Onomacritus

Onomacritus (Ancient Greek: Ὀνομάκριτος; c. 530 – c. 480 BC), also spelled Onomacritos and Onomakritos, was a Greek chresmologue, or compiler of oracles, who lived at the court of the tyrant Pisistratus in Athens and prepared an edition of the Homeric poems. He was a collector and forger of oracles and poems.

Accounts

Herodotus

Herodotus reports that Onomacritus was hired by Pisistratus to compile the oracles of Musaeus, but that Onomacritus inserted forgeries of his own that were detected by Lasus of Hermione. As a result, Onomacritus was banished from Athens by Pisistratus' son Hipparchus. After the flight of the Pisistratids to Persia, Onomacritus was reconciled with them. According to Herodotus, Onomacritus induced Xerxes I, the King of Persia, by his oracular responses, to decide upon his war with Greece.

Pausanias

Pausanias attributes to Onomacritus certain poems forged under the name of Musaeus. In explaining the presence of the Titan Anytos at Lycosura, he wrote: "From Homer the name of the Titans was taken by Onomakritos, who in the orgies he composed for Dionysos made the Titans the authors of the god's sufferings." In doing so, Pausanias attributed to Onomacritus the telling of the myth of Dionysus's dismemberment by the Titans.

According to Tatian, the literature attributed to Orpheus was "arranged" by Onomacritus. His association with the works of Orpheus can also be found in the writings of Christian authors such as Sextus Empiricus and Clement of Alexandria, and in the Suda, two works, the Orphic Chresmoi and Teletai, are said to have been written by him.

References

• Herodotus 7.6
• Pausanias 1.22.7, 8.37.5
• Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, by Harry Thurston Peck. New York. Harper and Brothers, 1898.
• Malamis, Daniel, The Orphic Hymns: Poetry and Genre, with a Critical Text and Translation, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2024. ISBN 9789004714076. doi:10.1163/9789004714083.
• Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, by Jane Ellen Harrison, Cambridge, 1903.