ONOMACRITUS (c. 530-480 B.C.)  , seer, priest and poet of Attica . His importance lies in his connexion with the religious movements in Attica during the 6th century B.C . He had great influence on the development of the Orphic religion and mysteries, and was said to have composed a poem on initiatory rites . The works of Musaeus, the legendary founder of Orphism in Attica, are said to have been reduced to order (if not actually written) by him (Clem . Alex . Stromata, i, p . 143 [3971; Pausanias i . 22, 7) . He was in high favour at the court of the Peisistratidae till he was banished by Hipparchus for making additions of his own in an oracle of Musaeus . When the Peisistratidae were themselves expelled and were living in Persia, he furnished them with oracles encouraging Xerxes to invade Greece and restore the tyrants in Athens (Herodotus vii . 6) . He is also said to have been employed by Peisistratus in editing the Homeric poems, and to have introduced interpolations of his own (e.g. a passage in the episode of the visit of Odysseus to the world below) .

According to Pausanias (viii . 31, 3; 37, 5; ix . 35, 5) he was also the author of poems on mythological subjects . See F . W .

Ritschl, " Onomakritos von Athen," in his Opuscula, i . (1866), and p . 35 of the same volume; U. von Wilamowitz-Mollendorff, " Homerische Untersuchungen" (pp . 199-226 on the Orphic interpolation in Odyssey, X 566–631), in Kiessling-Mollendorff, Philologische Untersuchungen, Heft 7 (1884) .