Charles
Burney: from A General History of Music, 1776.
ORPHEUS is one of the most ancient and venerable name, among the poets and musicians of Greece. His reputation was established as early is 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. (1) 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, was of opinion that such a person as Orpheus never existed; (2) 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, men-tions Orpheus as a person of whose existence he had no doubts. There are several ancient authors, among whom is Suidas, who enumerate five persons of the name of Orpheus, and relate 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, I 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. I shall, therefore, in speaking of him, make use only of such materials as the best ancient historians, and the most respectable writers among the modems, have furnished towards his history.
2: Orpheum Poetam docet Aristoteles nunquam fuisse. De Nat. Deor. l. i. sec. 38.
Dr. Cudworth, in his Intellectual System, (3) 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 philologers (4) 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 alledged 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 Hesiod 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 Isocrates, who lived before Aristotle, in his oration in praise of Busiris; and confirmed by the grave historian Diodorus Siculus (5) who says, that Orpheus diligently applied himself to literature, and when he had learned ta muqologoumena, 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 this 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 Threskeia, 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."
5: Lib. iv. cap. 25.
The bishop of Gloucester (6) speaks no more doubtfully of the existence of Orpheus, than of Homer and Hesiod, with whom he ranks him, not only as poet, but also as a theologian, and founder of religion. This learned author has thrown new lights upon the character of Orpheus; our pursuits are somewhat different; it was his business to introduce him to his readers as a philosopher, a legislator, and a mystagogue; and it is mine, after establishing his existence, to rank him among the first cultivators of music and poetry, and to give him that exalted and respectable station among illustrious bards, which has been allowed him by almost all antiquity
The family of Orpheus is traced by Sir Isaac Newton for several generations: "Sesac 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 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, Gesner supposes it to 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 like origin, and a particular compliment to Apis. But the abbé Fraguier, in an ingenious Dissertation upon the Orphic Life, (7) gives still more importance to the prohibition; for as Orpheus was the legislator and humanizer of the wild and savage Thracians, who were canibals, a total abolition of eating human flesh could only be established by obliging his countrymen to abstain from that of everything 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 Dactyli 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, lie 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 connected with the descendants of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes in Boeotia, 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 cere-monies 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 rendered 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, (8) 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. (9) He instituted the mysteries and worship of Hecate among the Eginetes, (10) and that of Ceres at Sparta.
9: Diod. Sic. lib. i.
10: Pausan. lib. ii. cap. 30.
Justin Martyr says, that he introduced among the Greeks near three hundred and sixty 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 Thesprotia, called Aornos, 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. (11) 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 (12) speaks of that which was in Thesprotia, 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.
12: In Baeot.
But it is not only the poets who speak of conjuring up spirits; examples of it are to be found both in sacred (13) and profane history. Periander, the tyrant of Corinth [fl 625 B.C., 585 B.C.] visited the Thesprotians, to consult his wife about something left with her in trust; and we are told by the historians, that the Lacedoemonians having starved Pausanius their general to death [470 B.C.] 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.
BURY.- History of Greece, Chapter VII.
STEWART.- The Myths of Plato.
JEVONS.- Introduction to the History of Religion.
ADAM'S.- Religious Teachers of Greece.
Cotterill in Ancient Greece (p. 282) says: "The Orphic teachings doubtless were associated with much superstition and priestcraft, but, together with Pythagorean mysticism, they helped by their parables to keep alive in the hearts of many the beliefs that lie at the root of all true religion."
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 entreaties, 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 affection.
All dangers past, at length the lovely bride
In safety goes, with her melodious guide;
Longing the common light again to share,
And draw the vital breath of upper air:
He first, and close 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 etherial light,
And longing for the glimmering of a sight
Th' unwary lover cast a look behind,
Forgetful of the law, nor master of his mind.
Straight all his hopes exhal'd in empty smoke;
And his long toils were forfeit for a look.
DRYDEN'S Virgil (14)
Tzetzes (15) 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. Aesculapius, 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 law-givers went thither to be initiated, as a kind of designation 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 con-cealed under it. So Orpheus is said to get to hell by the power of his harp.
Thrëicia fretus cithara, fidibusque canoris.
VIRG. Aen. VI. ver. 119.
that is in quality of law-giver; 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 through fear, at length, by drinking to a degree of intoxication, they so far fortified their courage as to put him to death. And Plutarch (16) assures us, that the Thracians stigmatized their women, even in his time, for the barbarity of this action. (17)
17: It is related, that after he had been torn to piece by the Thracian women, his lyre, happening to fall in the Hebrus during the scuffle, was carried to Lesbos, where it was taken up and deposited in the temple of Apollo. But, according to Lucian, Neanthus, the son of Pittacus the tyrant, brought it afterwards of the priests, imagining, that by merely touching this instrument, he should draw after him trees and rocks; it is true he succeeded no otherwise than by provoking the dogs in the neighbourhood to tear him to pieces. But though he could not share the fame, he shared the fate of the unfortunate Orpheus.
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 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 enormi-ties; as the detested pederasts of after-ages, scandalized the blame-less 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, how-ever, that his sepulchre was removed from Libethra, upon mount Olympus, where Orpheus was born, and was thence 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. (18)
Virgil bestows the first place in his Elysium upon the legislators, and those who brought mankind from a state of nature into society:
Magnanimi heroes, 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 fable would have it, that by the force of harmony, Orpheus softened the savage inhabitants of Thrace:
- Threicius longa cum veste sacerdos
Obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum:
Jamque eadem digitis, jam pectine pulsat eburno. (19)
Aen. lib. vi. ver. 645.
The Thracian bard surrounded by the rest,
There stands conspicuous in his flowing vest;
His flying fingers, and harmonious quill,
Strike seven distinguished notes, and sev'n at once they fill.
The latter part of this last verse says nothing to a musician, and, indeed, but little to any one else the four fingers and thumb of one hand, and the plectrum in the other, could fill at most but six notes. Mr. Pitt is still more unhappy in his version :
There Orpheus, graceful in his long attire,
In seven-divisions strikes the sounding lyre.
Now, a division is, unluckily, a technical term in music which implies a rapid flight, either with a voice or instrument: when applied to singing, it tells us that a great number of notes are given to one syllable; but we are as certain as we can be about anything that concerns ancient music, that neither the Greeks nor Romans had either the word or thing in the sense which we annex to division; and it is but an aukward way of describing an instrument with seven distinct strings, or sounds, to say that it had seven divisions. It seems as if the poet meant no more, by the whole passage, than that "the Thracian priest (Orpheus) sung to the seven-stringed Lyre, upon which he sometimes played with his fingers, and sometimes with the ivory plectrum."
The seven strings given by the poet in this passage to the lyre of Orpheus, is a circumstance somewhat historical. The first Mer-curian lyre had, at most, but four strings. Others were afterwards added to it by the second Mercury, or by 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 discrimina vocum: for the assertion 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 an eighth sound to the heptachord, which made the scale consist of two disjunct, instead of two conjunct tetrachords, and of which almost all antiquity allows him to have been the inventor. Nor is it 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. (20)
20: What is here said concerning the progressive improvements of instrumental music, must be wholly confined to Greece; for proofs have already been given of the Egyptians having been in possession of more perfect instruments than those just mentioned, long before the time when Orpheus was supposed to have flourished.
Orpheus is mentioned by Pindar in his 4th Pythic. The passage is curious: "Orpheus," says he, speaking of the Argonauts, "joins these heroes; Orpheus father of the lyre and of song; Orpheus whom the whole universe celebrates, and whose sire is Apollo." Herodotus likewise speaks of the Orphic mysteries. (21) 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, Musaeus, Onomacritus, Pamphus, and Olen, at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries; that is, the priesthood was hereditary in this family. (22)
21: Pindar was born 521 B.C. and Herodotus 484. Euripides and Aristophanes both quote Orpheus; the tragedian was born 477 years B.C. and the comic poet was his contemporary. Besides these, Apolonius Rhodius, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, Valerius Flaccus, among the poets; and Plato, Isocrates, Diodorus Siculus, Pausanias, Apollodorus, Hyginus, Plutarch, and many other philosophers, historians and mythologists, cite his works, and speak of him, without throwing the least doubt upon his existence.
22: Suidas gives to Orpheus a son, of the name of Leos, whom Pausanias makes the head of one of the great Athenian tribes; who, by the counsel of the oracle, devoted his three daughters, Dewkorai, Pasithea, Theope, and Eubule, to the safety of the state.
Iamblicus tells us, that the poems under the name of Orpheus were written in the Doric dialect, but have since been trans-dialected, 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. (23)
23: Of the poems which are still subsisting under the name of Orpheus, which were collected and published at Nuremberg, 1702, by Andr. Christ. Eschenbach, and which have been since reprinted at Leipsic, 1764, under the title of ORFEWS APANTA, several have been attributed to Onomacritos, an Athenian, who flourished under the Pisistratidae, about 500 years B.C. Their titles are:-
I. The Argonautics an epic poem.
II. Eighty-six hymns, which are so full of incantations and magical evocation. that Daniel Heinsius has called them veram satanae liturgiam the true litturgy of the devil. Pausanias, who made no doubt that the hymns subsisting in his time were composed by Orpheus, tells us, that, though less elegant, they had been preferred, for religious purposes, to those of Homer.
III. De Lapidibus, a poem on precious stones.
IV. 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 sixth Aeneid, 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.
If I have selected with too much sedulity and minuteness what-ever ancient and modem writers furnish relative to Orpheus it has been occasioned by an involuntary zeal for the fame of this musical and poetical patriarch; which, warm at first, grew more and more heated in the course of enquiry; and, stimulated by the respect and veneration which I found paid to him by antiquity, I became a kind of convert to this mystagogue, and eagerly aspired at initiation into his mysteries - in order to reveal them to my readers.
