting equipage. There must be officers
to attend the kitchens and offices, and women slaves to wait on the
princess. You understand what I mean; therefore go about it, and
come and tell me when all is finished.”
By the time Aladdin had instructed the genie with his intentions
respecting the building of his palace, the sun was set. The next
morning by break of day, Aladdin, whose love for the princess would
not let him sleep, was no sooner up but the genie presented himself,
and said, “Sir, your palace is finished; come and see how you like it.”
Aladdin had no sooner signified his consent, but the genie
transported him thither in an instant, and he found it so much
beyond his expectation, that he could not enough admire it. The
genie led him through all the apartments, where he met with
nothing but what was rich and magnificent, with officers and slaves,
all dressed according to their rank and the services to which they
were appointed. Then the genie shewed him the treasury, which was
opened by a treasurer, where Aladdin saw heaps of purses, of
different sizes, piled up to the top of the ceiling, and disposed in
most pleasing order. The genie assured him of the treasurer’s
fidelity, and thence led him to the stables, where he shewed him
some of the finest horses in the world, and the grooms busy in
dressing them; from thence they went to the store-houses, which
were filled with all necessary provisions, both for the food and
ornament of the horses.