Orpheus, a Greek hero, a son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope, or of Eagrus and Clio or Polyhymnia. His native country is Thracia, where many different localities were pointed out as his birthplace. 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, is bitten by a serpent and dies. Orpheus follows her into the infernal regions; and so powerful are his 'golden tones' that even stern Pluto and Proserpine are moved to pity, while Tantalus forgets his thirst, Ixion's wheel ceases to revolve, and the Danaids 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, draws his eyes towards her, and she is lost to him for ever. 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 Mænads 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. 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 metre; of everything, in fact, that was supposed to have contributed to the civilisation and initiation into a more humane worship of the deity among the primitive inhabitants of Thracia and all Greece. 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 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.
Orpheus has also given the name to a special literature called the Orphic, and was called the first poet of the heroic age, anterior to both Homer and Hesiod. The fragments current under his name were first collected at the time of the Pisistratidae, chiefly by Onomacritus, and these fragments 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 dramatists, commented upon, philosophised upon, and 'improved' by grammarians, philosophers, and theologians. Although authorities like Herodotus and Aristotle had already combatted the supposed antiquity of the so-called Orphic myths and songs of their day, yet the entire enormous Orphic literature which 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., but down almost to the last generation, when it was irrefutably proved to be in its main bulk, as far as it has survived, the production of those very 3d and 4th 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. The story of Orpheus also occurs in English and other mediæval literature.
Besides the fragments of the Theogony which have survived, imbedded chiefly in the writings of the Neoplatonists, are to be mentioned the Argonautica, a poem of the Byzantine period, consisting of 1384 hexameters; further, a collection of 87 or 88 liturgical hymns; a work on the virtues of stones, called Lythica, &c. Other poems belonging to the Orphic Cycle, of which, however, only names have survived in most instances, are Sacred Legends, ascribed to Cercops; a Poem on Nature, called Physica, probably by Brontinus; Bacchica, supposed to be written by Avignota, the daughter of Pythagoras; Minyas, or Orpheus' descent into Hades; and other poetical productions by Zopyrus, Tinocles, Nicias, Persinus, Prodicus, &c. The hymns have repeatedly been translated.
See the editions of the Orphica by Hermann (1805) and Abel (1885); Lobeck's Aglaophanus (1829); and Gerhard, Orpheus und die Orphiker (1861).