Orpheus in Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
（Ὀρφεύς) The history of the extant productions of Greek
literature begins with the Homeric poems. But it is evident
that works so perfect in their kind are the end, and not the
beginning, of a course of poetical development. This
assumption is confirmed by innumerable traditions, which
record the names of poets before the time of Homer, who
employed their music for the civilisation of men and for the
worship of different divinities. In accordance with the
spirit of Greek mythology, the gods themselves stand at the
head of this succession of poets, namely, Hermes, the
inventor of the lyre, and Apollo, who received the invention
from his brother, and became the divinity presiding over the
whole art of music. With Apollo are associated, still in the
spirit of the old mythology, a class of subordinate
divinities -- the Muses. The earliest human cultivators of
the art are represented as the immediate pupils, and even
(what, in fact, merely means the same thing) the children of
Apollo and the Muses. Their personal existence is as
uncertain as that of other mythical personages, and for us
they can only be considered as the representatives of
certain periods and certain kinds of poetical development.
Their names are no doubt all significant, although the
etymology of some of them is very uncertain, while that of
others, such as Musaeus, is at once evident. The chief of
these names are Olen, Linus, Orpheus, Musaeus, Eumolpus,
Pamphus, Thamyris, and Philammon.
Of these names that of Orpheus is the most important, and at
the same time the one involving the greatest difficulties.
These difficulties arise from the scantiness of the early
traditions respecting specting him, in tracing which we are
rather impeded than aided by the many marvels which later
writers connected with his story; and also from the very
different religious positions which are assigned to him. On
this last point it may be remarked in general that the
earliest opinions respecting him seem to have invariably
connected him with Apollo; while his name was afterwards
adopted as the central point of one system of Dionysiac
worship.
One of the most essential points in such an inquiry as the
present is, to observe the history of the traditions
themselves. The name of Orpheus does not occur in the
Homeric or Hesiodic poems ; but, during the lyric period, it
had attained to great celebrity. Ibycus, who flourished
about the middle of the sixth century B. C., mentions him as
"the renowned Orpheus" (ὀνομακλυτὸν Ὄρφην, Ibyc. Fr. No. 22,
Schneidewin, No. 9, Bergk, apud Priscian. vol. i. p. 283,
Krehl). Pindar enumerates him among the Argonauts as the
celebrated harp player, father of songs, and as sent forth
by Apollo (Pyth. 4.315. s. 176): elsewhere he mentioned him
as the son of Oeagrus (Schol. ad loc.). The historians
Hellanicus and Pherecydes record his name, the former making
him the ancestor both of Homer and of Hesiod (Fr. Nos. 5, 6,
Müller, apud Procl. Vit. Hes. p. 141b., Vit. Hom. Ined.);
the latter stating that it was not Orpheus, but Philammon,
who was the bard of the Argonauts (Fr. 63, Müller, apud
Schol. ad Apollon. 1.23), and this is also the account which
Apollonius Rhodius followed. In the dramatic poets there are
several references to Orpheus. Aeschylus alludes to the
fable of his leading after him trees charmed by the sound of
his lyre (Ag. 1612, 1613, Wellauer, 1629, 1630, Dind.) ; and
there is an important statement preserved by Eratosthenes
(100.24), who quotes the Bassarides of the same poet, that
"Orpheus did not honour Dionysus, but believed the sun to be
the greatest of the gods, whom also he called Apollo; and
rising up in the night, he ascended before dawn to the
mountain called Pangaeum, that he might see the sun first,
at which Dionysus being enraged sent upon him the
Bassaridae, as the poet Aeschylus says, who tore him in
pieces, and scattered his limbs abroad; but the Muses
collected them, and buried them at the place called
Leibethra :" but the quotation itself shows the
impossibility of determining termining how much of this
account is to be considered as given by Aeschylus. Sophocles
does not mention Orpheus, but he is repeatedly referred to
by Euripides, in whom we find the first allusion to the
connection of Orpheus with Dionysus and the inffrnal
regions: he speaks of him as related to the Muses (Rhes.
944, 946); mentions the power of his song over rocks, trees,
and wild beasts (Med. 543, Iph. in Aul. 1211, Bacch. 561,
and a jocular allusion in Cyc. 646); refers to his charming
the infernal powers (Alc. 357,); connects him with
Bacchanalian orgies (Hippol.) 953; ascribes to him the
origin of sacred mysteries (Rhes. 943), and places the scene
of his activity among the forests of Olympus. (Bacch. 561.)
He is mentioned once only, but in an important passage, by
Aristophanes (Aristoph. 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:
Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ᾽ ἡμῖν
κατέδειξε φόνου τ᾽ ἀπέχεσθαι.
Passages exactly parallel to this are found in Plato (Apol.
p. 41a., Protag. p.316, d.), who frequently refers to
Orpheus, his followers, and his works. He calls him the son
of Oeagrus (Sympos. p. 179d.), mentions him as a musician
and inventor (Ion, p. 533c., Leg. iii. p. 677d.), refers to
the miraculous power of his lyre (Protag. p. 315a.), and
gives a singular version of the story of his descent into
lades: 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, hut contrived to enter Hades
alive, and, as a further punishment for his cowardice, He
met his death at the hands of women (Sympos. p. 179d.; comp.
Polit. x. p. 620a.). This account is quite discordant with
the notions of the early Greeks respecting the value of
life, and even with the example quoted by Plato himself, as
far as Admetus is concerned. Plato seems to have
misunderstood the reason why Orpheus's "contriving to enter
Hades alive," called down the anger of the gods, namely, as
a presumptuous transgression of the limits assigned to the
condition of mortal men: this point will have to be
considered again. As the followers of Orpheus, Plato
mentions both poets and religionists (Prot. p. 316d., Ion,
p. 536b., Cratyl. p. 400c.), and in the passage last quoted,
he tells us that the followers of Orpheus held the doctrine,
that the soul is imprisoned in the body as a punishment for
some previous sins. He makes several quotations from the
writings ascribed to Orpheus, of which one, if not more, is
from the Theogony (Cratyl. p. 402b., Phileb. p. 66c., Leg.
ii. p. 669d.), and in one passage he speaks of collections
of books, which went under the names of Orpheus and Musaeus,
and contained rules for religious ceremonies. (Polit. ii. p.
364e.)
The writings mentioned in the last passage were evidently
regarded by Plato as spurious, but, from the other passages
quoted, he seems to have believed at least in the existence
of Orpheus and in the genuineness of his Theogony. Not so,
however, Aristotle, who held that no such person as Orpheus
ever existed, and that the works ascribed to him were forged
by Cercops and Onomacritus. [ONOMACRITUS.]
Proceeding to the mythographers, and the later poets, from
Apollodorus downwards, we find the legends of Orpheus
amplified by details, the whole. of which it is impossible
here to enumerate; we give an outline of the most important
of them.
Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus and Calliope, lived in Thrace at
the period of the Argonauts, whom he accompanied in their
expedition. Presented with the lyre. by Apollo, and
instructed by the Muses in its use, he enchanted with its
music not only the wild beasts, but the trees and rocks upon
Olympus, so that they moved from their places to follow the
sound of his golden harp. The power of his music caused the
Argonauts to seek his aid, which contributed materially to
the success of their expedition: at the sound of his lyre
the Argo glided down into the sea; the Argonauts tore
themselves away from the pleasures of Lennos; the
Symplegadae, or moving rocks, which threatened to crush the
ship between them, were fixed in their places; and the
Colchian dragon, which guarded the golden fleece, was lulled
to sleep: other legends of the same kind may be read in the
Argonautica, which bears the name of Orpheus. After his
return from the Argonautic expedition he took up his abode
in a cave in Thrace, and employed himself in the
civilisation of its wild inhabitants. There is also a legend
of his having visited Egypt. The legends Irspecting the loss
and recovery of his wife, and his own death, are very
various. His wife was a nymph named Agriope or Eurydice. In
the older accotlnts the cause of her death is not referred
to, but the legend followed in the well-known passages of
Virgil and Ovid, which ascribes the death of Eurydice to the
bite of a serpent, is no doubt of high antiquity, but the
introduction of Aristaeus into the legend cannot be traced
to any writer older than Virgil himself. (Diod. 4.25 ; Conon
45; Paus. 9.30.4; Hyg. Fab. 164.) He followed his lost wife
into the abodes of Hades, where the charms of his lyre
suspended the torments of the damned, and won back his wife
from the most inexorable of all deities; but his prayer was
only granted upon this condition, that he should not look
back upon his restored wife, till they had arrived in the
upper world: at the very moment when they were about to pass
the fatal bounds, the anxiety of love overcame the poet; he
looked round to see that Eurydice was following him; and he
beheld her caught back into the infernal regions. The form
of the myth, as told by Plato, has been given above. The
later poets, forgetting the religious meaning of the legend,
connected his death with the second loss of Eurydice, his
grief for whom led him to treat with contempt the Thracian
women, who in revenge tore him to pieces under the
excitement of their Bacchanalian orgies. Other causes are
assigned for the fury of the Thracian Maenads ; but the most
ancient form of the legend seems to be that already
mentioned as quoted by Eratosthenes from Aeschylus. The
variation, by which Aphrodite is made the instigator of his
death, from motives of jealousy, is of course merely a fancy
of some late poet (Conon,45). Another form of the legend,
which deserves much more attention, is that which was
embodied in an inscription upon what was said to be the
tomb, in which the bones of Orpheus were buried, at Dium
near Pydna, in Macedonia, which ascribed his death to the
thunderbolts of Zeus :--
Θρήϊκα χρυσολύρην τῇδ᾽ Ὀρφέα Μοῦσαι ἔθαφαν,
ὃν κτάνεν ὑψιμέδων Ζεὺς ψολόεντι βέλει.
(Diog. Laert. Prooem. 5; Paus. 9.30.5 ; Anth. Graec. Epig.
Inc. No. 483; Brunck, Anal. vol. iii. p. 253.)
After his death, according to the more common form of the
legend, the Muses collected the fragments of his body, and
buried them at Leibethra at the foot of Olympus, where the
nightingale sang sweetly over his grave. The subsequent
transference of his bones to Dium is evidently a local
legend. (Paus. l.c.) His head was thrown upon the Hebrus,
down which it rolled to the sea, and was borne across to
Lesbos, where the grave in which it was interred was shown
at Antissa. His lyre was also said to have been carried to
Lesbos; and both traditions are simply poetical expressions
of the historical fact that Lesbos was the first great seat
of the music of the lyre: indeed Antissa itself was the
birth-place of Terpander, the earliest historical musician.
(Phanocles, ap. Stob. Tit. lxii. p. 399). The astronomers
taught that the lyre of Orpheus was placed by Zeus anlong
the stars, at the intercession of Apollo and the Muses
(Eratosth. 24; Hygin. Astr. 2.7; Manil. Astron. 1.324).
In these legends there are some points which require but
little explanation. The invention of music, in connection
with the services of Apollo and the Muses, its first great
application to the worship of the gods, which Orpheus is
therefore said to have introduced, its power over the
passions, and the importance which the Greeks attached to
the knowledge of it, as intimately allied with the very
existence of all social order,--are probably the chief
elementary ideas of the whole legend. But then comes in one
of the dark features of the Greek religion, in which the
gods envy the advancement of man in knowledge and
civilisation, and severely punish any one who transgresses
the bounds assigned to humanity, as may be seen in the
legend of Prometheus, and in the sudden death, or blindness,
or other calamities of the early poets and musicians. In a
later age, the conflict was no longer viewed as between the
gods and man, but between the worshippers of different
divinities; and especially between Apollo, the symbol of
pure intellect, and Dionysus, the deity of the senses: hence
Orpheus, the servant of Apollo, falls a victim to the
jealousy of Dionysus, and the fury of his worshippers. There
are, however, other points in the legend which are of the
utmost difficulty, and which would require far more
discussion than can be entered upon here. For these matters
the reader is referred to Lobeck's Aglaophamus, Müller's
Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie, and
Klausen's article in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopädie.
Concerning the localities of the legend, see Miller's
Literature of Ancient Greece, p. 26, and Klausen. The works
of art representing Orpheus are enumerated by Klausen.
Orphic Societies and Mysteries.
All that part of the mythology of Orpheus which connects him
with Dionysus must be considered as a later invention, quite
irreconcilable with the original legends, in which he is the
servant of Apollo and the Muses: the discrepancy extends
even to the instrument of his music, which was always the
lyre, and never the flute. It is almost hopeless to explain
the transition. It is enough to remark here that, about the
time of the first development of Greek philosoplly,
societies were formed, which assumed the name of Orpheus,
and which celebrated peculiar mysteries, quite different
from those of Eleusis. They are thus described by Muüller
(Hist. Lit. Anc. Gr. p. 231.): --
"On the other hand there was a society of persons, who
performed the rites of a mystical worship, but were not
exclusively attached to a particular temple and festival,
and who did not confine their notions to the initiated, but
published them to others, and committed them to literary
works. These were the followers of Orpheus (οἱ Ὀρφικυί);
that is to say, associations of pertons, who, under the
[pretended] guidance of the ancient mystical poet Orpheus,
dedicated themselves to the worship of Bacchus, in which
they hoped to find satisfaction for an ardent longing after
the soothing and elevating influences of re ligion. The
Dionysus, to whose worship the Orphic and Bacchic rites were
annexed (τὰ Ὀρφικὰ καλεόμενα καὶ Βακχικά, Hdt. 2.81), was
the Chthonian deity, Dionysus Zagreus, closely connected
with Demeter and Cora, who was the personitied expression,
not only of the most rapturous pleasure, but also of a deep
sorrow for the miseries of human life. The Orphic legends
and poems related in great part to this Dionysus, who was
combined, as an infernal deity, with Hades (a doctrine given
by the philosopher Heracleitus as the opinion of a
particular sect, ap. Clem. Alex. Protrep. p. 30, Potter);
and upon whom the Orphic theologers founded their hopes of
the purification and ultimate immortality of the soul. But
their mode of celebrating this worship was very different
from the popular rites of Bacchus. The Orphic worshippers of
Bacchus did not indulge in unrestrained pleasure and frantic
enthusiasm, but rather aimed at an ascetic purity of life
and manners. (See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 244.) The followers of
Orp heus, when they had tasted the mystic sacrificial feast
of raw flesh torn front the ox of Dionysus (ὠμοφαγία),
partook of no other animal food. They wore white linen
garments, like Oriental and Egyptian priests, from whom, as
Herodotus remarks (l.c.), much may have been borrowed in the
ritual of the Orphic worship."
Herodotus not only speaks of these rites as being Egyptian,
but also Pythagorean in their character. The explanation of
this is that the Pythagorean societies, after their
expulsion from Magna Graecia, united themselves with the
Orphic societies of the mother country, and of course
greatly influenced their character. But before this time the
Orphic system had been reduced to a definite form by
PHERECYDES and ONOMACRITUS, who stand at the head of a
series of writers, in whose works the Orphic theology was
embodied; such as Cercops, Brontinus, Orpheus of Camarina,
Orpheus of Croton, Arignote, Persinus of Miletus, Timocles
of Syracuse, and Zopyrus of Heracleia or Tarentum (Müller,
p. 235). Besides these associations there were also an
obscure set of mystagogues derived from them, called
Orpheotelests (Ὀρφεοτελεσταί), "who used to come before the
doors of the rich, and promise to release them from their
own sins and those of their forefathers, by sacrifices and
expiatory songs; and they produced at this ceremony a heap
of books of Orpheus and Musaeus, upon which they founded
their promises" (Plat. Ion, p. 536b.; Müller, p. 235). The
nature of the Orphic theology, and the points of difference
between it and that of Homer and Hesiod, are fully discussed
by Müller (Hist. Lit. Anc. Gr. pp. 235-238) and Mr. Grote
(vol. i. pp. 22, §c.) ; out most fully by Lobeck, in his
Aglaophamus.
Orphic Literature.
We have seen that many poems ascribed to Orpheus were
current as early as the time of the Peisistratids
[ONOMACRITUS], and that they are often quoted by Plato. The
allusions to them in later writers are very frequent ; for
example, Pausanias speaks, of hymns of his, which he
believed to be still preserved by the Lycolnidae (an
Athenian family who seem to have been the chief priests of
the Orphic worhip. as the Eumolpidae were of the
Eleusinlian), and which, he says, were only inferior in
beauty to the poetus of Homer, and held even in higher
honour, on account of their divine subjects. He also speaks
of them as very few in number, and as distinguished by great
brevity of style (9.30. §§ 5, 6. s. 12).
Considering the slight acquaintance which the ancients
evidently possessed with these works, it is somewhat
surprising that certain extant poeins, which bear the name
of Orpheus, should have been generally regarded by scholars,
until a very recent period, as genuine, that is, as works
more ancient than the Homeric poems, if not the productions
of Orpheus himself. It is not worth while to repeat here the
history of the controversy, which will be found in Bernhard
and the other historians of Greek literature. The result is
that it is now fully established that the bulkof these poems
are the forgeries of Christian grammarians and philosophers
of the Alexandrian school; but that along the fragments,
which form apart of the collection, are some genuine remains
of that Orphic poetry which was known to Plato, and which
must be assigned to the period of Onomacritus, orperhaps a
little earlier. The Orphic literature which, in this sense,
we may call genuine, seems to have included Hymns, a
Theogony, an ancient poem called Minyas or the Descent into
Hades, Oracles and Songs for Initiations (Τελεταί), a
collection of Sacred Legends (Ἰεροὶ λόγοι), ascribed to
Cercops, and perhaps some other works. The apocryphal
productions which have come down to us under the name of
Orphica, are the following:
1. Ἀργοναυτικά
An epic poem in 1384 hexameters, giving an account of the
expedition of the Argonauts, which is full of indications of
its late date.
2. Ὕμνοι
Eighty-seven or eighty-eight hymns in hexameters, evidently
the productions of the Nco Platonic school.
3. Λιθικά
the best of the three apocryphal Orphic poems, which treats
of properties of stones, both precious and common, and their
uses in divination.
4. Fragments, chiefly of the Theogony.
It is in this class that we find the genuine remains, above
referred to, of the literature of the early Orphic theology,
but intermingled with others of a mnch later date.
Further Information
Eschenbach, Epigenes, de Poesi Orphica Commentarius, Norimb.
1702-1704; Tiedemain, Griechenlands erste Philosophen,
Leipz. 1780; G. H. Bode, de Orpheo Poetarum Graecorum
antiquissimo, Goett. 1824; Lobeck, Aglaophamus ; Bode,
Gesch. d. Hell. Dichtkunst, vols. i. ii.; Ulrici, Gesch. d.
Hellen. Dichtkunst, vols. i. ii.; Bernhardy, Grudriss d.
Griech. Litt. vol. ii. pp. 266, &c.; Fabric. Bibl. Graec.
vol. i. pp. 140, &c.; for a further list of writers on
Orpheus, see Hoffmann, Lexicon Bibliographicum Scriptorum
Graecorum.）
Editions
The chief editions of Orpheus, after the early ones of 1517,
1519, 1540, 1543, 1566, and 1606, are those of Eschenbach,
Traj. ad Rhen. 1689, 12mo.; Gesner and Hanberger, Lips.
1764, 8vo. and Hermann, Lips. 1805, 8vo., by far the best.
There are also small editions, chiefly for the use of
schools, by Schaefer, Lips. 1818, 12mo., and in the
Tauchnitz Classics, 1824, 16mo. - A Dictionary of Greek and
Roman biography and mythology, William Smith, Ed.
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