Orpheus

(supposed to be the Vedic Ribhu or Arbhu, an epithet both of Indra and the sun), a semi-mythic name of frequent occurrence in ancient Greek lore. The early legends call him a son of Apollo and the muse Calliope, or of Oleagrus and Clio, or Polymnia. His native country is Thrace, where many different localities were pointed out as his birthplace — such as the mounts of Olympus and Pangaeus, the river Enipeus, the promontory of Serrhium, and several cities. Apollo bestows upon him the lyre, which Hermes invented, and by its aid Orpheus moves men and beasts, the birds in the air, the fishes in the deep, the trees, and the rocks. He accompanies the Argonauts in their expedition, and the power of his music wards off all mishaps and disasters, rocking monsters to sleep and stopping cliffs in their downward rush. His wife Eurydice (?- Sanscrit Uru, the Dawn) is bitten by a serpent (? =Night), and dies. Orpheus follows her into the infernal regions; and so powerful are his "golden tones" that even stern Pluto and Proserpina are moved to pity; while Tantalus forgets his thirst, Ixion's wheel ceases to revolve, and the Danaides stop in their wearisome task. He is allowed to take her back into the "light of heaven," but he must not look around while they ascend. Love or doubt, however, draw his eyes towards her, and she is lost to him forever (? — first rays of the sun gleaming at the dawn make it disappear or melt into day). His death is sudden and violent. According to some accounts, it is the thunderbolt of Zeus that cuts him off, because he reveals the divine mysteries; according to others, it is Dionysus, who, angry at his refusing to worship him, causes the Menades to tear him to pieces, which pieces are collected and buried by the Muses in tearful piety at Leibethra, at the foot of Olympus, where a nightingale sings over his grave. Others, again, make the Thracian women divide his limbs between them, either from excessive madness of unrequited love, or from anger at his drawing their husbands away from them. Thus far legend and art, in manifold hues and varieties and shapes, treat of Orpheus the fabulous. The faint glimmer of historical truth hidden beneath these myths becomes clearer in those records which speak of Orpheus as a divine bard or priest in the service of Zagreus. the Thracian Dionysus, and founder of the Mysteries (q.v.); as the first musician, the first inaugurator of the rites of expiation and of the mantic art, the inventor of letters and the heroic meter; of everything, in fact, that was supposed to have contributed to the civilization and initiation into a more humane worship of the deity among the primitive inhabitants of Thracia and all Greece. Orpheus was one of the Argonauts, of which celebrated expedition he wrote a poetical account still extant. This is doubted by Aristotle, who says, according to Cicero, that there never existed an Orpheus, but that the poems which pass under his name are the compositions of a Pythagorean philosopher named Cecrops. According to some of the moderns, the Argonautica, and the other poems attributed to Orpheus, are the production of the pen of Onomacritus, a poet who lived in the age of Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens. Pausanias, however, and Diodorus Siculus speak of Orpheus as a great poet and nmsician, who rendered himself equally celebrated by his knowledge of the art of war, by the extent of his understanding, and by the laws which he enacted. He was buried at Pieria in Macedonia, according to Apollodorus. The inhabitants of Dion boasted that his tomb was in their city. Orpheus, as some report, after death received divine honors, the Muses gave an honorable burial to his remains, and his lyre became one of the constellations in the heavens (Diod. i, etc.; Pausan. i, etc.; Apollod. 1:9, etc.; Cicero, De Nat. Deo. 1:38; Apollon. i; Virgil, AEn. 6:645; Georg. 4:457, etc.; Hygin. Fab. xiv, etc.; Ovid, Mletam. 10:1, etc.; Plato, Polit. x; Horace, Odes, 1:13, 35). The best edition of the Orphic fragments is that of G. Herrmann (Leipsic, 1805). The hymns have repeatedly been translated into English by T. Taylor and others. The chief authority on the Orphic literature still remains Lobeck's Aglaophamus, p. 244. See Smith, Dict. of Class. Biog. and Mythol. — s.v.; Menzel, Christliche Symbolik, 2:174-575; Westrop, Handbook of Archaeol. p. 199; Martigny, Dict. des Antiquits Chretiennes, s.v. Orphee.