With the publication in 1974 of an inscribed ‘Orphic’ gold leaf from Hipponium in Southern Italy, and that in 1977 of another, now at Malibu, California, we have a relatively extensive series of gold leaves from graves bearing brief instructions concerning the afterlife. Whether these are Orphic, Pythagorean or whatever, will not be in question here; but the relation between the different texts constitutes a problem interesting in itself, whose dispassionate exploration may also contribute to the eventual understanding of the (...) religious background. (shrink)

At Aristotle's Rhetorica III 9.2 , in a discussion of λξις ερομνη and κατεστραμμνη, occurs the following misquotation of Herodotus' proem.

A hexametrical couplet from Aristophanes' lost Amphiaraus has in the past been interpreted as a fragment of an oracular response.