ORPHEUS, (supposed to be the Vedic Ribhu or Arbhu, and 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 cEagrus and Clio or Polymnia. His native country is Thracia, where many different localities were pointed out as his birth-place—such as the mounts of Olympus and Pangreus, the river Enipeus, the promontory of Serrhium, and several cities. Apollo bestows upon him a 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 mon sters to sleep and stopping cliffs in their downward rush. His wife, Eurydice (?= Sanser. Urn, 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 DanaYdes stop in their wearisome task. He is allowed to take her back into the "light of heaven," but he mast not look around while they ascend. Love or doubt, however, draws 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). Hia, death is sudden and violent. According to some accounts, it is the thunderbolt of Zeus that cuts him off, because lie reve&la the divine mysteries; according to others, it Li Dionysius, who, angry at his refusing to worship him, causes the Menades to tear him to pices, 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 unre quited 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 Diouysius, and founder of the mysteries (q.v.); as the first musician, the first inaugurator of the rites off 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 Thraciaand all Greece: a task to which Orpheus was supposed to have devoted his life after his return with the Argonauts. A kind of monastic order sprang up in later times, calling itself after him, which combined with a sort of enthusiastic creed about the migration of souls and other mystic doctrines a semi-ascetic life. Abstinence from meat (not from wine), frequent purifications and other expiatory rites, incantations, the wearing of white garments and similar things—not unlike some of the essenic manners and customs—were among their fundamental rules and ceremonies. But after a brief duration, the brotherhood, having first, during the last days of the Roman empire, passed through the stage of conscious and very profitable jugglery, sank into oblivion, together with their "orpheotelistic" formulas and sacrifices, and together with the joys of the upper and the never-ending punishments of the infernal regions which they held out to their rich dupes: according to the sums they grudged or bestowed upon them.
Orpheus has also given the name to a special literature called the Orphic, the real origin of which, however, is (according to ()tailed Muller), like Orpheus's own history, "unquestionably the darkest point in the entire history of early Greek poetry." Like Olen, Linus, Philammon, Eutnolpus, Musmus, and other legendary singers of prehistoric Greece, Orpheus is supposed to have been "the pupil of Apollo and the Muses," and to have first composed certain hymns and songs used in the worship of a Dioaysius, dwell ing in the infernal regions, and in the initiations into the Eleusiuian mysteries. A mere "abstraction," as it were, he was called the first poet of the heroic age, and though not mentioned before Ibycus, Pinder, Hellanicus, and the Athenian tragedians, he was yet placed anterior to both Homer and Hesiod. The fragments current under his name were first collected at the time of the Pisistratidm, chiefly by Onomacritus, and these frag ments grew under the hands of the Orphic brotherhood, aided by the Pythagoreans, to a vast literature of sacred mythological songs sung at the public games, chanted by the priests at their service,worked out for dramatic and pantomimic purposes by the dramat ists, commented upon, philosophized upon, and "improved" by grammarians, philoso phers, and theologians. Although authorities like Herodotus and Aristotle had already combated the supposed antiquity of the so-called Orphic myths and songs of their day, yet the entire enormous Orphic literature 10116 had grown out of them retained its " ancient" authority, not only with both the Hellenists and the church fathers of the 3d and 4th centuries A.D. (who, for their individual, albeit opposite purposes, referred to it as the most authentic primitive source of Greek religion, from which Pythagoras, Hera cleitus. Plato had drawn their theological philosophy), but down almost to the last gen eration, when it was irrefutably proved to be in its main bulk, as far as it has survived, the production of those very third and fourth centuries A.D., raised upon a few scanty, primitive snatches. The most remarkable part of the Orphic literature is its theogony, which is based mainly on that of Hesiod, with allegorizing and symbolizing tendencies, and with a desire to simplify the huge Olympic population by compressing several deities into a single one. See THEOGONY. Yet there is one figure which stands out here promi nently—viz., Zagreus, the horned child of Zeus by his own daughter Persephone, who, killed by the Titans at the bidding of Here, is reborn by Semele as Dionysius.
Besides the fragments of the Theogony which have survived, imbedded chiefly in the writings of the Neopalitonists, are to be mentioned the Argemautica, a poem of the Byzan tine period, consisting of 1384 hexameters: further, a collection of 87 or 88 liturgical hymns: a work on the virtues of stones, called Lythica, etc. Other poems belonging to the Orphic cycle, of which, however, only names have survived in most instances, are Sacred Legendr, ascribed to Cercops; a poem.on nature, called Physica, probably by Broil tinns; Bacchica, supposed to be written by Avignota, the daughter of Pythagoras; Min, yas, or Orpheus's descent into the Hades; and other poetical productions by Zopyrus, Timoeles, Nicias, Persinus, Prodicus, etc. The best edition of the Orphic fragments is that of G. Herrmann (Leipzig, 1805). The hymns have repeatedly been translated into English by T. Taylor and others. See Lobeck's Aglaophanzus. (1829); Gerhard, Orpheus and die Orphiker (1861); and Schuster, De Theogonice Orphica3 Indola (Leip. 1869).