Whilst Orpheus was among the shades, he sang the praises of all the gods but Bacchus, whom he accidentally omitted; to revenge this affront, Bacchus inspired the Mænădes, his priestesses, with such fury, that they tore Orpheus to pieces, and scattered his limbs about the fields. His head was cast into the river Hebrus, and (together with his harp) was carried by the tide to Lesbos, where it afterwards delivered oracles. The harp, with seven strings, representing the seven planets, which had been given him by Apollo, was taken up into heaven, and graced with nine stars by the nine Muses. Orpheus himself was changed into a swan. He left a son called Methon, who founded in Thrace a city of his own name.
It is certain that Orpheus may be placed as the earliest poet of Greece, where he first introduced astronomy, divinity, music and poetry; all which he had learned in Egypt. He introduced also the rites of Bacchus, which from him were called Orphica. He was a person of most consummate knowledge, and the wisest, as well as the most diligent scholar of Linus.
If we search for the origin of this fable, we must again have recourse to Egypt, the mother-country of fiction. In July, when the sun entered Leo, the Nile overflowed all the plains. To denote the public joy at seeing the inundation rise to its due height, the Egyptians exhibited a youth playing on the lyre, or the sistrum, and sitting by a tame lion. When the waters did not increase as they should, the Horus was represented stretched on the back of a lion, as dead. This symbol they called Oreph, or Orpheus, (from oreph, the back part of the head) to signify that agriculture was then quite unseasonable and dormant.
The songs with which the people amused themselves during this period of inactivity, for want of exercise, were called the hymns of Orpheus; and as husbandry revived immediately after, it gave rise to the fable of Orpheus's returning from hell. The Isis placed near this Horus, they called Eurydice, (from eri, a lion, and daca, tamed, is formed Eridica, Eurydice, or the lion tamed, i.e. the violence of the inundation overcome), and as the Greeks took all these figures in the literal, not in the emblematical sense, they made Eurydice the wife of Orpheus.
OSIRIS, son of Jupiter and Niŏbe, was king of the Argives many years; but, being instigated by the desire of glory, he left his kingdom to his brother Ægiălus, and went into Egypt, in search of a new name and kingdom there. The Egyptians were not so much overcome by the valor of Osīris, as obliged to him for his kindness towards them. Having conferred the greatest benefits on his subjects, by civilizing their manners, and instructing them in husbandry and other useful arts, he made the necessary disposition of his affairs, committed the regency to Isis, and set out with a body of forces in order to civilize the rest of mankind. This he performed more by the power of persuasion, and the soothing arts of music and poetry, than by the terror of his arms.
In his absence, Typhœus, the giant, whom historians call the brother of Osīris, formed a conspiracy to dethrone him; for which end, at the return of Osīris into Egypt, he invited him to a feast, at the conclusion of which a chest of exquisite workmanship was brought in, and offered to him who, when laid down in it, should be found to fit it the best. Osīris, not suspecting a trick to be played him, got into the chest, and the cover being immediately shut upon him, this good but unfortunate prince was thus thrown into the Nile.
When the news of this transaction reached Coptus, where Isis his wife then was, she cut her hair, and in deep mourning went every where in search of the dead body. This was at length discovered, and concealed by her at Butus; but Typhœus, while hunting by moonlight, having found it there, tore it into many pieces, which he scattered abroad. Isis then traversed the lakes and watery places in a boat made of the papyrus, seeking the mangled parts of Osīris, and where she found any, there she buried them; hence the many tombs ascribed to Osīris.
Plutarch seems evidently to prove that the Egyptians worshipped the Sun under the name of Osīris. His reasons are: 1. Because the images of Osīris were always clothed in a shining garment, to represent the rays and light of the sun. 2. In their hymns, composed in honor of Osīris, they prayed to him who reposes himself in the bosom of the sun. 3. After the autumnal equinox, they celebrated a feast called, The disappearing of Osīris, by which is plainly meant the absence and distance of the sun. 4. In the month of November they led a cow seven times round the temple of Osīris, intimating thereby, that in seven months the sun would return to the summer solstice.
He is represented sitting upon a throne, crowned with a mitre full of small orbs, to intimate his superiority over all the globe. The gourd upon the mitre implies his action and influence upon moisture, which, and the Nile particularly, was termed by the Egyptians, the efflux of Osīris. The lower part of his habit is made up of descending rays, and his body is surrounded with orbs. His right hand is extended in a commanding attitude, and his left holds a thyrsus or staff of the papyrus, pointing out the principle of humidity, and the fertility thence flowing, under his direction.
ÆSCULAPIUS. The name of Æsculapius, whom the Greeks called Ασκληπιος, appears to have been foreign, and derived from the oriental languages. Being honored as a god in Phœnicia and Egypt, his worship passed into Greece, and was established, first at Epidaurus, a city of Peloponnesus, bordering on the sea, where, probably, some colonies first settled; a circumstance sufficient for the Greeks to give out that this god was a native of Greece.