The cult was traditionally held to have centered in Thrace (e.g. the Balkans northeast of modern Greece, figure roughly modern Bulgaria). More modern interpretations assume he was from further east and Thrace was merely the location of contact with the Greek world, in the same way Aphrodite is said to have first come ashore in Cyprus but that's merely because that's where the Greek world would first had contact with Ishtar (by way of Phoenician Astarte).
Traditional sources give a date for Orpheus of "several generations before Homer," and assume that he's of the same generation as Heracles, Jason, Laertes, and all the rest of the Argonauts, which I'd take as a "cast of characters" remembered from the Mycenaean Age (which is, I would assume, the correct timeframe). Hall suggests c. 1200 BC, which is at least in line with the fall of Troy. In any case, we're talking about a minimum of 600 years before Pythagoras.
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Date: 2023-03-17 11:39 am (UTC)Traditional sources give a date for Orpheus of "several generations before Homer," and assume that he's of the same generation as Heracles, Jason, Laertes, and all the rest of the Argonauts, which I'd take as a "cast of characters" remembered from the Mycenaean Age (which is, I would assume, the correct timeframe). Hall suggests c. 1200 BC, which is at least in line with the fall of Troy. In any case, we're talking about a minimum of 600 years before Pythagoras.