After Homer and Hesiod, the oldest literary authorities for Greek cosmogonic myths are the poems attributed to Orpheus. About their probable date, as has been said, little is known. They have reached us only in fragments, but seem to contain the first guesses of a philosophy not yet disengaged from mythical conditions. The poet preserves, indeed, some extremely rude touches of early imagination, while at the same time one of the noblest and boldest expressions of pantheistic thought is attributed to him. From the same source are drawn ideas as pure as those of the philosophical Vedic hymn,(1) and as wild as those of the Vedic Purusha Sukta, or legend of the fashioning of the world out of the mangled limbs of Purusha. The authors of the Orphic cosmogony appear to have begun with some remarks on Time ((Greek text omitted)). "Time was when as yet this world was not."(2) Time, regarded in the mythical fashion as a person, generated Chaos and Aether. The Orphic poet styles Chaos (Greek text omitted), "the monstrous gulph," or "gap". This term curiously reminds one of Ginnunga-gap in the Scandinavian cosmogonic legends. "Ginnunga-gap was light as windless air," and therein the blast of heat met the cold rime, whence Ymir was generated, the Purusha of Northern fable.(3) These ideas correspond well with the Orphic conception of primitive space.(4) (1) Rig-Veda, x. 90. (2) Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 470. See also the quotations from Proclus. (3) Gylfi's Mocking. (4) Aglaophamus, p. 473.