Concept
Orpheus
Overview
In Greek mythology, Orpheus ( ; Ancient Greek: Ὀρφεύς, classical pronunciation: [or.pʰeú̯s]) was a Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned poet and, according to legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and descended into the underworld to recover his lost wife, Eurydice.
The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music (the usual scene in Orpheus mosaics), his attempt to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the underworld, and his death at the hands of the maenads of Dionysus, who got tired of his mourning for his late wife Eurydice. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the reception of classical mythology in Western culture, portrayed or alluded to in countless forms of art and popular culture including poetry, film, opera, music, and painting.
For the Greeks, Orpheus was a founder and prophet of the so-called "Orphic" mysteries. He was credited with the composition of a number of works, among which are a number of now-lost theogonies, including the theogony commented upon in the Derveni papyrus, as well as extant works such the Orphic Hymns, the Orphic Argonautica, and the Lithica. Shrines containing purported relics of Orpheus were regarded as oracles.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Orpheus is discussed.
But, in sorrow and revenge for his death, the River Helicon, sacred to the Muses, hid its waters under ground, and rose again in other places. EXPLANATION.—The fable receives this explanation. The music of Orpheus is of two kinds; one that appeases the infernal powers, and the other that draws together the wild beasts and trees. The former properly relates to natural, and the latter to moral philosophy, or civil…
Francis Bacon, Bacon's Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
Hercules{47} who did perambulate the world | 47. Hercules is not a Baconian hero. to suppress tyrants and giants and | The real hero is Orpheus as he is monsters in every | interpreted in "Orpheus, sive | Philosophia" in DE SAPIENTIA VETERUM. | Orpheus is the Baconian philosopher, | and the myth of Orpheus is about the | opera scientiae. The works of Orpheus | are superior to the works of Hercules | as the "works of…
Francis Bacon, Valerius Terminus
names the idea; states what it is
There he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of women, hating to be born of a woman because they had been his murderers; he beheld also the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale; birds, on the other hand, like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men. The soul which obtained the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion, and this was the…
Plato, The Republic
author linked in the graph; opens on it; names the idea
Was it not the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded in civilising Man? Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold accompaniments, and rich symphonies…
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, and
names the idea; opens on it
But Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, the harper, they sent empty away, and presented to him an apparition only of her whom he sought, but herself they would not give up, because he showed no spirit; he was only a harp-player, and did not dare like Alcestis to die for love, but was contriving how he might enter Hades alive; moreover, they afterwards caused him to suffer death at the hands of women, as the punishment of…
Plato, Symposium
author linked in the graph; opens on it; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Orpheus
- Aristophanes
- Hesiod
- Syrianus
- Pythagoras
- Parmenides
- Numenius of Apamea
- Sappho
- The School of Athens
- W. K. C. Guthrie
- Pherecydes of Syros
- Aristobulus of Alexandria
Related ideas
- Aristophanes
- Feminism
- Germany
- Classical Greece
- Laws (dialogue)
- Homer
- Hesiod
- Heracles
- Orphism
- Republic (Plato)
- Anaxagoras
- Netflix
- Sibyl
- Ion (dialogue)
- W. D. Ross
- Aeschylus
- Babylon
- Western culture
- Astrology
- Odyssey
- Oracle
- Plato
- Prometheus
- Neoplatonism
Place in the tradition
Part of Parmenides.