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Orpheus, the "father of songs" according to Pindaros, was the son of a Muse, either Calliope (who presided over eloquence and epic poetry) or Polyhymnia (sacred poetry and hymns, dance, and pantomime). When their sister Thalia (comedy and idyllic poetry) was being courted by Apollo, the god (who in some versions was his father) gave him a golden lyre and taught him how to play it, while his mother taught him how to compose lyrics. His music and singing could charm the animals, coax the trees and rocks to dance, and change the course of rivers; Aristophanes jested that he taught cannibals to subsist on fruit. His son Mousaios was a philosopher, historian, prophet, seer, poet, and musician who founded priestly poetry in Attica. In the "Apology," Platon had Sokrates ask rhetorically, "What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus...? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again." His wife, the oak nymph Euridike, daughter of Apollo, while being pursued by Apollo's son Aristaeus, the god of animal husbandry, bee-keeping, and cheese making, who perhaps had taught Dionysos how to make alcoholic beverages, and she was bitten by a viper and died. Orpheus played so mournfully that the nymphs and deities wept and told him to go to Hades and retrieve his wife. Upon his arrival at the Underworld his music put Cerberus, the multi-headed dog who guarded its entrance, to sleep, and it made the Erinyes (the Furies) weep; Hades and Persephone allowed him to take Euridike back to the world of the living, but only on condition that he stayed in front of her and did not look back until they reached the upper world. But at the last minute, to make sure that Hades had not tricked him, he checked to see if she was following him, and she disappeared back into the Underworld. In the "Symposium," Platon's Phaedrus claimed that he had only been escorting an apparition because he had not been willing to rejoin her by killing himself.
Orpheus, the "father of songs" according to Pindaros, was the son of a Muse, either Calliope (who presided over eloquence and epic poetry) or Polyhymnia (sacred poetry and hymns, dance, and pantomime). When their sister Thalia (comedy and idyllic poetry) was being courted by Apollo, the god (who in some versions was his father) gave him a golden lyre and taught him how to play it, while his mother taught him how to compose lyrics. His music and singing could charm the animals, coax the trees and rocks to dance, and change the course of rivers; Aristophanes jested that he taught cannibals to subsist on fruit. His son Mousaios was a philosopher, historian, prophet, seer, poet, and musician who founded priestly poetry in Attica. In the "Apology," Platon had Sokrates ask rhetorically, "What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus...? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again." His wife, the oak nymph Euridike, daughter of Apollo, while being pursued by Apollo's son Aristaeus, the god of animal husbandry, bee-keeping, and cheese making, who perhaps had taught Dionysos how to make alcoholic beverages, and she was bitten by a viper and died. Orpheus played so mournfully that the nymphs and deities wept and told him to go to Hades and retrieve his wife. Upon his arrival at the Underworld his music put Cerberus, the multi-headed dog who guarded its entrance, to sleep, and it made the Erinyes (the Furies) weep; Hades and Persephone allowed him to take Euridike back to the world of the living, but only on condition that he stayed in front of her and did not look back until they reached the upper world. But at the last minute, to make sure that Hades had not tricked him, he checked to see if she was following him, and she disappeared back into the Underworld. In the "Symposium," Platon's Phaedrus claimed that he had only been escorting an apparition because he had not been willing to rejoin her by killing himself.
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