Orphic Fragments

Orpheus 30; Vürtheim, Mnemosyne XXIX 1901, 199; Kern [same work]; Robert, Heroic Legends I 411 note 1. Concerning the very famous relief no. 59; concerning the small vases which represent Orpheus in the underworld no. 69.

31. Strabo, Geography X 471 (from Apollodorus’s work Against Demetrius of Scepsis? see Ed. Schwartz, Realencyclopädie² I 2865):
The Thracians who were devoted to ancient music are said to be Orpheus, Musaeus, and Thamyris; the name of Eumolpus Meaning "the good singer," a legendary founder of the Eleusinian Mysteries is also derived from there. Furthermore, those who dedicated all of Asia as far as India to Dionysus The god of wine and religious ecstasy also trace the majority of their music from that region.

Ovid, Letters from the Black Sea II 9, 53:
"Lest there be only one poet in this region, Orpheus, the Bistonians' land is proud of your talent [too]." original: "neve sub hoc tractu vates foret unicus O., Bistonis ingenio terra superba tuo est." The Bistonians were a Thracian tribe.

32. Aelian, Various History VIII 6:
They say that none of the ancient Thracians knew how to read or write... hence they even dare to say that Orpheus was not truly wise, being a Thracian, but rather that his myths were falsely attributed to him. original: "μηδὲ τὸν Ὀρφέα σοφὸν γεγονέναι... ἀλλ' ἄλλως τοὺς μύθους αὐτοῦ κατεψεῦσθαι" Androtion (Fragments of Greek Historians I 375 frag. 36) says these things, if anyone finds him a reliable witness to testify to the illiteracy and lack of education of the Thracians. Diels II³ 170 no. 11; Robert, Heroic Legends I 398 note 2.

33. Pomponius Mela, Description of the World II 17:
"The interior [of Thrace] raises the mountains of Haemus, Rhodope, and Orbelos, celebrated for the rites of Father Liber A Latin name for Dionysus and the gathering of Maenads The female followers of Dionysus, with Orpheus first initiating them."

Orpheus appears on the coins of Thrace; see B. Pick, Archaeological Yearbook XIII 1898, 135. For the coins of Philippopolis modern Plovdiv, Bulgaria see Lucian, The Runaways 29 (Pick [same work] 136 note 6).

34. Pliny the Elder, Natural History IV 41 (cf. Solinus 10, 7; Martianus Capella VI 656):
"Around the shores of the Black Sea, the Moriseni and Sitoni Thracian tribal names, the ancestors of the poet Orpheus, hold the land." Lobeck, Aglaophamus I 294.

35. Themistius, Oration XVI 209 c. d p. 255, 5 Dindorf:
Long ago, the power of music was more native to Thrace than arms, and it was no longer fitting to disbelieve that boars followed the strikes of Orpheus’s lyre, and that trees and stones followed along wherever he might lead with his songs. But Orpheus, as it seems, was capable of charming wild beasts, but he did not have the power to soothe the harshness of men; rather, Thracian women refuted his music, not being captured by his songs, but becoming even more wild and doing to the singer himself exactly what they did. A reference to the myth where Orpheus is torn apart by Thracian women.

But the interpreter and servant of the "Orpheus from heaven" likely referring to the Emperor as a divine harmonizer, who uses god-given music with persuasive words flowing sweeter than honey—of such a kind as he was sent equipped with by the one who sent him—by chanting these, by charming with these, by exhorting with these, setting forth good hopes for the future, taking away from the... The text cuts off mid-sentence.