Orpheus

The head of Orpheus, from an 1865 painting by Gustave Moreau.

Orpheus (Greek: Ὀρφεύς; pronounced /ˈɔrfiəs/ (OHR-fee-uhs) or /ˈɔrfjuːs/ (OHR'-fews) in English) is a figure from Thracian mythology born in the Rhodope Mountains of Thrace (now partly in Bulgaria), king of the Thracian tribe of Cicones. His name does not occur in Homer or Hesiod, but he was known by the time of Ibycus (c.530 BC). Orpheus was called by Pindar "the father of songs". He was a son of the Thracian river god Oiagros^[1] and the Muse Calliope,^[2] but as Karl Kerenyi observes,^[3] "In the popular mind he was more closely linked to the community of his disciples and adherents than with any particular race or family."

The Greeks of the Classical age venerated the legendary figure of Orpheus as chief among poets and musicians, and the perfector of the lyre invented by Hermes. Poets like Simonides of Ceos said that, with his music and singing, he could charm birds, fishes and wild beasts, coax the trees and rocks into dance,^[4] and even divert the course of rivers. He was one of the handful of Greek heroes^[5] to visit the Underworld and return; even in Hades his song and lyre did not lose their power.

As one of the pioneers of civilization, he is said at various times to have taught humanity the arts of medicine, writing (in one unusual instance,^[6] where he substitutes for the usual candidate, Cadmus) and agriculture, where he assumes the Eleusinian role of Triptolemus. More consistently and more closely connected with religious life, Orpheus was an augur and seer; practised magical arts, especially astrology; founded or rendered accessible many important cults, such as those of Apollo and the Thraco-Phrygian^[7] god Dionysus;^[8] instituted mystic rites both public and private; and prescribed initiatory and purificatory rituals, which his community of followers treasured in Orphic texts. In addition, Pindar and Apollonius of Rhodes^[9] place Orpheus as the harpist and companion of Jason and the Argonauts.

His son was Musaeus, "he of the Muses".

Etymology

Several etymologies for the name Orpheus have been proposed. A probable suggestion is that it is derived from a hypothetical PIE verb *orbhao-, "to be deprived", from PIE *orbh-, "to put asunder, separate". Cognates would include Greek orphe, "darkness", and Greek orphanos, "fatherless, orphan", from which comes English "orphan" by way of Latin. Orpheus would therefore be semantically close to goao, "to lament, sing wildly, cast a spell", uniting his seemingly disparate roles as disappointed lover, transgressive musician and mystery-priest into a single lexical whole. The word "orphic" is defined as mystic, fascinating and entrancing, and, probably, because of the oracle of Orpheus, "orphic" can also signify "oracular".

Mythology

Sites connected with Orpheus' life

Early life

Orpheus' father was Oeagrus (Οίαγρος) a Thracian king (or, according to another version of the story, the god Apollo); his mother was the muse Calliope. While living with his mother and her eight beautiful sisters on Parnassus, he met Apollo who was courting the laughing muse Thalia. Apollo became fond of Orpheus and gave him a little golden lyre, and taught him to play it. Orpheus's mother taught him to make verses for singing.

Death of Eurydice

Orpheus and Eurydice, by Federigo Cervelli

The most famous story in which Orpheus figures is that of his wife Eurydice (also known as Agriope). While fleeing from Aristaeus (son of Apollo), Eurydice ran into a nest of snakes which bit her fatally on her heel. Distraught, Orpheus played such sad songs and sang so mournfully that all the nymphs and gods wept. On their advice, Orpheus traveled to the underworld and by his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone (he was the only person ever to do so), 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. In his anxiety he forgot that both needed to be in the upper world, and he turned to look at her, and she vanished for the second time, but now forever. The story in this form belongs to the time of Virgil, who first introduces the name of Aristaeus. Other ancient writers, however, speak of Orpheus' visit to the underworld; according to Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium (179d), the infernal gods only "presented an apparition" of Eurydice to him. Ovid says that Eurydice's death was not caused by fleeing from Aristaeus but by dancing with naiads on her wedding day.

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. The myth may have been mistakenly derived from another Orpheus legend in which he travels to Tartarus and charms the goddess Hecate.

Main article: Descent to the underworld

The descent to the Underworld of Orpheus is paralleled in other versions of a worldwide theme: the Japanese myth of Izanagi and Izanami, the Akkadian/Sumerian myth of Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, and Mayan myth of Ix Chel and Itzamna. The Nez Perce tell a story about the trickster figure, Coyote, that shares many similarities with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.^[10] The mytheme of not looking back, an essential precaution in Jason's raising of chthonic Brimo Hekate under Medea's guidance,^[11] is reflected in the story of Lot's wife when escaping from Sodom. The warning of not looking back is also found in the Grimms' folk tale "Hansel and Gretel." 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

Albrecht Dürer envisioned the death of Orpheus in this pen and ink drawing (detail), 1494 (Kunsthalle, Hamburg)

According to a Late Antique summary of Aeschylus's lost play Bassarids, Orpheus at the end of his life disdained the worship of all gods save the sun, whom he called Apollo. One early morning he went to the oracle of Dionysus (there are ongoing discussions whether this is Perperikon or Mount Pangaion) to salute his god at dawn, but was torn to death by Thracian Maenads for not honoring his previous patron, Dionysus.^[8] Here his death is analogous with the death of Pentheus.

Ovid (Metamorphoses XI) also recounts that the Thracian Maenads, Dionysus' followers, spurned by Orpheus who'd forsworn the love of women after the death of Eurydice and had taken only youths as his lovers^[12], 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 Maenads tore him to pieces during the frenzy of their Bacchic orgies. Medieval folkore put additional spin on the story: in Albrecht Dürer's drawing (illustration, left) the ribbon high in the tree is lettered Orfeus der erst puseran ("Orpheus, the first sodomite").

Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus, by John William Waterhouse

His head and lyre, still singing mournful songs, floated down the swift Hebrus to the Mediterranean shore. There, the winds and waves carried them on to the Lesbos shore, where the inhabitants buried his head and a shrine was built in his honour near Antissa; there his oracle prophesied, until it was silenced by Apollo (Life of Apollonius of Tyana, book v.4.14). The lyre was carried to heaven by the Muses, and was placed among the stars. The Muses also gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at Leibethra below Mount Olympus, where the nightingales sang over his grave. His soul returned to the underworld, where he was re-united at last with his beloved Eurydice. Another legend places his tomb at Dion, near Pydna in Macedon. Other accounts of his death are that he killed himself from grief at the failure of his journey to Hades, or that he was struck with lightning by Zeus for having revealed the mysteries of the gods to men.^[13]

Orphic poems and rites

Main article: Orphism (religion)

A number of Greek religious poems in hexameters were attributed to Orpheus, as they were to similar miracle-working figures, like Bakis, Musaeus, Abaris, Aristeas, Epimenides, and the Sibyl. Of this vast literature, only two examples survived whole: a set of hymns composed at some point in the second or third century AD, and an Orphic Argonautica composed somewhere between the fourth and sixth centuries AD. Earlier Orphic literature, which may date back as far as the sixth century BC, survives only in papyrus fragments or in quotations.

In addition to serving as a storehouse of mythological data along the lines of Hesiod's Theogony, Orphic poetry was recited in mystery-rites and purification rituals. Plato in particular tells of a class of vagrant beggar-priests who would go about offering purifications to the rich, a clatter of books by Orpheus and Musaeus in tow (Republic 364c-d). Those who were especially devoted to these ritual and poems often practiced vegetarianism and abstention from sex, and refrained from eating eggs and beans — which came to be known as the Orphikos bios, or "Orphic way of life".^[14]

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. Fragments of the poem are quoted making it "the most important new piece of evidence about Greek philosophy and religion to come to light since the Renaissance".^[15] The papyrus dates to around 340 BC, during the reign of Philip II of Macedon, making it Europe's oldest surviving manuscript.

Orpheus with the lyre and surrounded by beasts, Byzantine & Christian Museum, Athens

The historian William Mitford wrote in 1784 that the very earliest form of a higher and cohesive ancient Greek religion was manifest in the Orphic poems.^[16]

W.K.C. Guthrie wrote that Orpheus was the founder of mystery religions and the first to reveal to men the meanings of the initiation rites.^[17]

Honour

Orpheus Gate on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Orpheus.

Post-classical Orpheus

The Orpheus legend has remained a popular subject for writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers.

Representation in Poetry

• In the Divine Comedy Dante sees the shade of Orpheus along with those of numerous other "virtuous pagans" in Limbo.
• In The Tale of Orpheus and Erudices his Quene the northern renaissance poet Robert Henryson created an extended poetic treatment of the myth with distinctively Ovidian touches and many references to music.
• The tale of Orpheus was mixed with Celtic fairy lore in the Middle English metrical romance Sir Orfeo. In this version, Sir Orfeo rescues his wife Heurodis from the King of Fairy, whose realm contains both the dead, and people thought to be dead but merely taken by the fairies. This story lasted long enough to be collected in the Child ballads as King Orfeo (albeit in fragmentary form).
• The tale of Orfeus and Eurydice forms the fitting subject of the first surviving opera, composed by Monteverdi in Mantua, "L'Orfeo". The libretto was written by Alessandro Striggio (Jr).
• The play Henry VIII by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher includes a song sung by a lady about Orpheus. It is not certain which author wrote the song.^[18]
• The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke published "Orpheus.Eurydice.Hermes" in his colection New Poems. He wrote The Sonnets to Orpheus (see Sonnets to Orpheus) immediately following his Duino Elegies.
• The English poet John Milton repeatedly made allusions to the figure of Orpheus in his work, most centrally in "Lycidas" (1637).
• The Swedish poet Lena Måndotter created Do Not Turn Around, 2004^[19]
• The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote Orpheus and Eurydice as an elegy to his late wife Carol in 2003.
• The American Poet John Ashbery wrote the poem "Syringa" about Orpheus' failed attempt to rescue Eurydice.
• W. H. Auden wrote a poem called "Orpheus" about the conflicting desires "to be bewildered and happy or most of all the knowledge of life".
• Orpheus appears as a member of Odysseus's last voyage from Ithaca in Nikos Kazantzakis' epic poem The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel.
• The American poet Jorie Graham has written several poems centered around Eurydice, including "Orpheus and Eurydice" from her book The End of Beauty, and "Eurydice on History" from her book Swarm.

Representation in Classical music

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice has been the subject of operas, cantatas, ballets, and other works through the history of western classical music:

• Angelo Poliziano's Orfeo, a musical Renaissance considered by some scholars an important forerunner of the opera genre.
• Jacopo Peri's opera Euridice (1600)
• Giulio Caccini's opera Euridice (written 1600 / first performance 1602)
• Claudio Monteverdi's opera Orfeo (1607)
• Stefano Landi's opera La morte d'Orfeo (1619)
• Luigi Rossi's opera Orfeo (1647)
• Marc-Antoine Charpentier's unfinished opera La descente d'Orphée aux enfers (date unknown: mid-1680s?)
• Louis-Nicolas Clerambault's cantata "Orphee" (1710)
• Georg Philipp Telemann's opera "Orpheus" (1726)
• Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer's Musikalischer Parnassus (c. 1738) comprises nine dance suites dedicated to the Muses; it is thought the final dance of the Uranie suite tells the story of Orpheus & Eurydice.
• Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762)
• Johann Gottlieb Naumann's opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1785)
• Joseph Haydn's opera L'anima del filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice (composed 1791)
• Friedrich August Kanne's Orpheus (1807)
• In a 1985 article in 19th Century Music musicologist Owen Jander controversially argued that the 2nd movement (Andante con moto) of Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto was programmatically modelled after the Orpheus myth.
• Franz Liszt's Symphonic poem Orpheus (1853-54)
• Jacques Offenbach's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld (1858)
• Darius Milhaud's opera Les malheurs d'Orphée (1924)
• Ernst Krenek's opera Orpheus und Eurydike (1926)
• Stravinsky's ballet Orpheus (1948).
• Orphee 53, Opera in Musique Concrete style by Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer (1953)
• Mark Alburger's "Orpheus Cycle" (1982), six art songs to lipogrammatic texts of Matthew Kiell
• Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Mask of Orpheus (1986)
• Philip Glass's opera Orphée (1993).
• Leslie Burrs and John A. Williams, Vanqui (2000), a retelling of the Orpheus legend set during the time of the Underground Railroad.
• Daron Hagen's triple concerto Orpheus and Eurydice (2006)
• Ingram Marshall, imagined how Orpheus would recall his trip to the Underworld and back to Earth: Orphic Memories (2006), a piece for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

Other music

• Post-Hardcore band Alesana's song "Alchemy Sounded Good at the Time" is based on Orpheus's retrieval Eurydice from the underworld
• The Herd (UK band) had some chart success with their 1967 single "From The Underworld," a psychedelic arrangement and rather "heavy" autobiographical delivery heralding the schizing of "Progressive rock" music from mainstream popular chart material. The lyrics concentrate on the moment of Orpheus's losing Eurydice in their flight from Hades.
• Former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett composed in 2005 an opera for guitar and orchestra named Metamorpheus on the classical Orpheus myth
• Orpheus is a single by the band Ash from their album Meltdown
• A modernised version of the myth of Orpheus is told in Nick Cave's song The Lyre Of Orpheus from the double album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
• Orpheus is a song on David Sylvian's album Secrets of the Beehive; complementarily, a later remaster of the album has the song Promise (The Cult of Eurydice)
• On his 2007 album Nightmoves, jazz artist Kurt Elling references Orpheus and Eurydice in his vocalese (lyric written for a previous instrumental solo) of Dexter Gordon's famous version of Body and Soul
• Several Rufus Wainwright songs reference Orpheus.
• Orpheus in Red Velvet is a song on Marc Almond's album Enchanted
• Orpheus is mentioned in the Wallflowers song "Nearly Beloved"
• Orpheus is mentioned in the Of Montreal song "Plastis Wafers" where singer Kevin Barnes sings, "When you're dead, I'll search for you, like Orpheus, I'll find you some way"
• Orpheus is mentioned in the Spin Doctors song "Laraby's Gang"
• "The playmate sings/ Like Orphée in some thunder world" appears as a lyric in Peter Murphy's 1988 "Indigo Eyes" (Orphée, the French spelling of "Orpheus," is also the title of Jean Cocteau's famous 1950 film, referenced below, which reinterpreted the Orphic myth in then-contemporary postwar France)
• The song "Eurydice (Don't Follow)" by the band known as The Cruxshadows is about the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
• Eurydice, a lament for the woman of the title, is a song by Sleepthief on their album The Dawnseeker
• "Hey! Orpheus" is a song on The Make-Up's collection of 7" singles titled "I Want Some"
• Italian Progressive rock band La Maschera Di Cera's album Lux Ade contains a track entitled Orpheus
• Orpheus - The Lowdown is a multimedia collaboration by Peter Blegvad and Andy Partridge (of XTC), available as a CD in an oversize package with a lyric book illustrated by rayographs
• The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is the inspiration for the Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia song "Reuben and Cerise"
• Singer songwriter Warwick Lobban recounts the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in his song Pluto's Toy.
• Orpheus and Greek Mythology are the key-themes of Gothic Kabbalah, Therion (band)'s most recent album.
• Ivo Papazov recorded an album titled Orpheus Ascending.
• The Dutch band, Focus, on their 1972 album Moving Waves, dedicates the whole of side 2 to the song "Eruption". The piece is centered around Orpheus and Euridice.
• Anais Mitchell wrote the folk Opera Hadestown is based on the Orpheus Legend.
• In the Canadian rock band The Tea Party's song Psychopomp (song), the titular psychopomp could possibly be considered to be Charon in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
• Orpheus is briefly mentioned in the Incredible String Band song "Blues for the Muse."

Drama

• The Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending is a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth set in 1950s America.
• Sarah Ruhl's play Eurydice is an interpretive retelling of the myth of Orpheus from the point of view of his wife, Eurydice.
• Jean Anouilh's Eurydice (1941) sets the story among a troupe of performers in 1930s France.
• Wildworks' promenade performance Souterrain is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
• Mary Zimmerman wrote a play called The Metamorphoses (premiered in 1998 at the Ivanhoe Theatre, Chicago), heavily based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the play, she tells the story of Orpheus twice, first in a way similar to Ovid, and then in a way similar to Rilke.
• David Lindsay-Abaire's play Rabbit Hole makes reference to the Orpheus myth, comparing it to a science fiction story written for a couple of bereaved parents.

Film

• Orphée, directed by Jean Cocteau (1949).
• Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro), directed by Marcel Camus (1959), from the play Orfeu da Conceição by Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes, retells the story during the Rio de Janeiro carnival.
• The Storyteller, retells the story during one of the episodes in the second season.
• Orfeu, directed by Carlos Diegues (1999), essentially a remake of Black Orpheus.
• Moulin Rouge!, the film directed by Baz Luhrmann (2001), is, among other things, a take on the idea of the power of music. It draws on the Orpheus myth via the operetta Orpheus in the Underworld by Jacques Offenbach, at least according to the writer's/director's DVD commentary.
• Orpheus directed byJoel T. Rose, 2005.
• Vincent Ward's What Dreams May Come alludes heavily to the Orpheus myth.
• Shredder Orpheus(1990) is a surreal low budget film directed by Robert McGinley. This version fuses modern skate-punk culture with the Orpheus legend, and is set in a bleak near-future America.
• Reconstruction, directed by Christoffer Boe (2003). is a modern reenactment of the Orpheus myth.

Novels

• The myth of Orpheus was retold in The Sandman comic books by Neil Gaiman, where he is recast as the son of the titular character.
• It is retold in the Hugo and Nebula-winning novella, Goat Song by Poul Anderson.
• Russell Hoban's "The Medusa Frequency" alludes heavily to the Orpheus myth. In fact, the head of Orpheus is a central character, albeit inside another character's mind.
• Thomas Pynchon's novel "Gravity's Rainbow" uses the Orpheus myth as one structure, with Slothrop as Orpheus and postwar Germany as Hades. There are many references to the afterlife in Slothrop's "descent" into the continent, the yacht the Anubis being one example.
• The King Must Die, the first of Mary Renault's novelizations of the life of Theseus, features a unnamed master-bard who performs at the court in Troizen. He regales his audience with stories of wide travels, including reference to great stone structures in Britain. Later, Theseus hears he has been killed in Thrace, and a tomb erected to his honor.
• Salman Rushdie used the Orpheus and Eurydice narrative as a mythic underpinning to the magical realist novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet (see also the song of the same name recorded by U2 with lyrics provided by Rushdie).
• The main character in Candelaria Saenz Valiente's novel El infierno de Orfeo Blaumont tries to rid himself from the pompousness and the karma of being called Orpheus by adopting different names.
• In Fred Saberhagen's short story "Stardust", part of his Berserkers collection of science-fiction shorts, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold through his setting of war-torn galactic future.
• Janette Turner Hospital uses the Orpheus myth, and refers to Orpheus-inspired music by Gluck and Beethoven, in her 2007 novel, Orpheus Lost.
• Grace Andreacchi uses the Orpheus myth as the centre of her novel Poetry and Fear (2001).
• The British novelist Jonathan Coe employs the Orpheus myth in his 1994 novel What A Carve-Up! whose principal character, the struggling writer Michael Owen, is obsessed by the myth in the form of the film Orphee by Jean Cocteau. Owen is also obsessed by a single scene in the British film comedy that gives Coe's novel its title, in which a timid male character attempts to resist the temptation to glance at the body of a naked woman in a mirror. This scene is deemed to have an Orphean character in terms of the character's desire to gaze openly at that which is forbidden. Owen's obsession with mirrors and screens, that are derived more from Cocteau than from the original myth, are important to the novel's political themes.
• In John Banville's The Sea, the narrator describes himself as a "lyreless Orpheus," presumably incapable of expressing internal emotions deriving from his lover's death. (18)
• Orphée L'Enchanteur (a French book) written by Guy Jimenes is the story of Orpheus and his love, loss, and death.
• Samuel Delany's Nebula award winning novel The Einstein Intersection (1966/67) is heavily based on the Orpheus myth and can be considered a science fiction retelling of the story.
• In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion Beren and Lúthien sneaked into Melkor's fortress and stole a Silmaril, an adaptation of the Orpheus myth.
• Irish novelist Colin Bateman's "Orpheus Rising" was published in 2008. Set in recent and contemporary New York City and Florida, it uses the myth of Orpheus in the story of an writer's psychological response to the violent death of his wife.

Orpheus in astronomy

Further information: Giant impact hypothesis

In planetary science, Orpheus refers to a proto-planet (also called Theia or Hephaestus) that collided with Earth early in the solar system's history, forming the Moon.

Spoken-word myths - audio files

Orpheus in pop culture

• In Neil Gaiman's epic comic The Sandman, Orpheus appears as the son of Dream.
• Orpheus appears as the main Protagonist's first usable Persona in the video game Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 using his music as attacks and his harp as a weapon. When the main character first summons Thanatos, Orpheus is killed by him from having his body ripped apart and his head being removed first. Orpheus can't speak through his mouth but uses a speaker to talk. Also, Orpheus' appearance is that of a mechanical body with an organic head placed on top of it and a heavy scarf covering the neck, as though his head was all that remained (like in the myth).
• In the NES/GameBoy video game Battle of Olympus, Orpheus is the main character, travelling around ancient Greece on a quest to save his wife - who was bitten by a poisonous snake - from the clutches of the evil god Hades. However, the Orpheus in this game is married to a certain "Helena" instead of Eurydice, and he only uses his musical instruments on a handful of special occasions, preferring swords and clubs to destroy just about every monster from Greek mythology apart from Medusa and Chaeron. Also, due to software limitations, the name "Orpheus" is too long to be chosen as the hero's in-game name, so he is only referred to as "Orpheus" in the game's manual.
• In the film Amadeus, Mozart asks which of his colleagues would rather listen to his hairdresser than Orpheus. Mozart goes on to say that Orpheus has a voice so lofty he sounds as if he shits marble.
• "Orpheus" is one of the achievements in Halo 3; namely completing the mission Cortana with 15000 points. This is most likely a reference to Orpheus rescuing Eurydice from death (i.e., Gravemind).
• Orpheus is the last name of the tenants in the west wing of the venture compound in the series The Venture Brothers.
• The Lyre of Orpheus is a 2004 album and song by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, a companion to Abbatoir Blues. The song, however, is not the traditional Orpheus myth. The song tells of Orpheus and his deadly lyre, which he uses to accidentally kill his wife and anger God, who sends him to hell, where he decides to stay with his wife.
• Orpheus is given a nod in Masami Kurumada's "Saint Seiya: Hades Chapter" in the form of Silver Saint Lyra Orphée, an exceptional musician who was able to charm the anime counterpart of Hades into giving back the soul of his Eurydice. But similarly to the Orpheus of myth, Orphée was tricked and lost the chance to bring his beloved back to the land of the living, choosing to stay with Eurydice as a Saint under the command of Hades.
• In Hercules: The Animated Series, Orpheus, voiced by Richard Simmons, is a widely popular singer, which appears in the episode "Hercules and the Prom" disputed by both Hercules (to play in his prom), and Hades (to make a show in the Underworld).
• The popular TV series Pushing Daisies is also quite similar to the Orpheus/Eurydice myth.
• "Orpheus" is a song by The Walker Brothers from their 1968 album "Images".
• In Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Orpheus is a worshiper of the god Bacchus and possesses a special lyre given by his god.
• In the manga and OVA of Angel Sanctuary, it is said that Setsuna Mudo is doing the same thing as Orpheus, as he goes into Hades to get his sister Sara Mudo's soul back, so he be in the world with the one he truly loves.
• Title of Angel Season 4 episode
• In a second season episode of Skins, Effy reads the Orpheus/Eurydice myth to Tony to calm him after his nightmare. The episode also holds some parallels with the myth.

References

• Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke I, iii, 2; ix, 16 & 25;
• Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica I, 23- 34; IV, 891-909.
• Bernabé, Albertus (ed.), Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta. Poetae Epici Graeci. Pars II. Fasc. 1. Bibliotheca Teubneriana, München/Leipzig: K.G. Saur, 2004. ISBN 3-598-71707-5. review of this book
• Guthrie, William Keith Chambers, Orpheus and Greek Religion: a Study of the Orphic Movement, 1935.
• Kerenyi, Karl (1959). The Heroes of the Greeks. New York/London: Thames and Hudson. 
• Mitford, William, The History of Greece, 1784. Cf. v.1, Chapter II, Religion of the Early Greeks.
• Moore, Clifford H., Religious Thought of the Greeks, 1916.
• Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, Orpheus, a sonnet about his trip to the underworld.
• Ovid, Metamorphoses X, 1-105; XI, 1-66;
• Rohde, Erwin, Psyche, 1925. cf. Chapter 10, The Orphics.
• Segal, Charles (1989). Orpheus : The Myth of the Poet. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801837081. 
• Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870, article on Orpheus,^[20]
• Taylor, Thomas [translator], The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus, 1896.^[21]
• West, Martin L., The Orphic Poems, 1983. There is a sub-thesis in this work that early Greek religion was heavily influenced by Central Asian shamanistic practices. One major point of contact was the ancient Crimean city of Olbia.

References

1. ↑ Pindar fragment 126.9.
2. ↑ Calliope is his mother in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke 1.3.2, in Argonautica 1.23, and in the Orphic Hymn 24,12.
3. ↑ Kerenyi, The Heroes of the Greeks 1959:279f.
4. ↑ Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke 1.3.2; Euripides, Iphigeneia at Aulis, 1212 and The Bacchae, 562.
5. ↑ Others to brave the nekyia were Odysseus, Theseus and Heracles; Perseus also overcame Medusa in a chthonic setting.
6. ↑ A transciption of an epigram in the form of a literary epitaph of Orpheus, quoted in a lost declamation attached to the name of the sophist Alcidamas, which is discussed by Ivan Mortimer Linforth, "Two Notes on the Legend of Orpheus", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 62, (1931):5-17).
7. ↑ Kerenyi 1976 p 107; Seltman 1956
8. ↑ ^{8.0 8.1} Apollodorus (Pseudo Apollodorus), Library and Epitome, 1.3.2. "Orpheus also invented the mysteries of Dionysus, and having been torn in pieces by the Maenads he is buried in Pieria."
9. ↑ Apollonius, Argonautica, passim.
10. ↑ Lopez, Barry Holstun. Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping With His Daughter: Coyote Builds North America. Avon Books, 1977, pp. 131-134.
11. ↑ 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).
12. ↑ Ovid - The Metamorphoses [1]
13. ↑ Encyclopedia Britannica - 1911 Edition [2]
14. ↑ Moore, p. 56 says that "the use of eggs and beans was forbidden, for these articles were associated with the worship of the dead".
15. ↑ Richard Janko, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, (2006) of K. Tsantsanoglou, G.M. Parássoglou, T. Kouremenos (editors), 2006. The Derveni Papyrus (Florence: Olschki) series "Studi e testi per il "Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini", vol. 13]).
16. ↑ Mitford, p.89: "But the very early inhabitants of Greece had a religion far less degenerated from original purity. To this curious and interesting fact, abundant testimonies remain. They occur in those poems, of uncertain origin and uncertain date, but unquestionably of great antiquity, which are called the poems of Orpheus or rather the Orphic poems [particularly in the Hymn to Jupiter, quoted by Aristotle in the seventh chapter of his Treatise on the World: Ζευς πρωτος γενετο, Ζευς υςατος, x. τ. ε]; and they are found scattered among the writings of the philosophers and historians." The idea of a religion "degenerated from original purity" expressed an Enlightenment idealisation of an assumed primitive state that is one connotation of "primitivism" in the history of ideas.
17. ↑ 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. 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).".
18. ↑ http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1849.html
19. ↑ http://www.lenamandotter.com
20. ↑ http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/2392.html
21. ↑ http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hoo

External links

• Greek Mythology Link, Orpheus
• Theoi Project: online text: The Orphic Hymns translated by Thomas Taylor
• The Story of Orpheus.
• Orphica in English and Greek, Select Resources
• Kz department of antiquities in Greece,Leibethra
• Leibethra,The Tomb of Orpheus