Book 1
prol.4
Linus again was (so it is said) the son of Hermes and the Muse Urania. He composed a poem describing the creation of the world, the courses of the sun and moon, and the growth of animals and plants. His poem begins with the line: Time was when all things grew up at once; and this idea was borrowed by Anaxagoras when he declared that all things were originally together until Mind came and set them in order. Linus died in Euboea, slain by the arrow of Apollo, and this is his epitaphAnth. Pal. vii. 616.: Here Theban Linus, whom Urania bore, The fair-crowned Muse, sleeps on a foreign shore. And thus it was from the Greeks that philosophy took its rise: its very name refuses to be translated into foreign speech.
prol.5
But those who attribute its invention to barbarians bring forward Orpheus the Thracian, calling him a philosopher of whose antiquity there can be no doubt. Now, considering the sort of things he said about the gods, I hardly know whether he ought to be called a philosopher; for what are we to make of one who does not scruple to charge the gods with all human suffering, and even the foul crimes wrought by the tongue amongst a few of mankind? The story goes that he met his death at the hands of women; but according to the epitaph at Dium in Macedonia he was slain by a thunderbolt; it runs as followsAnth. Plan. ii. 99.: Here have the Muses laid their minstrel true, The Thracian Orpheus whom Jove’s thunder slew.
