a celebrated poet and musician of antiquity. His reputation was established as early as the time of the Argonautic expedition, in which he was himself an adventurer; and is said by Apollonius Rhodius not only to have incited the Argonauts to row by the sound of his lyre, but to have vanquished and put to silence the sirens by the superiority of his strains. Yet, notwithstanding the great celebrity he had so long enjoyed, there is a passage in Cicero, which says, that Aristotle, in the third book of his Poetics, which is now lost, doubted if such a person as Orpheus ever existed. But as the work of Cicero, in which this passage occurs, is in dialogue, it is not easy to discover what was his own opinion upon the subject, the words cited being put into the mouth of Caius Cotta. And Cicero, in other parts of his writings, mentions Orpheus as a person of whose existence... ence he had no doubts. There are several ancient authors, among whom is Suidas, who enumerates five persons of the name of Orpheus, and relates some particulars of each. And it is very probable that it has fared with Orpheus as with Hercules, and that writers have attributed to one the actions of many. But, however that may have been, we shall not attempt to collect all the fables that poets and mythologists have invented concerning him; they are too well known to need insertion here. We shall, therefore, in speaking of him, make use only of such materials as the best ancient historians, and the most respectable writers among the moderns, have furnished towards his history.

Dr Cudworth, in his Intellectual System, after examining and confuting the objections that have been made to the being of an Orpheus, and with his usual learning and abilities clearly establishing his existence, proceeds, in a very ample manner, to speak of the opinions and writings of our bard, whom he regards not only as the first musician and poet of antiquity, but as a great mythologist, from whom the Greeks derived the Thracian religious rites and mysteries.

"It is the opinion (says he) of some eminent philologists of later times, that there never was any such person as Orpheus, except in Fairy-land; and that his whole history was nothing but a mere romantic allegory, utterly devoid of truth and reality. But there is nothing alleged for this opinion from antiquity, except the one passage of Cicero concerning Aristotle: who seems to have meant no more than this, that there was no such poet as Orpheus, anterior to Homer; or that the verses vulgarly called Orphical, were not written by Orpheus. However, if it should be granted that Aristotle had denied the existence of such a man, there seems to be no reason why his single testimony should preponderate against the universal consent of all antiquity: which agrees, that Orpheus was the son of Oeager, by birth a Thracian, the father or chief founder of the mythological and allegorical theology amongst the Greeks, and of all their most sacred religious rites and mysteries; who is commonly supposed to have lived before the Trojan war, that is, in the time of the Israelitish judges, or at least to have been senior both to Heliad and Homer; and to have died a violent death, most affirming that he was torn in pieces by women. For which reason, in the vision of Herus Pamphylius, in Plato, Orpheus's soul passing into another body, is said to have chosen that of a swan, a reputed musical animal, on account of the great hatred he had conceived for all women, from the death which they had inflicted on him. And the historic truth of Orpheus was not only acknowledged by Plato, but also by Iococrates, who lived before Aristotle, in his oration in praise of Bufris; and confirmed by the grave historian Diodorus Siculus, who says, that Orpheus diligently applied himself to literature, and when he had learned ἀπὸ μυθολογίας, or the mythological part of theology, he travelled into Egypt, where he soon became the greatest proficient among the Greeks in the mysteries of religion, theology, and poetry. Neither was his history of Orpheus contradicted by Origen, when so justly provoked by Celsus, who had preferred him to our Saviour; and, according to Suidas, Orpheus the Thracian was the first inventor of the religious mysteries of the Greeks, and that religion was thence called Θρησκεία, as it was a Thracian invention. On account of the great antiquity of Orpheus, there have been numberless fables intermingled with his history, yet there appears no reason that we should disbelieve the existence of such a man."

The bishop of Gloucester speaks no more doubtfully of the existence of Orpheus, than of Homer and Hesiod, with whom he ranks him, not only as a poet, but also as a theologian, and founder of religion.

The family of Orpheus is traced by Sir Isaac Newton for several generations: "Sefac passing over the Hellespont, conquers Thrace; kills Lycurgus, king of that country; and gives his kingdom and one of his singing-women to Oeagrus, the son of Tharops, and father of Orpheus; hence Orpheus is said to have had the muse Calliope for his mother."

He is allowed by most ancient authors to have excelled in poetry and music, particularly the latter; and to have early cultivated the lyre, in preference to every other instrument: so that all those who came after him were contented to be his imitators; whereas he adopted no model, says Plutarch; for before his time no other music was known, except a few airs for the flute. Music was so closely connected in ancient times with the most sublime sciences, that Orpheus united it High of not only with philosophy, but with theology. He abstained from eating animal food; and held eggs in abhorrence as aliment, being persuaded that the egg subsisted before the chicken, and was the principle of all existence: both his knowledge and prejudices, it is probable, were acquired in Egypt, as well as those of Pythagoras many ages after.

With respect to his abstaining from the flesh of oxen, Gellner supposes it may have proceeded from the veneration shewn to that animal so useful in tillage, in the Eleusinian mysteries, instituted in honour of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. He might have added that, as these mysteries were instituted in imitation of those established in Egypt in honour of Osiris and Isis, this abstinence from animal food was of the origin, and a particular compliment to Apis. But likeabé Fraguier, in an ingenious dissertation upon the Orphic Life, gives still more importance to the prohibition; for as Orpheus was the legislator and humanizer of the wild and savage Thracians, who were cannibals, a total abolition of eating human flesh could only be established by obliging his countrymen to abstain from every thing that had life.

With respect to theology, Diodorus Siculus tells us, that his father Oeagrus gave him his first instructions in religion, imparting to him the mysteries of Bacchus, as they were then practised in Thrace. He became afterwards a disciple of the Idaei Dachyli in Crete, and there acquired new ideas concerning religious ceremonies. But nothing contributed so much to his skill in theological matters, as his journey into Egypt; where being initiated into the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, or of Ceres and Bacchus, he acquired a knowledge concerning initiations, expiations, funeral rites, and other points of religious worship, far superior to any one of his age and country. And being much much connected with the descendants of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes in Bœotia, he resolved, in order to honour their origin, to transport into Greece the whole fable of Osiris, and apply it to the family of Cadmus. The credulous people easily received this tale, and were much flattered by the institution of the ceremonies in honour of Osiris. Thus Orpheus, who was held in great veneration at the Grecian Thebes, of which he was become a citizen, admirably adapted this fable, and render it respectable, not only by his beautiful verses, and manner of singing them, but by the reputation he had acquired of being profoundly skilled in all religious concerns.

At his return into Greece, according to Pausanias, he was held in the highest veneration by the people, as they imagined he had discovered the secret of expiating crimes, purifying criminals, curing diseases, and appeasing the angry gods. He formed and promulgated an idea of a hell, from the funeral ceremonies of the Egyptians, which was received throughout all Greece. He instituted the mysteries and worship of Hecate among the Eginetæ, and that of Ceres at Sparta.

Justin Martyr says, that he introduced among the Greeks near 360 gods; Hesiod and Homer pursued his labours, and followed the same clue, agreeing in the like doctrines, having all drank at the same Egyptian fountain.

Profane authors look upon Orpheus as the inventor of that species of magic called evocation of the manes, or raising ghosts; and indeed the hymns which are attributed to him are mostly pieces of incantation, and real conjuration. Upon the death of his wife Eurydice, he retired to a place in Thespia, called Aornas, where an ancient oracle gave answers to such as evoked the dead. He there fancied he saw his dear Eurydice, and at his departure flattered himself that she followed him; but upon looking behind him, and not seeing her, he was so afflicted, that he soon died of grief.

There were persons among the ancients who made public profession of conjuring up ghosts, and there were temples where the ceremony of conjuration was to be performed. Pausanias speaks of that which was in Thespia, where Orpheus went to call up the ghost of his wife Eurydice. It is this very journey, and the motive which put him upon it, that made it believed he went down into hell.

But it is not only the poets who speak of conjuring up spirits; examples of it are to be found both in sacred and profane history. Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, visited the Thespianians, to consult his wife about something left with her in trust; and we are told by the historians, that the Lacedæmonians having starved Pausanias their general to death, in the temple of Pallas, and not being able to appease his manes, which tormented them without intermission, sent for the magicians from Thessaly, who, when they had called up the ghosts of his enemies, so effectually put to flight the ghost of Pausanias, that it never more chose to shew its face.

The poets have embellished this story, and given to the lyre of Orpheus, not only the power of silencing Cerberus, and of suspending the torments of Tartarus, but also of charming even the infernal deities themselves, whom he rendered so far propitious to his intreates as to restore to him Eurydice, upon condition that he would not look at her till he had quitted their dominions; a blessing which he soon forfeited by a too eager and fatal curiosity.

All dangers past, at length the lovely bride In safety goes, with her melodious guide; Longing the common light again to flame, And draw the vital breath of upper air: He flies, and she behind him follow'd she; For such was Proserpine's severe decree. When strong desires, th' impatient youth invade, By little caution, and much love betray'd: A fault which easy pardon might receive, Were lovers judges, or could hell forgive. For near the confines of celestial light, And longing for the glimmering of a sight, Th' unwary lover cast a look behind, Forgetful of the law, nor matter of his mind. Straight all his hopes exhale in empty smoke; And his long toils were forfeit for a look.

Dryden's Virgil.

Tzetzes explains the fable of his drawing his wife Eurydice from hell, by his great skill in medicine, with which he prolonged her life, or, in other words, snatched her from the grave. Æsculapius, and other physicians, have been said to have raised from the dead, those whom they had recovered from dangerous diseases.

The bishop of Gloucester, in his learned, ample, and admirable account of the Eleusinian mysteries, says, "While these mysteries were confined to Egypt their native country, and while the Grecian lawgivers went thither to be initiated, as a kind of delegation to their office, the ceremony would be naturally described in terms highly allegorical. This way of speaking was used by Orpheus, Bacchus, and others; and continued even after the mysteries were introduced into Greece, as appears by the fables of Hercules, Castor, Pollux, and Theseus's descent into hell; but the allegory was so circumstanced, as to discover the truth concealed under it. So Orpheus is said to get to hell by the power of his harp:

Thracia fretus citbard, fidibusque canoris, Virg. Æn. VI. ver. 119.

That is, in quality of lawgiver; the harp being the known symbol of his laws, by which he humanized a rude and barbarous people.—Had an old poem, under the name of Orpheus, entitled, A descent into Hell, been now extant, it would perhaps have shewn us, that no more was meant than Orpheus's initiation."

Many ancient writers, in speaking of his death, relate, that the Thracian women, enraged at being abandoned by their husbands, who were disciples of Orpheus, concealed themselves in the woods, in order to satiate their vengeance; and, notwithstanding they postponed the perpetration of their design some time thro' fear, at length, by drinking, to a degree of intoxication, they so far fortified their courage as to put him to death. And Plutarch assures us, that the Thracians stigmatized their women, even in his time, for the barbarity of this action.

Our venerable bard is defended by the author of the Divine Legation, from some insinuations to his disadvantage in Diogenes Laertius. "It is true (says he) if uncertain report was to be believed, the mysteries were were corrupted very early; for Orpheus himself is said to have abused them. But this was an art the debauched mystae of later times employed to varnish their enormities; as the detestable pederasts of after-ages, scandalized the blameless Socrates. Besides, the story is so ill laid, that it is detected by the surest records of antiquity: for in consequence of what they fabled of Orpheus in the mysteries, they pretended he was torn in pieces by the women; whereas it appeared from the inscription on his monument at Dium in Macedonia, that he was struck dead with lightning, the envied death of the reputed favourites of the gods."

This monument at Dium, consisting of a marble urn on a pillar, was still to be seen in the time of Pausanias. It is said, however, that his sepulchre was removed from Libethra, upon mount Olympus, where Orpheus was born, and from whence it was transferred to Dium by the Macedonians, after the ruin of Libethra by a sudden inundation which a dreadful storm had occasioned. This event is very minutely related by Pausanias.

Virgil bestows the first place in his Elysium upon the legislators, and those who brought mankind from a state of nature into society:

Magnanimi heroës, nati melioribus annis.

At the head of these is Orpheus, the most renowned of the European law-givers, but better known under the character of poet: for the first laws being written in measure, to allure men to learn them, and, when learnt, to retain them, the sable would have it, that by the force of harmony Orpheus softened the savage inhabitants of Thrace:

—Thricius longa cum uceste sacerdes Obloquitur numeris sibuum disfimina vocum: Jamque eadem digitis, jam petine pulleat eburne.

Æn. lib. vi. ver. 645.

The seven strings given by the poet in this passage to the lyre of Orpheus, is a circumstance somewhat historical. The first Mercurean lyre had, at most, but four strings. Others were afterwards added to it by the second Mercury, or Amphion: but according to several traditions preserved by Greek historians, it was Orpheus who completed the second tetrachord, which extended the scale to a heptachord, or seven sounds, implied by the septem disfimina vocum. For the attention of many writers, that Orpheus added two new strings to the lyre, which before had seven, clashes with the claims of Pythagoras to the invention of the octachord, or addition of the sound proflambaro-vocum to the heptachord, of which almost all antiquity allows him to have been the inventor. And it is not easy to suppose, that the lyre should have been represented in ancient sculpture with four or five strings only, if it had had nine so early as the time of Orpheus, who flourished long before sculpture was known in Greece. See the article Lyre.

With respect to the writings of Orpheus, he is mentioned by Pindar as author of the Argonautics, and Herodotus speaks of his Orphics. His hymns, says Pausanias, were very short, and but few in number: the Lycomides, an Athenian family, knew them by heart, and had an exclusive privilege of singing them, and those of their old poets, Musæus, Onomacritus, Pamphus, and Olen, at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries; that is, the priesthood was hereditary in this family.

Jamblicus tells us, that the poems under the name of Orpheus were written in the Doric dialect, but have since been transdialected, or modernized. It was the common opinion in antiquity that they were genuine; but even those who doubted of it, gave them to the earliest Pythagoreans, and some of them to Pythagoras himself, who has frequently been called the follower of Orpheus, and been supposed to have adopted many of his opinions.

Of the poems that are still subsisting under the name of Orpheus, which were collected and published at Nuremberg 1702, by Andr. Christ. Eschenbach, and which have since been reprinted at Leipzig 1764, under the title of Ὀρφεῖος ἀπίστα, several have been attributed to Onomacritus, an Athenian, who flourished under the Pythiadæ, about 500 years before Christ. Their titles are, 1. The Argonautics, an epic poem. 2. Eighty-six hymns; which are so full of incantations and magical evocation, that Daniel Heinsius has called them veram Satanae liturgiam, "the true liturgy of the devil." Pausanias, who made no doubt that the hymns subsisting in his time were composed by Orpheus, tells us, that tho' less elegant, they had been preferred for religious purposes to those of Homer. 3. De lapidibus, a poem on precious stones. 4. Fragments, collected by Henry Stevens. Orpheus has been called the inventor, or at least the propagator, of many arts and doctrines among the Greeks. 1. The combination of letters, or the art of writing. 2. Music, the lyre, or cithara, of seven strings, adding three to that of Mercury. 3. Hexameter verse. 4. Mysteries and theology. 5. Medicine. 6. Magic and divination. 7. Astrology. Servius upon the fifth Æneid, p. 450, says Orpheus first instituted the harmony of the spheres. 8. He is said likewise to have been the first who imagined a plurality of worlds, or that the moon and planets were inhabited.