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In the section (6) the problems of the original title and date of the Derveni treatise are addressed, its relation to the Psephisma of Diopeithes (432 BC) as well as to the trial and death of Anaxagoras. Section (5) detects a neglected (polemical) peritrope of Prodicus’ benefaction theory of the origin of religion in Xenophon’s Memorabillia 4.4. This column is of primary importance for the understanding of the aims and allegorical method of the author in general as well as for his theory of names. IV that contains a quotation from Heraclitus. In the section (4) we propose a reconstruction and interpretation of the text of the col. These include both the verbatim quotations with Prodicus’ name that find an exact correspondence in the text of PDerv and the common peculiar features of the language and style.

In the section (3) we argue for Prodicus as the author of PDerv and present 18 testimonia on which this attribution is based. Section (2) deals with the literary genre, the general purpose and the hermeneutical method of the Derveni treatise, and draws a preliminary intellectual portrait of its author describing his peculiar features, a kind of a «composite image». The Orphic hymn to Zeus is a classical example of the first type, the Derveni commentary – of the second which is incompatible with the immortality of the soul and afterlife. Section (1) explains why the Derveni papyrus has often been misunderstood: among the main reasons are the wrong label «Orphic» and the confusion of two types of pantheism in Greek thought: the ethico- religious and the naturalistic.

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