Here too they have erected statues of poets and others notable for music, as blind Thamyris handling a broken lyre, and Arion of Methymna on the dolphin’s back. But he who made the statue of Sacadas the Argive, not understanding Pindar’s prelude about him, has made the piper no bigger in his body than his pipes. There too is Hesiod sitting with a harp on his knees, not his usual appearance, for it is plain from his poems that he used to sing with a laurel wand. As to the period of Hesiod and Homer, though I made most diligent research, it is not agreeable to me to venture an opinion, as I know the disputatiousness of people, and not least of those who in my day have discussed poetical subjects. There is also a statue of Thracian Orpheus with Telete beside him, and there are round him representations in stone and brass of the animals listening to his singing. The Greeks believe many things which are not true, and among others that Orpheus was the son of the Muse Calliope and not of the daughter of Pierus, and that animals were led by his melody, and that he went down alive to Hades to get back his wife Eurydice from the gods of the lower world. But Orpheus, as it seems to me, really did excel all his predecessors in the arrangement of his poems, and attained to great influence as being thought to have invented the mysteries of the gods, and purifications from unholy deeds, and cures for diseases, and means of turning away the wrath of the gods. And they say the Thracian women laid plots against his life, because he persuaded their husbands to accompany him in his wanderings, but from fear of their husbands did not carry them out at first: but afterwards when they had primed themselves with wine carried out the atrocious deed, and since that time it has been customary for the men to go drunk into battle. But some say that Orpheus died from being struck with lightning by the god because he taught men in the mysteries things they had not before heard of. Others have recorded that, his wife Eurydice having died before him, he went to Aornus in Thesprotia, to consult an oracle of the dead about her, and he thought that her soul would follow him, but losing her because he turned back to look at her he slew himself from grief. And the Thracians say that the nightingales that build their nests on the tomb of Orpheus sing pleasanter and louder than other nightingales. But the Macedonians who inhabit the district of Pieria, under the mountain and the city Dium, say that Orpheus was slain there by the women. And as you go from Dium to the mountain and about 20 stades further is a pillar on the right hand and on the pillar a stone urn: this urn has the remains of Orpheus as the people of the district say. The river Helicon flows through this district, after a course of 75 stades it loses itself in the ground, and 22 stades further it reappears, when it is called Baphyra instead of Helicon,