Orpheus

The Greeks say that, after Orpheus and Linus and the most ancient of the poets among them, the first to be admired for wisdom were the seven called the Sages.

And that most of them were barbarians by race and were educated among barbarians — what need to say it, since Pythagoras was shown to be a Tyrrhenian or a Tyrian, Antisthenes a Phrygian, and Orpheus an Odrysian or a Thracian?

And Orpheus, who sailed with Heracles, was the teacher of Musaeus.

as they say that in Thrace one Orpheus, a son of a Muse, came to be, and another, a shepherd on some mountain of Boeotia, heard the Muses themselves;

And indeed Orpheus tamed and made musical the beasts through song;

While Orpheus lived, then, they followed him from all sides, hearing him and at the same time grazing;

while in the second he sets out to accommodate the fables of Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer to what he himself had said in the first book about the immortal gods, so that even the most ancient poets, who never so much as suspected these things, may seem to have been Stoics.

Aristotle teaches that the poet Orpheus never existed, and the Pythagoreans say that this Orphic poem was the work of a certain Cercon;

but if he is a god, then Orpheus and Rhesus too are gods, born of a Muse for their mother — unless, perhaps, marriages with sea-deities are set above those with earthly ones.

To my mind, then, that Thracian Orpheus, and the Theban and the Methymnean — men who were no men — were deceivers;

I will set before you the very verses of Orpheus, that you may have the conductor of the mysteries himself as witness of their shamelessness:

Another, a Thracian sophist (this too is a Greek legend), tamed the wild beasts by his bare song, and even transplanted trees, the oaks, by his music.

Had I the tongue, the tuneful voice of Orpheus to charm Demeter’s daughter or her husband by my lay and bring thee back from Hades,

I had gone down, nor Pluto’s hound, nor Charon, ferryman of souls, whose hand is on the oar, had held me back, till to the light I had restored thee alive.

For nevermore will I touch the lyre nor lift my soul in song to the Libyan flute, for thou hast taken with thee all my joy in life. But in my bed thy figure shall be laid full length, by cunning artists fashioned;

And they produce a bushel of books of Musaeus and Orpheus, the offspring of the Moon and of the Muses, as they affirm, and these books they use in their ritual, and make not only ordinary men but states believe that there really are remissions of sins and purifications for deeds of injustice, by means of sacrifice and pleasant sport for the living, and that there are also special rites for the def …

He saw the soul that had been Orpheus’, he said, selecting the life of a swan, because from hatred of the tribe of women, owing to his death at their hands, it was unwilling to be conceived and born of a woman.

It has, indeed, seemed to itself to have drawn even from the sacred writings, as they call them, because antiquity reckoned most of its authors to be even gods, let alone divine men — such as the Egyptian Mercury, to whom Plato especially attached himself;

‘For in man the blood about the heart is perception.

And to be permitted to converse with Orpheus, Musaeus, Homer, Hesiod — at how much, pray, do you value it?

and before you cast your votes, each juryman must reflect that he is being watched by hallowed and inexorable Justice, who, as Orpheus, that prophet of our most sacred mysteries, tells us, sits beside the throne of Zeus and oversees all the works of men.

Perhaps in the deep-wooded lairs of Olympus, where Orpheus once playing the lyre drew together trees by his songs, drew together the beasts of the fields.

Well, but I know a spell of Orpheus, a most excellent one, to make the brand enter his skull of its own accord, and set alight the one-eyed son of Earth.

take Orpheus for thy chief and go a-revelling, with all honour for the vapourings of many a written scroll, seeing thou now art caught.

If I had the eloquence of Orpheus, my father, to move the rocks by chanted spells to follow me, or to charm by speaking anyone I wished, I would have resorted to it.

nor skill to sing a fairer strain than ever Orpheus sang, unless therewith my fame be spread abroad!

Whom thou hast slain;

As under far Pangaion Orpheus lies,

By Orpheus, very cousin of this dead

But this man, no less eminent for sanctity than wisdom, felt himself authorized by the law of nature, as it is admitted by the evidence of Berosus, and Orpheus, who were strangers.

and Orpheus, who made a point of rehearsing these tales, died by being torn asunder

But Orpheus led the dead back from Hades, whereas Busiris brought death to the living before their day of destiny.

And from Apollo the lyre-player came, the father of songs, much-praised Orpheus.

Or again, what would any of you give to meet with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer?

Orpheus, too, says— Fair-flowing Ocean was the first to marry, and he wedded his sister Tethys, daughter of his mother.

But with the sixth generation, says Orpheus, cease the rhythmic song.

The persons who followed in their rear, listening to what they could of the talk, seemed to be mostly strangers, brought by the great Protagoras from the several cities which he traverses, enchanting them with his voice like Orpheus, while they follow where the voice sounds, enchanted;

Now I tell you that sophistry is an ancient art, and those men of ancient times who practised it, fearing the odium it involved, disguised it in a decent dress, sometimes of poetry, as in the case of Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides sometimes of mystic rites and soothsayings, as did Orpheus, Musaeus and their sects;

But Orpheus, son of Oeagrus, they sent back with failure from Hades, showing him only a wraith of the woman for whom he came;

Shall I, since I have no calendar, compute how much time lies between Orpheus and Homer?