tience, however, prevailing, he broke the
condition, and lost Eurydice forever.

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 Maen{)a}des, 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 Ni{)o}be, was king of the Argives many years;
but, being instigated by the