Facts about Orpheus

Despite his reputation as an effete musician, one of the earliest mythic sagas to include Orpheus was as a crew-member on Jason's expedition for the Golden Fleece.

The unpleasant death of Orpheus (he is rent asunder by the Maenads (ravening devotees of Dionysus) is another popular tale in the mythic accounts of the musician god.

The mythic accounts describing the provenance of Orpheus lack a consensus on the parents of the musical hero.

The Orpheus legend has remained a popular subject for writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers, inspiring poetry, novels, musical compositions, visual art, animation, and films.

Orpheus (Greek: ??????; pronunciation: ohr'-fee-uhs) is a figure from Greek mythology called by Pindar "the minstrel father of songs.

Without a doubt, the most famous tale of Orpheus concerns his doomed love for his wife Eurydice.

Conversely, according to a Late Antique summary of Aeschylus's lost play Bassarids, Orpheus at the end of his life disdained the worship of all gods save the sun, which he called Apollo.

Orpheus, like Dionysus and Demeter, was credited with a miraculous return from the world of the dead, a fact that seemed to capture the Hellenic religious imagination.

Plato in particular tells of a class of vagrant beggar-priests who would go about offering purifications to the rich, a clatter of books by Orpheus and Musaeus in tow.

More directly, the story of Orpheus is similar to the ancient Greek tales of Persephone capture at the hands of Hades and of similar stories depicting Adonis held captive in the underworld.