A legendary Greek poet from Thrace, able to charm beasts and even stones with the music of his lyre. In this way he obtained the release of his wife Eurydice from Hades. He was killed by the maenads, and his head, still singing, floated to Lesbos.
In Greek legend, Orpheus (Greek: Ὀρφεύς) was the chief representative of the arts of song and the lyre, and of great importance in the religious history of Greece. The mythical figure of Orpheus was borrowed by the Greeks from their Thracian neighbors; (See Orphism (religion).)
The ancients knew him as a Thracian of Pieria (the coastal region above Mount Olympos), a magical musician, and also as a priest of Dionysus.
Overview
The name Orpheus does not occur in Homer or Hesiod, but he was known in the time of Ibycus (c.
From the 6th century BC onwards, Orpheus was considered one of the chief poets and musicians of antiquity, and the inventor or perfector of the lyre.
George Grote wrote that "Orpheus is celebrated by Pindar as the harper and companion of the Argonautic maritime heroes."
Several etymologies for the name Orpheus have been proposed. The word "orphic" is defined as mystic, fascinating and entrancing, and, probably, because of the oracle of Orpheus, "orphic" can also signify "oracular".
Genealogy
According to the best-known tradition, Orpheus was the son of Oeagrus, king of Thrace, which in pre-historic period seems to describe a wider region from Olymbos to the Hellespontos Straits, as the Orphic texts (Argonautica) point out that Orpheus was born in Mount Helicon at Livithra (Pieria), and that his mother was Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry. Orpheus learned music from Linus, or from Apollo, who gave him his own lyre (made by Hermes out of a turtle shell) as a gift.
The Argonautic expedition
Despite Orpheus's Thracian origin, he joined the expedition of the Argonauts. However, when Orpheus heard the Sirens, he drew his lyre and played music more beautifully than that of the Sirens, thus drowning out their alluring but deadly song.
Death of Eurydice
The most famous story in which he figures is that of his wife Eurydice (also known as Agriope). Distraught, Orpheus played such sad songs and sang so mournfully that all the nymphs and gods wept and gave him advice. Orpheus went down to the lower world and by his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone (the only person to ever do so), who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth.
The famous story of Eurydice may actually be a late addition to the Orpheus myths. The myth may have been mistakenly derived from another Orpheus legend in which he travels to Tartarus and charms the goddess Hecate.
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice has interesting similarities to 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. More directly and importantly, the story of Orpheus bears direct similarity to the ancient Greek tales of Demeter captured by Hades (where in early myth she is transformed into Cthon-Demeter and later returned as Proserpina) and similar stories of Adonis or Apollo being captive in the underworld (described as Cthon-Apollo). However, the eventual form of the Orpheus myth was entwined with the mystery cults (called Orphic cults as perhaps a misprision of the old term Ophidian cults and even older Ova cults), the development of Mithrasism and Sol Invictus in Rome, and the predecessors of Orpheus. What Orpheus was before the twists of myth enveloped him with other stories might have been a happy king with a happy wife and many daughters, but perhaps that was a different king and a different time, a different place.
After the death of Eurydice, Orpheus presumably swore off the love of women and took only youths as his lovers.
Death of Orpheus
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.
Ovid (Metamorphoses X) also recounts that the Thracian Maenads, Dionysus' followers, angry for having been spurned by Orpheus in favor of "tender boys," 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.
His head and lyre, still singing mournful songs, floated down the swift Hebrus to the Mediterranean shore.
In Attic vase painting, however, the women who attack Orpheus appear to be normal Thracian women, who are irritated that the bard's songs have stolen their husbands away from them.
Some archeologies believe to have found the tomb of Orpheus near Tatul in Bulgaria.
Orphic poems and rites
A number of Greek religious poems in hexameter were attributed to Orpheus, as they were to similar miracle-man figures like Bakis, Musaeus, Abaris, Aristeas, Epimenides, and the Sybil.
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).
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. Guthrie wrote that Orpheus was the founder of mystery religions and the first to reveal to men the meanings of the initiation rites.
The post-classical Orpheus
In the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, the tale of Orpheus was mixed with Celtic fairy lore in the Middle English metrical romance Sir Orfeo.
In the Divine Comedy Dante sees the shade of Orpheus along with those of numerous other "virtuous pagans" in Limbo.
This story of Orpheus and Eurydice has been the subject of operas and cantatas through the history of western classical music:
Jacopo Peri's Euridice (1600) Giulio Caccini's Euridice (written 1600 / first performance 1602) Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607 / score 1609) Louis-Nicolas Clerambault's "Orphee" (1710) Georg Philipp Telemann's "Orpheus" (1736) Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer's Musikalischer Parnassus (c. it is thought the final dance of the Uranie suite tells the story of Orpheus & Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) Johann Gottlieb Naumann's Orfeo ed Euridice (1785) Friedrich August Kanne's Orpheus (1807) Jacques Offenbach's operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, known as "Orphée aux enfers", (1858) Darius Milhaud's Les malheurs d'Orphée (1924) Stravinsky's "Orpheus" (1948).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 programatically modelled after the Orpheus myth.
The Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending is a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth set in 1950's America. Sarah Ruhl's play Eurydice is an interpretive retelling of the myth of Orpheus from the point of view of his wife, Eurydice.
Film retellings and reinterpretations include:
Orphée, directed by Jean Cocteau (1949) Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro), directed by Marcel Camus (1959) Orfeu, directed by Carlos Diegues (1999), essentially a remake of Black Orpheus.The English poet John Milton repeatedly made allusions to the figure of Orpheus in his work, most centrally in "Lycidas" (1637).
The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote Orpheus and Euridice as an elegy to his late wife Carol in 2003.
The myth of Orpheus was also retold in The Sandman comic books by Neil Gaiman, and 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.
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).
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. 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.
XTC's Andy Partridge and Slapp Happy's Peter Blegvad spend 13 years, on and off, creating the album Orpheus: The Lowdown, a dense mix of music, poetry and spoken word.
Sonya Taaffe's "Shade and Shadow" presents the Orpheus myth in relation to the modern fear of death and isolation.
In The Sandman, Orpheus is the son of Dream and Calliope, and his head lived on as an oracle, protected by a priesthood created by his father.
George Selden, in The Cricket in Times Square, has a character describe the cricket as an Orpheus, and then, just before the cricket leaves, has the music from its concert cause all of Times Square to fall still, and then escape from the square to cause blocks of New York city to fall still, listening.
In the TV series Angel, Orpheus is the name given to a drug taken by humans to give them a rush when their blood is drunk by a vampire. is reminiscent in its plot of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.
In the anime Saint Seiya Hades, there is a legendary silver saint named Orpheus, whose special weapon is a lyre.
The name of the New York-based Orpheus Chamber Orchestra was inspired by the mythical figure.
The name Orpheus is used in the cartoon television series The Venture Bros.. In a somewhat ironic scene, Dr. Orpheus visits his master and teacher, who has taken the form of Cerberus.
Orpheus's theatrical qualities are memorialized in the name of the numerous "Orpheum" theaters in cities across the United States, once part of a chain of vaudeville and motion picture theaters [see Orpheum Circuit, Inc.].
Canadian electronic musicians Orphx allude to various aspects of the Orpheus mythos in their work.
On his debut album "The Dawnseeker" musician Sleepthief wrote the song "Eurydice" about Orpheus' attempt at saving his wife from Hades.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds retell the story in the 2004 record, "The Lyre of Oprpheus."
Spoken-word myths - audio files
| Orpheus myths as told by story tellers |
|---|
| 1. Orpheus and the Thracians, read by Timothy Carter, music by Steve Gorn, compiled by Andrew Calimach |
| Bibliography of reconstruction: Pindar, Pythian Odes, 4.176 (462 BC); Orpheus |
Honours
Orpheus Gate on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named for Orpheus.
User Comments Add a comment…