Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

After losing Eurydice, Orpheus withdrew from the love of women—or, in the Aeschylean *Bassarids* tradition, angered Dionysus by giving exclusive honor to Apollo (the sun) on Mount Pangaeum. Thracian (or Macedonian) women, or Maenads/Bassarids of Dionysus, attacked him. Apollodorus says the women of Thrace tore him to pieces. His music at first kept weapons and stones from striking; when the clamor of the assault drowned the lyre, they rent him limb from limb (sparagmos). They cast his head and lyre into the river Hebrus; the head floated, still singing, to Lesbos, where it was buried and became an oracular relic; the lyre was set among the stars (catasterism) or dedicated in a temple. Pausanias records local claims about Orpheus’s tomb and cult and notes variant killers and motives. The death closes the singer’s arc: the voice that moved Hades cannot finally save its owner from Dionysiac or Thracian violence, and the severed head becomes a new kind of sacred speech.