ORPHEUS. The legendary founder of the cult known as Orphism, o 'ONSuces gios. The derivation of the name is uncertain, possibly from the same root as 6pc/wn, signifying darkness. What original figure, human or divine, lies behind the legend, is un known; it seems possible, however, that Orpheus is the name or title of Thraco-Phrygian priest-kings, who may have been re garded as incarnating the god Dionysus (q.v.) or some similar deity, and were perhaps killed by the worshippers of the god after a period of years (see Frazer, Golden Bough, 3rd ed. vi. 99).
Legend.—Orpheus was the son, in most accounts, of the Thracian king Oeagrus (sometimes of Apollo), and a Muse, generally Calliope, sometimes Polyhymnia. He took part in the Argonautic expedition (see ARGONAUTS), and there was an Orphic version of that exploit, preserved in a late form in the Orphic Argonautica. The best-known episode of his career is that of his marriage. His wife Eurydice was bitten by a serpent (while fleeing from Aristaeus, according to Virgil, Georg., iv., 457 ; this detail is not found earlier, but the story itself is old and wide spread; see Rose in Aberystwyth Studies, iv. p. 21). Orpheus, inconsolable at her death, went down to Hades to get her back. The infernal deities, softened by his music, allowed her to return, on condition that she should walk behind Orpheus and he should not look back. He broke this condition, and she became a ghost once more (Plato, Sympos, 179 D., seems to allude to a slightly different account). He now refused to have anything more to do with women, and consequently the Thracian women, during a Dionysiac orgy, set upon him and tore him to pieces. His head floated down the Hebrus and finally came ashore on Lesbos, where there was apparently an oracular shrine of Orpheus. The legend may be founded on the practice of the omophagia (see MortYsus).
Orpheus is represented as a musician so marvellous that the wild beasts, and even trees and rivers, came to listen to him. He is also represented as a seer, a founder of mystic rites, particu larly Dionysiac, a magician, and later as an astrologer also. Sometimes his adventures tend to be assimilated to the stock incidents in the career of a philosopher, for he is represented as travelling in search of knowledge (as Plato, for example, is said to have visited Egypt). Several writers speak of him as a sort of missionary of civilization (e.g., Aristophanes, Frogs, 1032, Horace A.P., 391). He is also the reputed author of a number of books, some dating from the time of Peisistratus of Athens (cf. ONOMACRITUS).
initiators (6p1EoreXco-rat) were numerous, and are spoken of with the utmost contempt by Plato and others. We hear of Orphism from about the 6th century on, and the doctrine, which seems to have grown out of a combination of the Thraco-Phrygian worship of Dionysus with certain religious speculations characteristic of that age, and probably resulting from the contact of Greece with the East, was in outline as follows. When Zagreus was devoured by the Titans (see DIONYSUS) and they were consumed by the thunderbolt, man sprung from their ashes. Hence man is partly divine (Zagreus), partly desperately wicked (the Titans). It is his chief end to get rid of the latter element, which is ac complished by a life of ritual and moral purity during the soul's incarnation in a series of bodies. When completely purified, it will be freed from the "circle of birth or becoming" (Kbaos and be made fully divine. The rules of purity in cluded abstinence from animal food of all kinds, avoidance of polluting actions, such as contact with death or birth, wearing of white garments and other ascetic practices. There were mysteries of some kind, at which we may conjecture that the death of Zagreus was enacted (see MYSTERY), also various Dionysiac practices, such as the omophagia. In some cases, at least. the Orphic dead were provided with extracts from the sacred writings of their sect, inscribed on gold tablets, containing direc tions for their conduct in the underworld. Several of these have been recovered (see next paragraph). The influence of Orphism on Pythagoreanism was very great, so much so that it is often impossible to separate the two, although one was primarily a religion, the other a system of philosophy.