Orpheus
The Singer
OR-fee-us
Sang so well that stones followed him and the dead stood still, and lost his wife anyway, over one look.
The Story
Son of the Muse Calliope, he played well enough to move rivers and put the Sirens out of business when he sailed with the Argonauts. When Eurydice died of a snakebite he walked into the underworld and asked for her back, and his song was good enough that Hades granted it.
The condition was that he not look at her until both were in the light. He held out the whole way up and turned at the threshold. Afterwards he wandered Thrace refusing all company and was torn apart by maenads; his head floated down the river still singing. The mystery cult that took his name promised its initiates a better route through the place he had been.
Did You Know?
- A religious movement took his name and taught reincarnation, personal purity, and vegetarianism, deeply unusual positions in a culture built around animal sacrifice.
- Monteverdi's L'Orfeo of 1607 is among the first operas still performed. The form's founding subject was a man whose singing could stop the dead.
- The constellation Lyra is his lyre, placed in the sky by the Muses after his death. Vega, its brightest star, is one of the brightest in the northern sky.