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 Mænădes, 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.