One of the greatest mythological musicians and poets of Antiquity, Orpheus was the son of Oeager, King of Thrace, and Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry. He could charm even wild beasts with his music, while trees and inanimate objects drew near to listen to him. He sailed with Jason and the Argonauts and helped them with the power of his music. Afterwards, he returned to Thrace, where he married Eurydice. One day, as she was out walking, she was pursued by Aristaeus and in her attempts to escape him was bitten by a snake and died. Orpheus resolved to descend into the Underworld and bring her back. With the power of his lyre he charmed the gods into permitting her to follow him on condition that he not set eyes on her until they had ascended to the earth. Tormented by love and anxiety, however, Orpheus turned to look at her and thus condemned her to return to the Underworld. Virgil says that Orpheus lamented her inconsolably throughout the land of Thrace, from the Strymon and Pangaeon to Rhodope and the Hebrus. Tradition records several versions of his death. According to Aeschylus, he was killed by Thracian Maenads because he had ceased to worship Dionysus and honored Apollo-Helios instead. Ovid ascribes his gruesome end at the hands of the Maenads in Thrace to the fact that his devotion to Eurydice caused him to reject all other women and turn to boys; in this account, they tore him to pieces and threw his body into the Hebrus, but his head and lyre floated across the sea and eventually washed ashore on the island of Lesbos (later the home of the great lyric poets Sappho and Alcaeus), where in token of their respect the people gave the head a proper burial. In yet another version, Orpheus was slain by Zeus with a lightning bolt because he had revealed to mankind the secrets of the gods. After his death his shade descended to the Underworld and was reunited with the shade of Eurydice.
