ORPHEUS was the son of Apollo and Calliope (Calliopeia), the "Fair Voiced" and the eldest Muse; the muse of epic poetry . He was presented by his father with a lyre and taught to play upon it, which he did to such perfection that nothing could withstand the charm of his music. Not only his fellow-mortals, but wild beasts were softened by his strains, and gathering round him laid by their fierceness, and stood entranced with his lay. Nay, the very trees and rocks were sensible to the charm. The former crowded round him and the latter relaxed somewhat of their hardness, softened by his notes. He was one of the Argonauts, and when the Argo had to pass the island of the Sirens, it was Orpheus' music which prevented the crew from being lured to destruction.

Eurydice and Orpheus were young and in love. So deep was their love that they were practically inseparable. So dependent was their love that each felt they could not live without the other. These young lovers were very happy and spent their time frolicking through the meadows. Hymen (the god of marriage and the marriage feast or song) had been called to bless with his presence the nuptials of Orpheus with Eurydice; but though he attended, he brought no happy omens with him. His very torch smoked and brought tears into their eyes. In coincidence with such prognostics, Eurydice, shortly after her marriage, while wandering with the nymphs, her companions, was seen by the shepherd Aristaeus, who was struck by her beauty and made advances to her. She fled, and in flying trod upon a snake in the grass, was bitten in the foot, and died. Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both gods and men, and finding it all unavailing resolved to seek his wife in the regions of the dead (Hades). He descended by a cave situated on the side of the promontory of Taenarus and arrived at the Stygian realm. He passed through crowds of ghosts and presented himself before the throne of Pluto (Hades) and Proserpine (Persephone). Accompanying the words with the lyre, he sung:

"O deities of the under-world, to whom all we who live must come, hear my words, for they are true. I come not to spy out the secrets of Tartarus, nor to try my strength against the three-headed dog with snaky hair who guards the entrance. I come to seek my wife, whose opening years the poisonous viper's fang has brought to an untimely end. Love has led me here, Love, a god all powerful with us who dwell on the earth, and, if old traditions say true, not less so here. I implore you by these abodes full of terror, these realms of silence and uncreated things, unite again the thread of Eurydice's life. We all are destined to you, and sooner or later must pass to your domain. She too, when she shall have filled her term of life, will rightly be yours. But till then grant her to me, I beseech you. If you deny me, I cannot return alone; you shall triumph in the death of us both."  

When you hear music which mourns lost love, it is Orpheus' spirit who guides the hand of the musicians who play it.

As he sang these tender strains, the very ghosts shed tears. Tantalus, in spite of his thirst, stopped for a moment his efforts for water, Ixion's wheel stood still, the vulture ceased to tear the giant's liver, the daughters of Danaus rested from their task of drawing water in a sieve, and Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen. Then for the first time, it is said, the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears. As the overseer of the underworld, Hades heart had to be hard as steel, and so it was. Many approached Hades to beg for loved ones back and as many times were refused. But Orpheus' music was so sweet and so moving that it softened the heart of Hades himself. Eurydice was called. She came from among the new-arrived ghosts, limping with her wounded foot. Orpheus was permitted to take her away with him on one condition, that he should not turn around to look at her till they should have reached the upper air. Under this condition they proceeded on their way, he leading, she following, through passages dark and steep, in total silence, till they had nearly reached the outlet into the cheerful upper world, when Orpheus, in a moment of forgetfulness, to assure himself that she was still following, cast a glance behind him, when instantly she was borne away. Stretching out their arms to embrace each other, they grasped only the air! Dying now a second time, she yet cannot reproach her husband, for how can she blame his impatience to behold her? "Farewell," she said, "a last farewell,"- and was hurried away, so fast that the sound hardly reached his ears. Hermes, the messenger of the gods, guided Eurydice back down to the underworld.

See also Orpheus in Hades: OVID, Metamorphoses, Book X, 1-106

At his wife's second death, Orpheus was completely stunned. He was like the timid fellow who, when he saw three-headed Cerberus led along, chained by the middle one of his three necks, was turned to stone in every limb ... in vain did the poet long to cross the Styx a second time, and prayed that he might do so. But Hades' stern ferryman (Charon) repulsed him and thrust him aside. Seven days he lingered about the brink, without food or sleep; then bitterly accusing of cruelty the powers of Erebus, he sang his complaints to the rocks and mountains, melting the hearts of tigers and moving the oaks from their stations. He held himself aloof from womankind, dwelling constantly on the recollection of his sad mischance.

Three times the sun had reached the watery sign of Pisces, that brings the year to a close. Throughout this time Orpheus had shrunk from loving any woman, either because of his unhappy experience, or because he had pledged himself not to do so. Orpheus preferred to centre his affections on boys of tender years, and to enjoy the brief spring and flowering of their youth: he was the first to introduce this custom among the people of Thrace.

On the top of a certain hill was a level stretch of open ground, covered with green turf. There was no shelter from the sun, but when the divinely-born poet seated himself there and struck his melodious strings, shady trees moved to the spot. The oak tree of Chaonia and poplars, Phaethon's sisters, crowded round, along with Jupiter's great oak, with its lofty branches, and soft lime trees and beeches, and the virgin laurel, brittle hazels, and ash trees, that are used for spear shafts, smooth firs and the holm oak, bowed down with acorns, the genial sycamore, and the variegated maple, willows that grow by the rivers and the water loving lotus, evergreen box, slender tamarisks, myrtles double-hued, and viburnum with its dark blue berries. There was ivy too, trailing its tendrils, and leafy vines, vine clad elms and mountain ash, pitchpine and wild strawberry, laden with rosy fruit, waving palms, the victor's prize, and the pine, its leaves gathered up into a shaggy crest, the favourite tree of Cybele, the mother of the gods: for her priest Attis exchanged his human shape for this, and hardened into its trunk.

The Thracian maidens tried their best to captivate him, but he repulsed their advances. They bore with him as long as they could; but finding him insensible one day, excited by the rites of Bacchus (Dionysos), one of them exclaimed, "See yonder our despiser!" and threw at him her javelin. The weapon, as soon as it came within the sound of his lyre, fell harmless at his feet. So did also the stones that they threw at him.

But the women raised a scream and drowned the voice of the music, and then the missiles reached him and soon were stained with his blood. The maniacs tore him limb from limb, and threw his head and his lyre into the river Hebrus, down which they floated, murmuring sad music, to which the shores responded a plaintive symphony. The Muses gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at Libethra, where the nightingale is said to sing over his grave more sweetly than in any other part of Thrace (now in the territory of Greece). His lyre was placed by Jupiter among the stars (constellation of Lyra). His shade passed a second time to Tartarus where he sought out his Eurydice and embraced her with eager arms. They roam the happy fields together now, sometimes he leading, sometimes she; and Orpheus gazes as much as he will upon her, no longer incurring a penalty for a thoughtless glance.

The story of Orpheus has furnished Alexander Pope with an illustration of the power of music, for his "Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day." The following stanza relates the conclusion of the story:

"But soon, too soon the lover turns his eyes;
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!
How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?
No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.
Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the falls of fountains,
Or where Hebrus wanders,
Rolling in meanders,
All alone,
He makes his moan,
And calls her ghost,
For ever, ever, ever lost!
Now with furies surrounded,
Despairing, confounded,
He trembles, he glows,
Amidst Rhodope's snows.
See, wild as the winds o'er the desert he flies;
Hark! Haemus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries.
Ah, see, he dies!
Yet even in death Eurydice he sung,
Eurydice still trembled on his tongue:
Eurydice the woods
Eurydice the floods
Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung."

The superior melody of the nightingale's song over the grave of Orpheus is alluded to by Southey in his "Thalaba":

"Then on his ear what sounds
Of harmony arose!
Far music and the distance-mellowed song
From bowers of merriment;
The waterfall remote;
The murmuring of the leafy groves;
The single nightingale
Perched in the rosier by, so richly toned,
That never from that most melodious bird
Singing a love song to his brooding mate,
Did Thracian shepherd by the grave
Of Orpheus hear a sweeter melody,
Though there the spirit of the sepulchre
All his own power infuse, to swell
The incense that he loves."

Mist hid the village below but
The rocks looked clear across
High peaks receding to the Aegean.

Sitting there imagining distant music
We heard the thunder booming and saw
Lightning as a storm boiled between summits
Three valleys away.

But on the rocks
Thin cloud drifted silently as we strained to hear
A lost music as if the stone had coiled
The notes and petrified them.

Also found in the Rhodope mountains is this place, called "Devil's Throat".

The legends say that this is the cave entrance "situated on the side of the promontory of Taenarus" where Orpheus descended and presented himself before the throne of Pluto (Hades) and Proserpine (Persephone) to seek Eurydice and beg to be reunited again the thread of her life.

Who taught the Rhodopean Orpheus to his musical art?
Some people say Apollo. Others - his mother - the beautiful muse Calliope. But we, who since ages are listening to the legends of the mountain, know something different.
Since his childhood, without realizing it, he knew everything. He left secretly his birthplace in the valley, as he was feeling attraction to climb up alone distant peaks. (Who put him up to it? Ask the cock fraternized with the Sun.)
On his difficult road he was listening closely to the sounds emitted by the pine branches under the fingertips of the Rhodopean whiffs and white winds,
     To the song of the jolly streams, to the silver thunder of the waterfalls,
     To the mysterious peal of the sage rocks, to the deep resound of the caverns.
     To the sound of the thin arrow crossing the green air of the forests.
When on one bright night he climbed finally the peak, he raised his head and heard the singing of the stars. He bent on his knees. And the star-beams ran through his eyes, his open palms and heart.
In the morning, when the sun poured out generously its yellow gold, he reached in the cove in the rock and carved himself a lyre.
But he did not put only strings made from star-beams, as would have done some mute sage, but following the example of the very life:
     For a first chord he put a star-beam;
     And, when he was descending slowly on the way back -
     A silver thread from fine waterfall, hidden behind the rocks,
     A pine branch with smell of solar resin,
     A vibrating flying arrow aiming the heart of one eagle,
     And a gold hair from the head of a girl who he met in the vale and who he brought back into the mountains.
     Five chords - to be understood by beasts, birds and even by people.
He was playing on this lyre with his soft fingers as a night breeze in the mountain.
And he never stood alone. He was loved with hope by all the creatures.
And he loved Eurydice. And she loved him.

No, the ancients are wrong, they did not understand.
On his long way back from the bosom of Hades until the portals lit by a warm light, Orpheus, filled with the sage cold of the hereafter of the dead, with the images and dreams he saw down there, fell in geometrical thoughts.
He was telling himself that if Euridyce turned back in the world of the mountains, of the beasts and the birds, he would never be alone and whole (as the musician should always be).
But one even more terrible thought came into his mind:
How he could not resist the charm of the Bacchantes if he is with his beloved Eurydice? So then her presence would save him from the arms of the priestesses of Dionysus - yearned death for everyone forward looking not to the kingdom of Hades, but to the world of the dead in the Skies.
When they reached the portals lit by sun Orpheus decided:
He turned round, looked at Euridyce with infinite death in his eyes and she disappeared in a violet silence.
And he - alone and whole, returned
in the dreadful light of the world.