Charmed stones, trees and wild beasts into following his lyre
Even rivers were said to pause; the standard image in ancient mosaics
Myth · Greek
Orpheus
Greek mythology — Thracian musician, poet and prophet
The supreme musician of myth, whose lyre could move rocks, trees and wild animals and even soften the rulers of the dead. He went down to the underworld to bring back his wife Eurydice, won her on the condition that he not look back, and lost her a step from daylight. Torn apart at last by Thracian women, his head floated on singing. A mystery religion, and a great deal of opera, took his name.
How to spot them
- ▸A lyre, a Thracian cap, and a ring of enchanted animals listening
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Eurydice', 'do not look back', 'Calliope', 'the Bacchantes', 'a singing severed head'
- ▸Son of a Muse; his instrument became the constellation Lyra
- ▸Gave his name to a mystery cult teaching the transmigration of souls
Stories & episodes
Went down alive into the land of the dead to fetch back his wife
She had died of a snake bite fleeing the shepherd Aristaeus
Granted his wish on one condition, he looked back a step too soon
Hades and Persephone forbade him to turn until both were in the upper air
Out-sang the Sirens so that a famous ship's crew rowed past unharmed
He sailed with the Argonauts and drowned the deadly song with his own
Torn to pieces by Thracian women; his head floated downriver still singing
Down the Hebrus to Lesbos, where it became an oracle
A mystery religion took his name and taught reincarnation and a vegetarian life
Orphism, with its gold leaves buried as instructions for the soul in the afterlife
Quick-fire facts
- •Son of the Muse Calliope, by Oeagrus of Thrace or, in some versions, by Apollo
- •Apollo (or Hermes) gave him the lyre; it was set in the sky as the constellation Lyra
- •The fullest classical tellings are Virgil's Georgics 4 and Ovid's Metamorphoses 10–11
- •Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1607) is the earliest opera still regularly staged
- •Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) opened the reform of opera seria
- •Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld (1858) contains the galop that became the can-can
- •Cocteau's Orphée (1950) recasts the myth in post-war Paris; Black Orpheus (1959) sets it in Rio at Carnival
- •Orphic gold tablets found in graves in southern Italy and Crete give the soul directions among the waters of the underworld
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Ovid — Metamorphoses Books 10–11: the descent, the backward glance and the death
- Virgil — Georgics, Book 4 The earliest full surviving version in which the rescue fails