In the 6th century B.C. Ipparchus -Peisistratus' son- who ruled Athens, set up a committee who undertook the hard task of collecting all the fragments of Orpheas' teachings as well as the theories of his initiated students -Musaeus was the most famous- which were communicated from generation to generation through centuries or had been written on thin boards as Herman Diels pointed out in his book "Fragmenta der Vorsokratiker". The recently discovered prehistoric Hellenic inscription on a thin board in Castoria (N.W. of Hellas) is an indisputable evidence that prehistoric Hellenes had invented a way of writing down their ideas since 5.000 B.C.
Onomacritus was one of the leading members of the committee (Herodotus VII 6) who had already become an expert in collecting prehistoric extant parts of unfinished or lost texts since Peisistratus had charged him with the collection and recording of Homeric Epics. The people who took part in the gathering and recording of the Orphic texts like Onomacritus, Lasos, Cercops and Ipparchus were said to be initiated into Orphism which was preserved in the Eleusinia Mysteries.
Unfortunately the Orphic texts have not been preserved in full and except for a big extant part of "Argonautica" and the Orphic Hymns the rest of the preserved texts are fragments of Orpheas' teaching which were saved in texts of later writers (Clemes Alexandreus, Proclus etc.). The Orphic Hymns are a very important work because they include all those pieces of knowledge and information -accessible only to the initiated of the time- which help us insinuate into the secret world of "The Hellenic Cosmogony and Theogony".
But how accurate are the Orphic ideas contained in the Hymns? The answer to this question is the severe punishment of Onomacritus (he was exiled) who tried to insert a few of his own verses in the original Orphic texts. It was Lasos, Pindarus' teacher, who accused Onomacritus of interpolating his own lines. This incident enables us to conclude two things: First, at the time of the recording of the Orphic Hymns there were the Orphism followers who could check the accuracy of the collection, and secondly this check was also possible by comparing the newly recorded material to the ancient texts which were used by the initiated into Orphism and were handed over to them from place to place and from generation to generation.
In the language of the Orphic texts one can recognize the colour of the Homeric language but there are also idioms of later years so that the texts could be read and understood by the initiated of that time. The main dialect of the Orphic texts is the Aeoliki dialect with many elements and idioms from the Attiki dialect as we should have expected since the collection and the recording was done by people from Ionia and Athens.
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