page_title: Orpheus
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Orpheus / Mythology / Death
caption_attribution_description: Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) &#160;&#160;Alternative namesAlbrecht DürerDescription German painter, printmaker, engraver and mathematician Date of birth/death21 May 14716 April 1528Location of birth/deathNurembergNurembergWork locationNuremberg (1484–1490), Basel (1490–1494), Strasbourg (1490–1494), Colmar (1490–1494), Frankfurt am Main (1490–1494), Mainz (1490–1494), Cologne (1490–1494), Nuremberg (21 May 1494–1528), Innsbruck (1494), Venice (1494–1495), 1505–1506), Bologna (1505–1506), Milan (1505–1506), Florence (1505–1506), Rome (1505–1506), Augsburg (1518)Authority control VIAF: 54146999 LCCN: n79118011 GND: 11852786X SELIBR: 184206 BnF: cb11900585f ULAN: 500115493 ISNI: 0000 0001 2096 1368 WorldCat WP-Person English: Albrecht Dürer, The Death of Orpheus, pen and ink drawing, 1494 (Kunsthalle, Hamburg). In this Albrecht Dürer’s 1494 drawing, the banner hung in the tree reads: Orfeus der erst puseran (“Orpheus, the first sodomite”). The word puseran(t) derives from the Italian buggerone, which in its turn derives from Latin bulgarus from which come also the terms bugger in English and bougre in French. Though the drawing could be taken as a Northern European reaction to sodomy, it is actually based on an original, now lost, by the Italian master Andrea Mantegna.
context_page_description: Orpheus is a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion.
  "It was believed by Aristotle that Orpheus never existed; but to all other ancient writers he was a real person, though living in remote antiquity. Most of them believed that he lived several generations before Homer"
  Some ancient Greek sources note Orpheus' Thracian origins. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music, his attempt to retrieve his wife Eurydice from the underworld, and his death at the hands of the maenads of Dionysus who tired of his mourning for his late wife Eurydice. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the reception of classical mythology in Western culture, portrayed or alluded to in countless forms of art and popular culture including poetry, film, opera, music, and painting.
  For the Greeks, Orpheus was a founder and prophet of the so-called "Orphic" mysteries. He was credited with the composition of the Orphic Hymns and the Orphic Argonautica. Shrines containing purported relics of Orpheus were regarded as oracles.
context_section_description: According to a Late Antique summary of Aeschylus' lost play Bassarids, Orpheus, towards the end of his life, disdained the worship of all gods except the sun, whom he called Apollo. One early morning he went to the oracle of Dionysus at Mount Pangaion 
  to salute his god at dawn, but was ripped to shreds by Thracian Maenads for not honoring his previous patron (Dionysus) and buried in Pieria. 
  Here his death is analogous with that of Pentheus, who was also torn to pieces by Maenads; and it has been speculated that the Orphic mystery cult regarded Orpheus as a parallel figure to or even an incarnation of Dionysus. 
  Both made similar journeys into Hades, and Dionysus Zagreus suffered an identical death. 
  Pausanias writes that Orpheus was buried in Dion and that he met his death there. 
  He writes that the river Helicon sank underground when the women that killed Orpheus tried to wash off their blood-stained hands in its waters.
  Ovid recounts that Orpheus ... 
  had abstained from the love of women, either because things ended badly for him, or because he had sworn to do so. Yet, many felt a desire to be joined with the poet, and many grieved at rejection. Indeed, he was the first of the Thracian people to transfer his affection to young boys and enjoy their brief springtime, and early flowering this side of manhood.
  — Ovid. trans. A. S. Kline, Ovid: The Metamorphoses, Book X
  Feeling spurned by Orpheus for taking only male lovers (eromenoi), the Ciconian women, followers of Dionysus, first threw sticks and stones at him as he played, but his music was so beautiful even the rocks and branches refused to hit him. Enraged, the women tore him to pieces during the frenzy of their Bacchic orgies. 
  In Albrecht Dürer's drawing of Orpheus' death, based on an original, now lost, by Andrea Mantegna, a ribbon high in the tree above him is lettered Orfeus der erst puseran ("Orpheus, the first pederast").
  His head and lyre, still singing mournful songs, floated down the River Hebrus into the sea, after which the winds and waves carried them to the island of Lesbos, at the city of Methymna; there, the inhabitants buried his head and a shrine was built in his honour near Antissa; 
  there his oracle prophesied, until it was silenced by Apollo. 
  In addition to the people of Lesbos, Greeks from Ionia and Aetolia consulted the oracle, and his reputation spread as far as Babylon.
  Orpheus' lyre was carried to heaven by the Muses, and was placed among the stars. The Muses also gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at Leibethra 
  below Mount Olympus, where the nightingales sang over his grave. After the river Sys flooded 
  Leibethra, the Macedonians took his bones to Dion. Orpheus' soul returned to the underworld, to the fields of the Blessed, where he was reunited at last with his beloved Eurydice.
  Another legend places his tomb at Dion, near Pydna in Macedon. In another version of the myth, Orpheus travels to Aornum in Thesprotia, Epirus to an old oracle for the dead. In the end Orpheus commits suicide from his grief unable to find Eurydice.
  "Others said that he was the victim of a thunderbolt."
caption: Death of Orpheus (1494) by Dürer
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