Orpheus

Orpheus was a musician, poet and prophet in Greek mythology. His parents were Oeagrus of Thrace and the Muse Calliope, although some sources name Apollo as his father. His singing and lyre-playing moved animals, trees, rivers and rocks. He sailed with the Argonauts, lost his wife Eurydice in the Underworld, and was torn apart by Thracian women.

Orpheus’ Parents and Early Life

Apollodorus says that Calliope bore Orpheus to Oeagrus or, nominally, to Apollo (Library 1.3.2), and Apollonius Rhodius calls him the son of Calliope and the Thracian Oeagrus (Argonautica 1.23–25). Plato also names Oeagrus as his father (Symposium 179d). Pausanias doubted the common story that Calliope was his mother and said that he excelled earlier poets in the beauty of his verse and gained power because people believed he had discovered mysteries, purifications from sin and cures for disease (9.30.4). Pindar calls him the lyre-player and father of songs (Pythian 4.176–177).

Orpheus charmed all nature with his music. Apollonius says that by his songs he charmed the stubborn rocks on the mountains and the courses of rivers, and that the wild oaks on the Thracian shore still stand in ranks where he led them with his lyre (Argonautica 1.26–31). Apollodorus says that he moved stones and trees by his singing (Library 1.3.2).

Orpheus and Eurydice

Orpheus and Eurydice got married, but Eurydice died soon after, bitten by a snake. Ovid says that she was walking with a group of Naiads when she was bitten in the ankle by a snake in the grass (Metamorphoses 10.8–10). In Virgil she was running along a river to escape the shepherd Aristaeus, who was pursuing her, when she trod on a water-snake (Georgics 4.457–463). The journey to the Underworld is told in full on the page Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus mourned in song, and the nymphs and the Dryads wept with him; Virgil says that the heights of Rhodope and the land of Thrace itself wailed (Georgics 4.460–463).

Orpheus at the Underworld

Orpheus went down to the Underworld, through the gate at Taenarum in the versions of Virgil and Ovid, and appeared before Hades and Persephone (Georgics 4.467–470; Metamorphoses 10.11–17). He pleaded to be allowed to take his wife back, and after his song the rulers of the dead were softened and agreed (Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.40–52). However, they told him not to look back until they had reached the upper world (Apollodorus, Library 1.3.2; Virgil, Georgics 4.485–487). They started walking towards the surface; when Orpheus reached the threshold of the upper world, he looked back, anxious to see whether Eurydice was behind him, and she slipped away to the Underworld a second time (Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.53–63; Virgil, Georgics 4.488–503). Plato has a different version, in which the gods showed Orpheus only a phantom of his wife (Symposium 179d). Pausanias knows a tradition that Orpheus went to the oracle of the dead at Aornum in Thesprotia and killed himself for grief when he lost Eurydice there (9.30.6).

The Lyre of Orpheus

Orpheus did not invent the lyre. According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, Hermes made the first one, from a tortoise shell, soon after he was born (24–51). Hyginus says that the lyre, made by Mercury from a tortoise, was handed on to Orpheus, who was passionately devoted to it (Astronomica 2.7). The lyre was a stringed instrument, and Apollonius calls the one Orpheus used his Bistonian lyre (Argonautica 4.905–906). Orpheus used it to charm animals, trees and rocks, and to still the quarrels of the Argonauts (Argonautica 1.494–511). After his death, the lyre was placed among the stars as the constellation Lyra (Hyginus, Astronomica 2.7).

Orpheus and the Argonauts

Another famous story about Orpheus is his involvement with the Argonauts. The Argonauts were a band of heroes who sailed on the ship Argo in order to retrieve the Golden Fleece, and Orpheus was one of them (Apollodorus, Library 1.9.16; Apollonius, Argonautica 1.23–34). When Idas and Idmon quarrelled before the departure, Orpheus raised his lyre and sang of the creation of the world and of the earliest gods, and the heroes calmed down (Argonautica 1.494–515). At his bidding the Argonauts put in at Samothrace to be initiated into the mysteries there (Argonautica 1.915–921). When the Argo sailed past the island of the Sirens, whose singing had drawn many sailors to their ruin, Orpheus played his Thracian lyre and sang so loudly that it drowned their voices; only Butes leapt into the sea (Argonautica 4.891–919; Apollodorus, Library 1.9.25).

Orpheus and the Mysteries

Apollodorus says that Orpheus also invented the mysteries of Dionysus (Library 1.3.2). Pausanias adds that the hymns of Orpheus are all very short and not numerous, and that the Lycomidae know them and chant them over the ritual of the mysteries; for poetic beauty they come next after the hymns of Homer (9.30.12). Euripides speaks of “Thracian tablets” on which Orpheus wrote (Alcestis 967–970).

Orpheus’ Death

The accounts of Orpheus’ death differ. In Virgil and Ovid, the Thracian women, called Ciconian or Maenads, tore Orpheus to pieces in their Bacchic rites, angry that he had remained faithful to Eurydice (Virgil, Georgics 4.516–522; Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.1–43). Pausanias says that the women plotted his death because Orpheus had persuaded their husbands to follow him in his wanderings, and that in another account Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt for revealing the mysteries (9.30.5). Hyginus, citing Eratosthenes, says that Orpheus was sitting on Mount Pangaeus when Dionysus sent the Bacchae against him, because Orpheus had left Dionysus out when he praised the gods in the Underworld (Astronomica 2.7).

According to Hyginus the Muses gathered his limbs and buried them (Astronomica 2.7), and Apollodorus says that he was buried in Pieria (Library 1.3.2). His head and lyre floated down the river Hebrus into the sea and came to Lesbos (Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.50–55); Lucian adds that the people of Lesbos buried the head and kept the lyre in a temple of Apollo (The Ignorant Book Collector 11). The people of Dium in Macedonia claimed that the bones of Orpheus lay in an urn on a pillar twenty stades from the city; the people of Libethra on Mount Olympus also had a tomb, and Pausanias says that nightingales nesting on the grave sing more sweetly than others (9.30.6–11). In Ovid, his shade descended to the Underworld, where he found Eurydice again (Metamorphoses 11.61–66).

Orpheus Sources

The main sources for Orpheus are Apollodorus’ Library (1.3.2, 1.9.16, 1.9.25), Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica (1.23–34, 1.494–515, 1.915–921, 4.891–919), Virgil’s Georgics (4.453–527), Ovid’s Metamorphoses (10.1–85, 11.1–66), Pausanias (9.30.4–12), Plato’s Symposium (179d), Pindar’s Pythian 4 (176–177), Euripides’ Alcestis (967–970), the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (24–51), Hyginus’ Astronomica (2.7) and Lucian’s The Ignorant Book Collector (11).

See Also: Orpheus and Eurydice, Calliope, Apollo, Argonauts, Siren, Eurydice, Hades, Persephone, Dionysus, Maenads