792 
O R P H E-U S. 
to pieces, they threw his head into the Hebrus, which 
ftill articulated the words Eurydice ! Eurydice ! as it was 
carried down the dream into tiie yEgean Sea. 
Others think, that, as he attempted to conjure his wife 
from the dead, which they underftatid by the dory of his 
going down to hell, he thought lie fa w her; and when 
afterwards, on looking back, he miffed her, he died of 
grief. There is certainly feme reafon for fuppodng this 
to be the cafe ; for there were perfons and temples pub¬ 
licly appointed for evocations ; and Paufanias really 
/peaks of that temple which was in Threfprotia, and where 
Orpheus went to call up the ghoft of Eurydice. Poets 
often mention this fubjedt; and indances of it occur in 
hiftory both facred and profane. The witch of Endor is 
well known to thofe who read the hidorical part of the 
Bible. But, to particularife indances, whether facred or 
profane, would be endlefs. Some maintain that he was 
killed by a thunder-bolt. He was buried at Pieria in 
Macedonia, according to Apoilodorus. The inhabitants 
of Dium boafled that his tomb was in their city ; and the 
people of Mount Libdthrus in Thrace claimed the fame 
honour; and farther obferved, that the nightingales which 
built their neds near his tomb fang with greater melody 
than all other birds. Orpheus, as fome report, after death 
received divine honours; the Mufes gave an honourable 
burial to his retrains, and his lyre became one of the con- 
dellations in the heavens. 
Tzetzes explains the fable of his drawing his wife 
Eurydice from hell, by his great /kill in medicine, with 
which lie prolonged her life; or, in other words, 
/hatched her from the grave. FEfeulapius, and otherphy- 
licians, have been faid to have railed from the dead 
thofe whom they had recovered from dangerous difeafes. 
Warburton, in his learned, ample, and admirable, ac¬ 
count of the Eleufmian myderies, fays, “ While tbefe 
myfteries were confined to Egypt, their native country, 
and while the Grecian lawgivers went thither to be ini¬ 
tiated, as a kind of defignation to their office, the cere¬ 
mony would be naturally deferibed in terms highly alle¬ 
gorical. This way of lpeaking was tiled by Orpheus, 
Bacchus, and others; and continued even after the myf- 
teries were introduced into Greece, as appears by the fa¬ 
bles of Hercules, Caftor, Pollux, and Thefeus’s defeent 
into hell ; but the allegory was fo circumflanced, as to 
difeover the truth concealed under it. So Orpheus is faid 
to get to hell by the. power of his harp: Tlireieia fre tits 
cithara, fidibufque canoris. JEn. vi. ver. 119. That is, in 
quality of lawgiver; the harp being the known fymbol 
of his laws, by which lie humanized a rude and barba¬ 
rous people. 
Orpheus is defended by the fame author from fome in- 
finuations to his difadvantage in Diogenes Laertius : “ It 
is true (fays he), if uncertain report was to be believed, 
the myfteries were corrupted very early ; for Orpheus him- 
feIf is faid to have abufed them. But this was an art the 
debauched myftte of later times employed to varnifh their 
enormities ; as the deteffed psederafts of after-ages fcan- 
dalized the blamelefs Socrates. Belides, the ftory is fo ill 
laid, that it is detedled by the fureff records of antiquity; 
for, in confequeriGe of what they fabled of Orpheus in 
the myfteries, they pretended he was torn in pieces by tire 
women ; whereas it appeared, from the infeription on his 
monument at Dium in Macedonia, that he was ftruck 
dead with lightning, the envied death of the reputed fa¬ 
vourites of the gods.” 
Orpheus’s monument at Dium, coniiffing of a marble 
urn on a pillar, was ftill to be feen in the time of Paufa¬ 
nias. It is faid, however, that liis fepulclire 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 
fuddeh inundation which a dreadful florin had occafioned. 
This event is very minutely related by Paufanias. 
With refpedl to the writings of Orpheus, lie is men¬ 
tioned by Pindar as author of the Argonautics; and He¬ 
rodotus fpeaks of his Orphics. His Hymns, fays Pau¬ 
fanias, were very fhort, and but few in number ; 'the Ly- 
comides, an Athenian family, knew them by heart, and 
had an exclusive privilege of finging them, and thofe of 
their old poets, Mufteus, Onomacritus, Pamphus, and 
Oien, at the celebration of the Eleufmian myfteries ; that 
is, the priefthood was hereditary in this family. 
Jambli.cus tells us, that the poems under the name of 
Orpheus were written in the Doric dialedi, but have fince 
been transrdialecled, or modernifed. It was the common 
opinion in antiquity that they were genuine; but even 
thofe who doubted of it, gave them to the earlieft Pytha¬ 
goreans, and fome of them to Pythagoras himfelf, who 
has frequently been called the follower of Orpheus,and has 
been fuppofed to have adopted many of his- opinions. 
Of the poems that are ftill f'ubfifling under the name of 
Orpheus, which were colledled and publifhed at Nurem¬ 
berg, 1702, by Andr. Christ. Efchenbacb, and which have 
been reprinted at LeipSic, 1764., under the title ofOP<J>E£ 2 S 
AFJANTA, feveral have been attributed to Onomacritus, 
an Athenian, who flourished under the Pififtratidas, about 
500 years before Clirifl. Their titles are, i.The Argo¬ 
nautics, an epic poem. 2. Eighty-Six Hymns; which are 
fo full of incantations and magical evocation; that Daniel 
Heinfius has called them . Veram Scttance Liturgiam, “ The 
True Liturgy of the Devil.”' Paufanias, who made no 
doubt that the hymns fubfifting in his time were cora- 
pofed by Orpheus, tells us, that, though lefts elegant, they 
had been preferred for religious purpofes to thofe of Ho¬ 
mer. 3. Dc Lapidibus; a poem on precious flones. 4.. 
Fragments, coiledted by Henry Stevens. 
The true doctrine of Orpheus on the fubjedt of Cofmo- 
gony, is laid to be contained in an epitome made long ago 
by Timotheus the chronographer. This writer fays, that 
Orpheus gave an account of the generation of the gods, 
the creation of the world, and the formation’of man, pro- 
feffing, that he delivered nothing from his own invention, 
but as he" was informed, on inquiry, by Phcebus, Titan, 
or the Sun. His account is briefly as follows: That, in 
the beginning, the ether, or heaven, was formed by God 5 
and that on each fide of the ether were.chaos and dark 
night, which covered whatfoever was under the ether, 
thereby fignifying, that night was prior. He declared 
aifo, that there was a certain incoinprehenfible Being, 
which was the higheft and mod ancient of all things, 
and the.maker of the univerfe, both of the ether itfelf, 
and of things under the ether; that the earth was invifi- 
ble b}f reafon of the darknefs which was upon it; but the 
light, breaking forth through the ether, illuminated the 
whole creation ; this light, which fo broke forth, being 
faid by him to be that higheft of all beings before-men¬ 
tioned, whole name,as revealed by the oracle, was Counfei, 
Light, and the Giver of Life; that thefe three names 
manifeft one and the fame power and might of that invi- 
fible and incoinprehenfible God, who is the maker of all 
things, and who bringeth that which is not into a date 
of exiftence; by which power were procured all incor¬ 
poreal principles, and the fun, the moon, the liars, the 
earth, and the fea, and all things therein, both vifibie and 
invifible. He likewise declared, that mankind was formed 
out of the earth by the fame Deity, and received from 
him a rational foul, agreeably to what Mofes has recorded. 
Timotheus adds, that the fame Orpheus alfo wrote, that 
all things were made by one godhead of three name's, and 
that this God is all things. (Timoth. Chronogr. apud 
Eufeb. Citron. Grtec. Vide etiam Suidam, in voce Orpheus ; 
et Proci. in Tim. lib. ii.) If this teflimony be admitted) 
we need not appeal to the- Orphic verfes, which are very 
full as to the alfertion of a Supreme Deity. Many of 
thefe verfes, it is true, are fuppolititious, and manifeflly 
forged either by Chriflians or Jews ; but the fame cannot 
be laid of them all: feveral being-cited by -Pagan authors, 
as having been written, if not by Orpheus himfelf, yet by 
perfons of great antiquity, and well acquainted with his 
dodlrine and traditions, and therefore thought, by men 
a of 
