ORPHEUS was the son of Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, and Oeagrus, king of Phrygia. Apollo gave him his lyre, and the Muses taught him to play it. He became such a marvelous musician that he charmed trees, birds, and beasts. He married the nymph Eurydice and disaster struck immediately. As she wandered through the grass with her friends on her wedding day a snake bit her and she died. Orpheus, inconsolable, went down to the Underworld to fetch her back. With the music of his lyre he charmed Cerberus, the three-headed dog of the Underworld, then Hades and his wife Persephone. Finally, in agreement with the Erinyes, Hades and Persephone allowed Eurydice to return to earth on condition that Orpheus not look back at her until they had left the valley of Avernus, the entrance to the Underworld. Just as they neared the light, Orpheus looked back, and Eurydice was lost forever (Met X.1-63; OM X.1-195). Virgil says that Eurydice stepped on a snake while she fled the advances of Aristaeus, but the end of the story is the same (Georgics IV.454-529).

Ovid's story is the main source for medieval writers, while Boethius's interpretation of the myth in De consolatione philosophiae III, Metr 12, prevailed for most medieval commentators. Chaucer translates the interpretation thus: "This fable apertenith to yow alle, whosoevere desireth or seketh to lede his thought into the sovereyn day (that is to seyn, into cleernesse of soveryn good)," Bo III, Metr 12. Other traditions interpret the figures of both Orpheus and Eurydice allegorically. Isidore (c. 560-636), in discussing rhythm, the third division of music, says that Mercury invented music and that Orpheus handed it down to posterity (Etym III.10). Fulgentius (fifth to sixth centuries) interprets the myth as an allegory of the art of music and derives Orpheus from Orea fone, or "matchless voice" (Mythologiae III.10). As a musician, Orpheus appears at the wedding feast of Mercury and Philology in Martianus Capella's De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae IX (The Wedding of Mercury and Philology IX), written between 410 and 439. A different approach to the story is found in the Middle English poem Sir Orfeo (beginning of the fourteenth century), where Orpheus and Dame Heurodis return to their kingdom and live happily ever after.

Neither Orpheus nor Amphioun ever made such melody as the instruments at Januarie's wedding feast, MerchT 1715-1716. Not even Orpheus, the god of melody, can cure the Man in Black of his sorrow, BD 567-569. The poet hears Orpheus play the harp skilfully at Fame's court, HF III.1201-1203. Criseyde comforts Troilus with the thought that while they may be separated during their lifetimes, they will be united in the Elysian Fields, like Orpheus and Erudice, Tr IV.785-791. The story is told in Bo III, Metr 12. [Caliope: Erudice]

The name occurs initially, HF III.1203; three times in medial positions, MerchT 1716; BD 569; Tr IV.791; and in Bo III, Metr 12.4, 17, 46, 55, 58.