Orpheus

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For other uses, see Orpheus (disambiguation).
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Orpheus
Odomantice
ParentsOeagrus and Calliope
SpouseEurydice
ChildrenMusaeus

In

poet and, according to the legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and even descended into the underworld of Hades, to recover his lost wife Eurydice.[1]

Ancient Greek authors such as Strabo and Plutarch note Orpheus's Thracian origins. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music (the usual scene in Orpheus mosaics), his attempt to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the underworld, and his death at the hands of the maenads of Dionysus, who got tired of his mourning for his late wife Eurydice. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the reception of classical mythology in Western culture, portrayed or alluded to in countless forms of art and popular culture including poetry, film, opera, music, and painting.[2]

For the Greeks, Orpheus was a founder and prophet of the so-called

number of works, including several theogonies, the Orphic Hymns, and the Orphic Argonautica. Shrines containing purported relics of Orpheus were regarded as oracles[citation needed
].

Etymology

Several etymologies for the name Orpheus have been proposed. A probable suggestion is that it is derived from a hypothetical PIE root *h₃órbʰos 'orphan, servant, slave' and ultimately the verb root *h₃erbʰ- 'to change allegiance, status, ownership'.[4] Cognates could include Greek: ὄρφνη (órphnē; 'darkness')[5] and ὀρφανός (orphanós; 'fatherless, orphan')[6] from which comes English 'orphan' by way of Latin.

Fulgentius, a mythographer of the late 5th to early 6th century AD, gave the unlikely etymology meaning "best voice", "Oraia-phonos".[7]

Background

Part of a series on
Greek mythology
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Heroes and heroism
Related
 Ancient Greece portal
 Myths portal

Although

Muse Calliope.[14]

Greeks of the Classical age venerated Orpheus as the greatest of all poets and musicians; it was said that while Hermes had invented the lyre, Orpheus perfected it. Poets such as Simonides of Ceos said that Orpheus's music and singing could charm the birds, fish and wild beasts, coax the trees and rocks into dance,[15] and divert the course of rivers.

Orpheus was one of the handful of

descent to the underworld is the painting by Polygnotus (5th century BC) described by Pausanias (2nd century AD), where no mention is made of Eurydice. Euripides and Plato both refer to the story of his descent to recover his wife, but do not mention her name; a contemporary relief (about 400 BC) shows Orpheus and his wife with Hermes. The elegiac poet Hermesianax called her Agriope; and the first mention of her name in literature is in the Lament for Bion (1st century BC).[8]

Some sources credit Orpheus with further gifts to humankind:

Thebes and became a Theban.[20] He is claimed by Aristophanes and Horace to have taught cannibals to subsist on fruit, and to have made lions and tigers obedient to him. Horace believed, however, that Orpheus had only introduced order and civilization to savages.[21]

Oedipus Tyrannus to characterize Tiresias as a trickster with an excessive desire for possessions. Αγύρτης (agúrtēs) most often meant 'charlatan'[24] and always had a negative connotation. Pausanias writes of an unnamed Egyptian who considered Orpheus a μάγευσε (mágeuse), i.e., magician.[25][non-primary source needed
]

"Orpheus ... is repeatedly referred to by Euripides, in whom we find the first allusion to the connection of Orpheus with Dionysus and the infernal regions: he speaks of him as related to the Muses (Rhesus 944, 946); mentions the power of his song over rocks, trees, and wild beasts (Medea 543, Iphigenia in Aulis 1211, Bacchae 561, and a jocular allusion in Cyclops 646); refers to his charming the infernal powers (Alcestis 357); connects him with Bacchanalian orgies (Hippolytus 953); ascribes to him the origin of sacred mysteries (Rhesus 943), and places the scene of his activity among the forests of Olympus (Bacchae 561.)"[26] "Euripides [also] brought Orpheus into his play Hypsipyle, which dealt with the Lemnian episode of the Argonautic voyage; Orpheus there acts as coxswain, and later as guardian in Thrace of Jason's children by Hypsipyle."[8]

Orpheus mosaic at Dominican Museum, Rottweil, Germany, 2nd c. AD

"He is mentioned once only, but in an important passage, by Aristophanes (Frogs 1032), who enumerates, as the oldest poets, Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer, and makes Orpheus the teacher of religious initiations and of abstinence from murder ..."[26]

"Plato (Apology, Protagoras), ... frequently refers to Orpheus, his followers, and his works. He calls him the son of Oeagrus (Symposium), mentions him as a musician and inventor (Ion and Laws bk 3.), refers to the miraculous power of his lyre (Protagoras), and gives a singular version of the story of his descent into Hades: the gods, he says, imposed upon the poet, by showing him only a phantasm of his lost wife, because he had not the courage to die, like Alcestis, but contrived to enter Hades alive, and, as a further punishment for his cowardice, he met his death at the hands of women (Symposium 179d)."[26]

"Earlier than the literary references is a sculptured representation of Orpheus with the ship Argo, found at Delphi, said to be of the sixth century BC."[8]

Four other people are traditionally called Orpheus: "The second Orpheus was an Arcadian, or, according to others, a

Suidas denies his existence. The fourth Orpheus was of Crotonia; flourished in the time of Pisistratus, about the fiftieth Olympiad, and is, I have no doubt, the same with Onomacritus, who changed the dialect of these hymns. He wrote Decennalia, and in the opinion of Gyraldlus the Argonautics, which are now extant under the name of Orpheus, with other writings called Orphical, but which according to Cicero some ascribe to Cecrops the Pythagorean. But the last Orpheus [the fifth] was Camarinseus, a most excellent versifier; and the same, according to Gyraldus, whose descent into Hades is so universally known."[27]

Mythology

Orpheus's genealogy

Origin

Some ancient Greek authors, such as Strabo and Plutarch, write of Orpheus as having a Thracian origin (through his father, Oeagrus).[28][29][30] Although these traditional accounts have been uncritically accepted by some historians,[28] they have been put into question by others, since it was only in the mid-/late 5th century that Orpheus acquired Thracian attributes.[31][32] Additionally, as André Boulanger notes, "the most characteristic features of Orphism—consciousness of sin, need of purification and redemption, infernal punishments—have never been found among the Thracians".[28] Indeed, the introduction of the worship of the

Pierian, or Macedonian, roots of Orpheus, highly probable.[33][34] The testimonies referring to his death, grave and heroic worship, for example early attestations to the existence of a real, or fictitious, gravestone epigram of Orpheus, point most strongly to his Macedonian links.[33]

Early life

Important sites in the life and travels of Orpheus

According to

Thalia. Apollo, as the god of music, gave Orpheus a golden lyre and taught him to play it.[46] Orpheus's mother taught him to make verses for singing. He is also said to have studied in Egypt.[47]

Orpheus is said to have established the worship of

Demeter Chthonia[49] and that of the Κόρες Σωτείρας (Kóres Sōteíras; 'Saviour Maidens').[clarification needed][50] Also in Taygetos a wooden image of Orpheus was said to have been kept by Pelasgians in the sanctuary of the Eleusinian Demeter.[51]

According to Diodorus Siculus, Musaeus of Athens was the son of Orpheus.[52]

Cave of Orpheus's oracle in Antissa, Lesbos

Adventure as an Argonaut

Main article: Argonautica

The

Hellenistic elegiac poet Phanocles, Orpheus loved the young Argonaut Calais, "the son of Boreas, with all his heart, and went often in shaded groves still singing of his desire, nor was his heart at rest. But always, sleepless cares wasted his spirits as he looked at fresh Calais."[53][54]

Death of Eurydice

See also: Orpheus and Eurydice
Byzantine & Christian Museum
, Athens)

The most famous story in which Orpheus figures is that of his wife Eurydice (sometimes referred to as Euridice and also known as Argiope). While walking among her people, the Cicones, in tall grass at her wedding, Eurydice was set upon by a satyr. In her efforts to escape the satyr, Eurydice fell into a nest of vipers and suffered a fatal bite on her heel. Her body was discovered by Orpheus who, overcome with grief, played such sad and mournful songs that all the nymphs and gods wept. On their advice, Orpheus traveled to the underworld. His music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone, who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition: he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached the upper world. Orpheus set off with Eurydice following; however, as soon as he had reached the upper world, he immediately turned to look at her, forgetting in his eagerness that both of them needed to be in the upper world for the condition to be met. As Eurydice had not yet crossed into the upper world, she vanished for the second time, this time forever.

The story in this form belongs to the time of Virgil, who first introduces the name of Aristaeus (by the time of Virgil's Georgics, the myth has Aristaeus chasing Eurydice when she was bitten by a serpent) and the tragic outcome.[55] Other ancient writers, however, speak of Orpheus's visit to the underworld in a more negative light; according to Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium,[56] the infernal gods only "presented an apparition" of Eurydice to him. In fact, Plato's representation of Orpheus is that of a coward, as instead of choosing to die in order to be with the one he loved, he instead mocked the gods by trying to go to Hades to bring her back alive. Since his love was not "true"—he did not want to die for love—he was actually punished by the gods, first by giving him only the apparition of his former wife in the underworld, and then by being killed by women. In Ovid's account, however, Eurydice's death by a snake bite is incurred while she was dancing with naiads on her wedding day.

Attic red-figure bell-krater (c. 440 BC)[57]

Virgil wrote in his poem that

Dryads wept from Epirus and Hebrus up to the land of the Getae (north east Danube valley) and even describes him wandering into Hyperborea and Tanais (ancient Greek city in the Don river delta)[58]
due to his grief.

The story of Eurydice may actually be a late addition to the Orpheus myths. In particular, the name Eurudike ("she whose justice extends widely") recalls cult-titles attached to Persephone. According to the theories of poet Robert Graves, the myth may have been derived from another Orpheus legend, in which he travels to Tartarus and charms the goddess Hecate.[59]

The myth theme of not looking back, an essential precaution in

Lot's wife when escaping from Sodom. More directly, the story of Orpheus is similar to the ancient Greek tales of Persephone captured by Hades and similar stories of Adonis captive in the underworld. However, the developed form of the Orpheus myth was entwined with the Orphic mystery cults and, later in Rome, with the development of Mithraism and the cult of Sol Invictus
.

Death

Thracian Girl Carrying the Head of Orpheus on His Lyre (1865) by Gustave Moreau
The Death of Orpheus, detail from a silver kantharos, 420–410 BC, part of the Vassil Bojkov collection, Sofia, Bulgaria

According to a

Mount Pangaion[61] to salute his god at dawn, but was ripped to shreds by Thracian Maenads for not honoring his previous patron (Dionysus) and was buried in Pieria.[18][62]

But having gone down into Hades because of his wife and seeing what sort of things were there, he did not continue to worship Dionysus, because of whom he was famous, but he thought

Bassarides, as Aeschylus the tragedian says; they tore him apart and scattered the limbs.[63]

Here his death is analogous with that of Pentheus, who was also torn to pieces by Maenads; and it has been speculated that the Orphic mystery cult regarded Orpheus as a parallel figure to or even an incarnation of Dionysus.[64] Both made similar journeys into Hades, and Dionysus-Zagreus suffered an identical death.[65] Pausanias writes that Orpheus was buried in Dion and that he met his death there.[66] He writes that the river Helicon sank underground when the women that killed Orpheus tried to wash off their blood-stained hands in its waters.[67] Other legends claim that Orpheus became a follower of Dionysus and spread his cult across the land. In this version of the legend, it is said that Orpheus was torn to shreds by the women of Thrace for his inattention.[68]

Ovid recounts that Orpheus

had abstained from the love of women, either because things ended badly for him, or because he had sworn to do so. Yet, many felt a desire to be joined with the poet, and many grieved at rejection. Indeed, he was the first of the Thracian people to transfer his affection to young boys and enjoy their brief springtime, and early flowering this side of manhood.

— Ovid, trans. A. S. Kline, Ovid: The Metamorphoses, Book X

Feeling spurned by Orpheus for taking only male lovers (

Ciconian women, followers of Dionysus,[69] first threw sticks and stones at him as he played, but his music was so beautiful even the rocks and branches refused to hit him. Enraged, the women tore him to pieces during the frenzy of their Bacchic orgies.[70] In Albrecht Dürer's drawing of Orpheus's death, based on an original, now lost, by Andrea Mantegna, a ribbon high in the tree above him is lettered Orfeus der erst puseran ("Orpheus, the first pederast").[71]

Death of Orpheus (1494) by Albrecht Dürer

His head, still singing mournful songs, floated along with his lyre down the River Hebrus into the sea, after which the winds and waves carried them to the island of Lesbos,[72] at the city of Methymna; there, the inhabitants buried his head and a shrine was built in his honour near Antissa;[73] there his oracle prophesied, until it was silenced by Apollo.[74] In addition to the people of Lesbos, Greeks from Ionia and Aetolia consulted the oracle, and his reputation spread as far as Babylon.[75]

Orpheus's

Dion
. Orpheus's soul returned to the underworld, to the fields of the Blessed, where he was reunited at last with his beloved Eurydice.

Another legend places his tomb at Dion,

Macedon. In another version of the myth, Orpheus travels to Aornum in Thesprotia, Epirus to an old oracle for the dead. In the end Orpheus commits suicide from his grief unable to find Eurydice.[78]

"Others said that he was the victim of a thunderbolt."[79]

Orphic poems and rites

Main article:
Orphic literature
Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus (1900) by John William Waterhouse

On the writings of Orpheus, Freeman, in the 1946 edition of The Pre- Socratic Philosophers pp. 4–8, writes:[80]

"In[

Bacchic religion. Alexis, the fourth century comic poet, depicting Linus offering a choice of books to Heracles, mentions "Orpheus, Hesiod, tragedies, Choerilus, Homer, Epicharmus". Aristotle did not believe that the poems were by Orpheus; he speaks of the "so-called Orphic epic", and Philoponus (seventh century AD) commenting on this expression, says that in the De Philosophia (now lost) Aristotle directly stated his opinion that the poems were not by Orpheus. Philoponus adds his own view that the doctrines were put into epic verse by Onomacritus
. Aristotle when quoting the Orphic cosmological doctrines attributes them to "the theologoi", "the ancient poets", "those who first theorized about the gods".

In addition to serving as a storehouse of mythological data along the lines of

mystery religions and the first to reveal to men the meanings of the initiation rites.[83] There is also a reference, not mentioning Orpheus by name, in the pseudo-Platonic Axiochus, where it is said that the fate of the soul in Hades is described on certain bronze tablets which two seers had brought to Delos from the land of the Hyperboreans
.

Nymphs Listening to the Songs of Orpheus (1853) by Charles Jalabert

A number of Greek religious poems in

Abaris, Aristeas, Epimenides, and the Sibyl. Of this vast literature, only two works survived whole: the Orphic Hymns, a set of 87 poems, possibly composed at some point in the second or third century, and the epic Orphic Argonautica, composed somewhere between the fourth and sixth centuries. Earlier Orphic literature, which may date back as far as the sixth century BC, survives only in papyrus fragments or in quotations. Some of the earliest fragments may have been composed by Onomacritus.[84]

Aelian (second century AD) gave the chief reason against believing in them: at the time when Orpheus is said to have lived, the Thracians knew nothing about writing. It came therefore to be believed that Orpheus taught, but left no writings, and that the epic poetry attributed to him was written in the sixth century BC by Onomacritus. Onomacritus was banished from Athens by Hipparchus for inserting something of his own into an oracle of Musaeus when entrusted with the editing of his poems. It may have been Aristotle who first suggested, in the lost De Philosophia, that Onomacritus also wrote the so-called Orphic epic poems. By the time when the Orphic writings began to be freely quoted by Christian and Neo-Platonist writers, the theory of the authorship of Onomacritus was accepted by many.

Gabriel Thomas, Orpheus (1854), Paris, Cour Carrée, Louvre Palace

The Neo-Platonists quote the Orphic poems in their defence against Christianity, because Plato used poems which he believed to be Orphic. It is believed that in the collection of writings which they used there were several versions, each of which gave a slightly different account of the origin of the universe, of gods and men, and perhaps of the correct way of life, with the rewards and punishments attached thereto."[80]

The Derveni papyrus, found in Derveni, Macedonia (Greece) in 1962, contains a philosophical treatise that is an allegorical commentary on an Orphic poem in hexameters, a theogony concerning the birth of the gods, produced in the circle of the philosopher Anaxagoras, written in the second half of the fifth century BC.[85] The papyrus dates to around 340 BC, during the reign of Philip II of Macedon, making it Europe's oldest surviving manuscript.

Post-Classical interpretations

Orpheus charming the beasts. Engraving by Regius for Ovid's Metamorphoses Book X, 143

Classical music

The Orpheus motif has permeated Western culture and has been used as a theme in all art forms. Early examples include the Breton lai Sir Orfeo from the early 13th century and musical interpretations like Jacopo Peri's Euridice (1600, though titled with his wife's name, the libretto is based entirely upon books X and XI of Ovid's Metamorphoses and therefore Orpheus's viewpoint is predominant).

Subsequent operatic and musical interpretations include:

Literature

Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (1922) are based on the Orpheus myth. Poul Anderson's Hugo Award-winning novelette "Goat Song", published in 1972, is a retelling of the story of Orpheus in a science fiction setting. Some feminist interpretations of the myth give Eurydice greater weight. Margaret Atwood's Orpheus and Eurydice Cycle (1976–1986) deals with the myth, and gives Eurydice a more prominent voice. Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice likewise presents the story of Orpheus's descent to the underworld from Eurydice's perspective. Ruhl removes Orpheus from the center of the story by pairing their romantic love with the paternal love of Eurydice's dead father.[86] David Almond's 2014 novel A Song for Ella Grey was inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 2015.[87]

Film and stage

Death of Orpheus by Mexican artist Antonio García Vega

stage musical. Reeve Carney originated the role on Broadway. Sarah Ruhl's play Eurydice examines the myth from the perspective of Eurydice, and the myth features as one of the tales told in Mary Zimmerman's play Metamorphoses
.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Cartwright, Mark (2020). "Orpheus". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2021-07-26.
  2. ^ Geoffrey Miles, Classical Mythology in English Literature: A Critical Anthology (Routledge, 1999), p. 54.
  3. ^ Pausanias, 2.30.2
  4. ^ Cf. "Ὀρφανός" in: Etymological Dictionary of Greek, ed. Robert S. P. Beekes. First published online[where?] October 2010.
  5. ISBN 0-940262-47-9
  6. ISBN 0-8014-2473-9
    .
  7. ISBN 0-415-14755-7
  8. ^ a b c d Freeman, Kathleen (1946). The Pre-Socratic Philosophers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 1.
  9. ^ Ibycus, Fragments 17 (Diehl); M. Owen Lee, Virgil as Orpheus: A Study of the Georgics State University of New York Press, Albany (1996), p. 3.
  10. ^ Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, Harvard University Press (1948), p. 1.
  11. ^ Aristotle (1952). W. D. Ross; John Alexander Smith (eds.). The Works of Aristotle. Vol. XII–Fragments. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 80.
  12. ^ Pindar, Pythian Odes 4.176
  13. ^ Pindar, fr. 126.9
  14. Orphic Hymn
     24.12
  15. Iphigeneia at Aulis 1212 and The Bacchae, 562; Ovid, Metamorphoses
    11: "with his songs, Orpheus, the bard of Thrace, allured the trees, the savage animals, and even the insensate rocks, to follow him."
  16. ^ Others to brave the nekyia were Odysseus, Theseus and Heracles; Perseus also overcame Medusa in a chthonic setting.
  17. ^ A single literary epitaph, attributed to the sophist Alcidamas, credits Orpheus with the invention of writing. See Ivan Mortimer Linforth, "Two Notes on the Legend of Orpheus", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 62, (1931):5–17.
  18. ^ a b Apollodorus, 1.3.2. "Orpheus also invented the mysteries of Dionysus, and having been torn in pieces by the Maenads he is buried in Pieria."
  19. ^ Apollonius, Argonautica passim
  20. ^ Apollodorus, Library and Epitome, 2.4.9. This Linus was a brother of Orpheus; he came to Thebes and became a Theban.
  21. ^ Godwin, William (1876). "Lives of the Necromancers". p. 44.
  22. ^ a b Strabo, 7.7: "At the base of Olympus is a city Dium. And it has a village near by, Pimpleia. Here lived Orpheus, the Ciconian, it is said – a wizard who at first collected money from his music, together with his soothsaying and his celebration of the orgies connected with the mystic initiatory rites, but soon afterwards thought himself worthy of still greater things and procured for himself a throng of followers and power. Some, of course, received him willingly, but others, since they suspected a plot and violence, combined against him and killed him. And near here, also, is Leibethra."
  23. ISBN 0-8153-3683-7
    , p. 46.
  24. ^ Index in Eustathii commentarios in Homeri Iliadem et Odysseam by Matthaeus Devarius, p. 8.
  25. ^ Pausanias, 6.20.18: "A man of Egypt said that Pelops received something from Amphion the Theban and buried it where is what they call Taraxippus, adding that it was the buried thing which frightened the mares of Oenomaus, as well as those of every charioteer since. This Egyptian thought that Amphion and the Thracian Orpheus were clever magicians, and that it was through their enchantments that the beasts came to Orpheus, and the stones came to Amphion for the building of the wall. The most probable of the stories in my opinion makes Taraxippus a surname of Horse Poseidon."
  26. ^ a b c Smith, William (1870). Dictionary of Greek And Roman Biography And Mythology. Vol. 3. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. p. 60. ark:/13960/t23b60t0r.
  27. ^ Taylor, Thomas (1821) [1787]. The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus. Cheswick: C. Whittingham College House. pp. li–lii. ark:/13960/t2v47bg2h.
  28. ^
    ISBN 022602735X
    .
  29. Kalliope
    .
  30. ISBN 0192561030
    .
  31. ISSN 2159-3159
    .
  32. ^ Lissarague, François (1993). "«Musica e storia», II, 1994". Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi (in Italian). pp. 273–274.
  33. ^
    ISSN 1972-2516
    .
  34. ISBN 978-1-350-21319-7
    .
  35. ^ Son of Oeagrus and Calliope: Apollodorus, 1.3.2.
  36. ^ Kerényi, p. 280; Pindar fr. 128c Race (Threnos 3) 11–12.
  37. ^ Scholia on Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.23 with Asclepiades as the authority
  38. ^ In Pausanias, 9.30.4, the author claimed that "... There are many untruths believed by the Greeks, one of which is that Orpheus was a son of the Muse Calliope, and not of the daughter of Pierus."
  39. ^ Tzetzes, Chiliades 1.12 line 306
  40. ^ Gantz, p. 725; Pindar, Pythian 4.176–7.
  41. BNJ 12 F6a = [Scholia on Pindar
    's Pythian, 4.313a].
  42. ^ Tzetzes, Chiliades 1.12 line 305
  43. ISBN 0-691-02499-5
    , p. 61 f.: "[…] is a city Dion. Near it is a village called Pimpleia. It was there they say that Orpheus the Kikonian lived."
  44. ^
    ISBN 0-691-01514-7
    , p. 469: "[…] near the city of Dium is a village called Pimpleia where Orpheus lived."
  45. ^ The Argonautica, book I (ll. 23–34), "First then let us name Orpheus whom once Calliope bare, it is said, wedded to Thracian Oeagrus, near the Pimpleian height."
  46. ISBN 0-590-44110-8
    , 1995, p. 77: "His father was a Thracian king; his mother the muse Calliope. For a while he lived on Parnassus with his mother and his eight beautiful aunts and there met Apollo who was courting the laughing muse Thalia. Apollo was taken with Orpheus, gave him his little golden lyre and taught him to play. And his mother Calliope, the muse presiding over epic poetry, taught him to make verses for singing."
  47. ^ Diodorus Siculus, 4.25.2–4.
  48. ^ Pausanias, Corinth, 2.30.1 [2]: "Of the gods, the Aeginetans worship most Hecate, in whose honor every year they celebrate mystic rites which, they say, Orpheus the Thracian established among them. Within the enclosure is a temple; its wooden image is the work of Myron, and it has one face and one body. It was Alcamenes, in my opinion, who first made three images of Hecate attached to one another, a figure called by the Athenians Epipurgidia (on the Tower); it stands beside the temple of the Wingless Victory."
  49. ^ Pausanias, Laconia, 3.14.1,[5]: "[…] but the wooden image of Thetis is guarded in secret. The cult of Demeter Chthonia (of the Lower World) the Lacedaemonians say was handed on to them by Orpheus, but in my opinion it was because of the sanctuary in Hermione that the Lacedaemonians also began to worship Demeter Chthonia. The Spartans have also a sanctuary of Serapis, the newest sanctuary in the city, and one of Zeus surnamed Olympian."
  50. ^ Pausanias, Laconia, 3.13.1: "Opposite the Olympian Aphrodite the Lacedaemonians have a temple of the Saviour Maid. Some say that it was made by Orpheus the Thracian, others by Abairis when he had come from the Hyperboreans."
  51. ^ Pausanias, Laconia, 3.20.1,[5]: "Between Taletum and Euoras is a place they name Therae, where they say Leto from the Peaks of Taygetus […] is a sanctuary of Demeter surnamed Eleusinian. Here according to the Lacedaemonian story Heracles was hidden by Asclepius while he was being healed of a wound. In the sanctuary is a wooden image of Orpheus, a work, they say, of Pelasgians."
  52. ^ Diodorus Siculus, 4.25.1–2
  53. ISBN 978-0-521-76989-1
    .
  54. ISBN 978-0-8156-2825-5
    .
  55. ^ M. Owen Lee, Virgil as Orpheus: A Study of the Georgics, State University of New York Press, Albany (1996), p. 9.
  56. ^ Symposium 179d
  57. ^ "Attributed to the Painter of London E 497: Bell-krater (24.97.30) – Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History – The Metropolitan Museum of Art". metmuseum.org.
  58. ^ "The Georgics of Virgil: Fourth Book". www.sacred-texts.com. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  59. ^ Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Penguin Books Ltd., London (1955), Volume 1, Chapter 28, "Orpheus", p. 115.
  60. ^ Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, book III: "Let no footfall or barking of dogs cause you to turn around, lest you ruin everything", Medea warns Jason; after the dread rite, "The son of Aison was seized by fear, but even so he did not turn round..." (Richard Hunter, translator).
  61. ^
    ISBN 0-691-02499-5
    , p. 32
  62. ISBN 113678800X
    , p. 702: "His grave and cult belong not to Thrace but to Pierian Macedonia, northeast of Mount Olympus, a region that the Thracians had once inhabited".
  63. ^ Homer; Bryant, William Cullen (1809). The Iliad of Homer. Ashmead.
  64. ^ Mark P. O. Morford, Robert J. Lenardon, Classical Mythology, p. 279.
  65. ^ Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, volume 88, p. 211
  66. ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece: Boeotia, 9.30.1. The Macedonians who dwell in the district below Mount Pieria and the city of Dium say that it was here that Orpheus met his end at the hands of the women. Going from Dium along the road to the mountain, and advancing twenty stades, you come to a pillar on the right surmounted by a stone urn, which according to the natives contains the bones of Orpheus.
  67. ^ Pausanias, Boeotia 9.30.1. There is also a river called Helicon. After a course of seventy-five stades the stream hereupon disappears under the earth. After a gap of about twenty-two stades the water rises again, and under the name of Baphyra instead of Helicon flows into the sea as a navigable river. The people of Dium say that at first this river flowed on land throughout its course. But, they go on to say, the women who killed Orpheus wished to wash off in it the blood-stains, and thereat the river sank underground, so as not to lend its waters to cleanse manslaughter
  68. ^ "Orpheus". The Columbia Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2020-09-25.
  69. ISBN 978-0-299-22400-4
    . "by the Ciconian women".
  70. ^ Ovid, trans. A. S. Kline (2000). Ovid: The Metamorphoses. Book XI.
  71. ISBN 978-0-486-14090-2
    .
  72. ^ Carlos Parada "His head fell into the sea and was cast by the waves upon the island of Lesbos where the Lesbians buried it, and for having done this the Lesbians have the reputation of being skilled in music."[full citation needed]
  73. ^ Recently[when?] a cave was identified as the oracle of Orpheus nearby the modern village of Antissa; see Harissis H. V. et al. "The Spelios of Antissa; The oracle of Orpheus in Lesvos" Archaiologia kai Technes 2002; 83:68–73 (article in Greek with English abstract)
  74. Flavius Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, [1]
  75. ^ Godwin, William (1876). "Lives of the Necromancers". p. 46.
  76. ISBN 0-8018-6954-4
    , p. 161
  77. ^ Pausanias, Boeotia, 9.30.1 [11] Immediately when night came the god sent heavy rain, and the river Sys (Boar), one of the torrents about Olympus, on this occasion threw down the walls of Libethra, overturning sanctuaries of gods and houses of men, and drowning the inhabitants and all the animals in the city. When Libethra was now a city of ruin, the Macedonians in Dium, according to my friend of Larisa, carried the bones of Orpheus to their own country.
  78. ^ Pausanias, Boeotia, 9.30.1. Others have said that his wife died before him, and that for her sake he came to Aornum in Thesprotis, where of old was an oracle of the dead. He thought, they say, that the soul of Eurydice followed him, but turning round he lost her, and committed suicide for grief. The Thracians say that such nightingales as nest on the grave of Orpheus sing more sweetly and louder than others.
  79. ^ Freeman, Kathleen (1946). The Pre-Socratic Philosophers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 3. ark:/13960/t9z088h5f.
  80. ^ a b Freeman, Kathleen (1946). The Pre-Socratic Philosophers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 4–8. ark:/13960/t9z088h5f.
  81. The Republic
    364c–d.
  82. ^ Moore, p. 56: "the use of eggs and beans was forbidden, for these articles were associated with the worship of the dead".
  83. ^ Guthrie, pp. 17–18. "As founder of mystery-religions, Orpheus was first to reveal to men the meaning of the rites of initiation (teletai). We read of this in both Plato and Aristophanes (Aristophanes, Frogs, 1032; Plato, Republic, 364e, a passage which suggests that literary authority was made to take the responsibility for the rites)". Guthrie goes on to write about "This less worthy but certainly popular side of Orphism is represented for us again by the charms or incantations of Orpheus which we may also read of as early as the fifth century. Our authority is Euripides, a reference in the Alcestis of Euripides to certain Thracian tablets which "the voice of Orpheus had inscribed" with pharmaceutical lore. The scholiast, commenting on the passage, says that there exist on Mt. Haemus certain writings of Orpheus on tablets. We have already noticed the 'charm on the Thracian tablets' in the Alcestis and in Cyclops one of the lazy and frightened Satyrs, unwilling to help Odysseus in the task of driving the burning stake into the single eye of the giant, exclaims: 'But I know a spell of Orpheus, a fine one, which will make the brand step up of its own accord to burn this one-eyed son of Earth' (Euripides, Cyclops 646 = Kern, test. 83)."
  84. ^ Freeman, Kathleen. Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, Harvard University Press (1948), p. 1.
  85. ^ Janko, Richard (2006). Tsantsanoglou, K.; Parássoglou, G. M.; Kouremenos, T. (eds.). "The Derveni Papyrus". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Studi e testi per il 'Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini'. 13. Florence: Olschki.
  86. ^ Isherwood, Charles (2007-06-19). "The Power of Memory to Triumph Over Death". The New York Times.
  87. ISSN 0261-3077
    . Retrieved 2020-11-24.

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