Orpheus
3 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Orpheus. All 3 are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
or'fe-us, in Greek mythology, a harper of wondrous skill. He played so sweetly that the trees moved, the stones stirred themselves to hear, the wild beasts stood at the sound, and the very hounds gave over the chase for the sweetness of his music. Then men, for interruption of their hunting, sent his wife to the lower world; whereupon the harper filled the woods with his sorrowings till even the rivers stayed in their courses. Harp in hand, and playing his sweetest tunes, Orpheus prevailed upon the three-headed Cerberus, the dog that kept the entrance of hell, and Charon, the horrid old gatekeeper, and even those fierce goddesses, the Fates, to admit him to the presence of the king of the lower world before whom he played his divinest strains for the release of his beloved wife. The wheel of Ixion stood still, Tantalus ceased to strive for water, the insatiable vulture tore not the liver of the king, and all the punishments of hell were suspended for his harping. The king told Orpheus to lead on, his wife should follow; but not to look backward once, lest he lose her again. The harper set forth playing away bravely, but on passing the outermost portal into the light, he could not resist the temptation to throw a glance over his shoulder to see whether the dear wife were really following him. This was the forbidden act. This broke the spell. The gates of hell closed, and his wife was lost to him forever. At least this is the substance of the version translated by King Alfred from the Greek for the instruction of his Wessex people. The moral is all his own. It is that, once forsaken, we should keep our backs turned resolutely upon our vices, however alluring; and that we should trudge steadily forward toward the light. It seems hardly fair, however, to identify a wife whom Orpheus had not seen for so long a time with the false allurements of the world of darkness.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A son of Oeger and the Muse Calliope. Some suppose him to be the son of Apollo . He received a lyre from Apollo, or, according to some, from Mercury, on which he played in such a masterly manner that the melodious sounds caused rivers to cease to flow, and savage beasts to forget their wildness. He married Eurydice, who died from the bite of a serpent. Orpheus felt her death acutely, and to recover her he visited the infernal regions. Pluto , the king of the infernal regions, was enraptured with the strains of music from the lyre of Orpheus; and, according to the poets, the wheel of Ixion stopped, the stone of Sisyphus stood still, Tantalus forgot his burning thirst, and even the Furies relented, so fascinating were the sounds extracted from the lyre. Pluto was moved by the sorrow of Orpheus, and consented to restore Eurydice to him, provided he forbore to look behind him till he had reached the extremity of his domain. Orpheus agreed to this, but forgot his promise, and turned round to look at Eurydice, who instantly vanished from his sight. After this he separated himself from the society of mankind, and the Thracian women, whom he had offended by his coldness, attacked him while they celebrated the orgies of Bacchus , and after they had torn his body to pieces they threw his head into the Hebrus. Mr. Wiffen, in a translation from the Spanish of Garcilaso de la Vega, thus beautifully alludes to the strains of Orpheus : "Had I the sweet resounding lyre, Whose voice could in a moment chain The howling wind's ungovern'd ire And movement of the raging main, On savage hill the leopard rein, The lion's fiery soul entrance, And lead along, with golden tones, The fascinated trees and stones, In voluntary dance."
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in Greek mythology, a cel- , ebrated mythic bard, said to have been a son of Apollo or Eagrus, King of Thrace, and the Muse Calliope. Together with his brother Linus he was regarded as having introduced the arts ; of civilized life among wild and untutored hordes.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The myth itself stands as the three accounts tell it, and the small variations they preserve — Apollo or Mercury as the giver of the lyre, Oeagrus or Apollo as father — are still the variants in the ancient sources. Two things have moved. Aiton's 1910 note that King Alfred translated the tale "from the Greek" is off: the Orpheus passage comes from Alfred's Old English version of Boethius's Latin Consolation of Philosophy, and modern scholars are divided over how much of that translation Alfred did himself. More substantially, the religious movement attached to Orpheus is no longer known only from later quotations: inscribed gold leaves buried with initiates have been recovered from tombs in southern Italy, Crete and Thessaly, and the charred Derveni papyrus, found near Thessaloniki in 1962, preserves a philosophical commentary on an Orphic poem and is the oldest surviving European manuscript. Orpheus has also stayed unusually busy on stage and screen, from Cocteau's 1950 film to the musical Hadestown.
Written for this edition, 2026.