Orpheus is frequently present in my spirit

Aristophanes, The Frogs 1030-33
For consider how useful our noble-minded poets have been from the beginning. Orpheus revealed to us the mysteries and abstinence from murder, Mousaios taught us cures from illnesses and oracles.

[Aristotle], de Mirabilibus Auscultationibus 122
They say that in Crastonia near the country of the Bisaltae hares which are caught have two livers, and that there is a place there about an acre in extent, into which if any animal enters it dies. There is also there a fine large temple of Dionysos, in which when a sacrifice and feast takes place, should the god intend to give a good season, it is said that a huge flame of fire appears and that all who go to the sacred enclosure see this, but when the season is going to be very bad, this light does not appear, but darkness covers the place, just as on other nights.

Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander 1.11.2
Meanwhile, it was reported that the statue of Orpheus, son of Oiagros the Thracian, in Pieria, had sweated continuously; the seers interpreted this variously, but Aristander of Telmissos encouraged Alexander by saying that it meant that makers of epics and choric songs and writers of odes would be hard at work on poetry and hymns honoring Alexander and his exploits.

Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.107
Aristotle says that Orpheus never existed, and it is common opinion that this Orphic poem is by one Cercops, a Pythagorean; but Orpheus, that is, his image as you prefer to say, is frequently present in my spirit.

Conon, fragment 1.45
So, on fixed days, a crowd of armed Thracians and Macedonians would come to Libethra, gathering in a large dwelling that was well suited for initiations. Whenever they went in to perform the orgiastic rites, they left their weapons in front of the gates. The women watched for this and after seizing the weapons because of their anger at the dishonour done to them, killed the men who attacked them and tore Orpheus apart, scattering his limbs into the sea. But the land was being ravaged by a plague because the women had not paid the penalty and, when they begged for relief from the disaster, the citizens received an oracle that if they found and buried the head of Orpheus, they would meet with deliverance. With difficulty they found it, through the help of a fisherman, around the mouth of the river Meles, even then still singing and having suffered no harm from the sea, nor any other of the disfigurements of corpses which mortal deaths bring, but in perfect condition and blooming with living blood despite the considerable passage of time. So they took it and buried it beneath a great monument, enclosing it within a sacred precinct, which for a while was a hero-shrine but later won out as a temple. It is honoured with sacrifices and all the other things with which the gods are honoured. And it is absolutely forbidden for women to enter.

Euripides, Rhesos 962-73
The black earth will not take my son. I will ask the virgin Persephone, daughter of Demeter, giver of fruit, to let my son’s soul remain here on earth. She is obliged to show me that she truly honours all the friends of Orpheus. Of course, to me he will be just like any other man who has died and cannot see the light of day. He will never see me. He will never set eyes upon his mother and he will never approach her. He will be a man-god. He will live hidden in the caves of the silver-rich land, able to see sun light and acting as the prophet of Bacchus who has come to live among the crags of Pangaeon and be revered as a god by those who have the knowledge.

Scholiast on Euripides’ Alcestis 968
That oracle of Dionysos was built in Thrace on the so called Haemus, where it is said there were some writings of Orpheus upon tablets.

Scholiast on Euripides’ Hecuba 1267
Some say that the oracle of Dionysos was in Pangaion, others in Haemus where there were some writings of Orpheus upon tablets, about which he speaks in Alcestis ‘Not any drug in the Thracian tablets, where are written the sayings of Orpheus.’ And because Dionysos was a prophet in Bakchai he says ‘This god is a prophet, too, for in his Bacchic rites and madness a huge prophetic power is unleashed.’

Herodotos, The Histories 7.6
They had come up to Sardis with Onomakritos, an Athenian diviner who had set in order the oracles of Mousaios. They had reconciled their previous hostility with him; Onomakritos had been banished from Athens by Pisistratos’ son Hipparchos, when he was caught by Lasos of Hermione in the act of interpolating into the writings of Mousaios an oracle showing that the islands off Lemnos would disappear into the sea. Because of this Hipparchos banished him, though they had previously been close friends. Now he had arrived at Susa with the Pisistratidae, and whenever he came into the king’s presence they used lofty words concerning him and he recited from his oracles; all that portended disaster to the Persian he left unspoken, choosing and reciting such prophecies as were most favorable, telling how the Hellespont must be bridged by a man of Persia and describing the expedition. So he brought his oracles to bear, while the Pisistratidae and Aleuadae gave their opinions.

Herodotos, Histories 7.111.1-2
The Satrai, however, never yet became obedient to any man, so far as we know, but they remain up to my time still free, alone of all the Thracians; for they dwell in lofty mountains, which are covered with forest of all kinds and with snow, and also they are very skilful in war. It is they who possess the place of divination sacred to Dionysos. This place is in their highest mountains; the Bessoi, a clan of the Satrai, are the prophets of the shrine; there is a priestess who utters the oracle, as at Delphoi; it is no more complicated here than there.

Herodotos, The Histories 8.96
When the battle was broken off, the Hellenes towed to Salamis as many of the wrecks as were still there and kept ready for another battle, supposing that the king could still make use of his surviving ships. A west wind had caught many of the wrecks and carried them to the shore in Attica called Colias. Thus not only was all the rest of the oracle fulfilled which Bacis and Musaeus had spoken about this battle, but also what had been said many years before this in an oracle by Lysistratus, an Athenian soothsayer, concerning the wrecks carried to shore there. Its meaning had eluded all the Hellenes: “The Colian women will cook with oars. But this was to happen after the king had marched away.”

Hyginus, Astronomica 2.7
Some also have said that Venus and Proserpina came to Jove for his decision, asking him to which of them he would grant Adonis. Calliope, the judge appointed by Jove, decided that each should posses him half of the year. But Venus, angry because she had not been granted what she thought was her right, stirred the women in Thrace by love, each to seek Orpheus for herself, so that they tore him limb from limb. His head, carried down from the mountain into the sea, was cast by the waves upon the island of Lesbos. It was taken up and buried by the people of Lesbos, and in return for this kindness, they have the reputation of being exceedingly skilled in the art of music. The lyre, as we have said, was put by the Muses among the stars.

Lucian, Against the Unlettered Bibliomaniac 11-12
When the Thracian women dismembered Orpheus, they say that his head, together with his lyre, having fallen into the Hebrus, was cast into the Black Gulf and that the head sailed on the lyre, singing a lament for Orpheus, as the story goes, whilst the lyre echoed in answer as the winds fell on the chords. Thus they approached Lesbos to the sound of music, and the Lesbians, taking them up, buried the head where their Baccheion now is and dedicated the lyre in the shrine of Apollo, where, for a long time, it was preserved.

After some time had passed, they say that Neanthus, the son of Pittacus the tyrant, learned these things about the lyre, that it enchanted beasts and plants and stones, and that it made music after Orpheus’ death even when no one laid a finger on it. He was overcome by the desire to possess it and after corrupting the priest with a lot of money, he persuaded him to give him the lyre of Orpheus and to put another similar lyre in its place. After he had taken it, he did not think it was safe to make use of it in broad daylight in the city, but during the night, having concealed it in the folds of his clothes, he went alone to the outskirts of the city and taking up the lyre struck the notes and threw the chords into confusion, since he was an unskilled and unmusical youth, but he expected that the lyre would produce divine songs, by which he would enchant and bewitch everyone and that, once he had inherited Orpheus’ music, he would be wholly blessed. Eventually, some dogs—of which there were plenty in the area—were drawn by the noise and tore him to pieces, so that in this respect at any rate he resembled Orpheus, and he summoned only dogs to him. Then it was seen clearly that it was not the lyre that had done the enchanting, but musical skill and song, which belonged to Orpheus alone as his outstanding gifts from his mother. But in other respects the lyre was just an object, no better than other stringed instruments.

Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.18.1
Aristotle in his Studies of the Gods says that the Ligyrians in Thrace had a temple dedicated to Liber Pater where predictions were issued. They pronounced their prophecies after drinking pure wine just as those at Claros drink water to gain inspiration.

Orphic Argonautika
O powerful lord of Pytho, far-thrower, also a seer, whose place is high atop the Parnassus rock, of your power I sing: In turn, may your gift furnish me with glory and send your true voice into my mind so that, by the imposition of the Muse, I may disperse a fine song to the numberless races of men with the help of my well-made cithara. For now to you, O worker of the lyre, singer of pleasing songs, my spirit rouses me to tell of things of which I have never before spoken, when driven by the goad of Kings Bacchus and Apollo, I described their terrible shafts, and likewise I disclosed the cure for feeble mortal bodies and the Great Rites to initiates. Truly, above all I disclosed the stern inevitability of ancient Chaos, and Time, who in his boundless coils, produced Aether, and the twofold, beautiful, and noble Eros, whom the younger men call Phanes, celebrated parent of eternal Night, because he himself first manifested.

Then, I sang, of the race of powerful Brimo, and the destructive acts of the Giants, who spilled their gloomy seed from the sky begetting the men of old, whence came forth mortal stock, which resides throughout the boundless world. And I sang of the service of Zeus, and of the cult of the Mother and how wandering in the mountains of Cybele she conceived the girl Persephone by the unconquerable son of Cronus, and of the renowned tearing of Casmilus [or perhaps Meleus; the text is corrupt] by Heracles, and of the sacred oath of Idaeus, and of the immense oak of the Corybantes, and of the wanderings of Demeter, her great sorrow for Persephone, and her lawgiving. And also I sang of the splendid gift of the Kabeiroi, and the silent oracles of Night about Lord Bacchus, and of the sea of Samothrace and of Cyprus, and of the love of Aphrodite for Adonis. And I sang of the rites of Praxidike and the mountain nights of Athela, and of the lamentations of Egypt, and of the holy offerings to Osiris.

And also you learned the multitudinous ways prophesying: from the motion of wild birds and from the positions of entrails; and whatsoever the souls of men prophesy through the ways of interpreting the dreams that pierce the mind in sleep, and the interpretation of these signs and prophecies; and from the motions of the stars. You learned of atonement, the great happiness for mortals; and of obtaining an accounting of the supplication of the gods, and of offerings to the dead.

And other things were described to you, that which I gained by sight and thought when on the dark way of entering Hades via Taenaron, relying on my cithara, through the love of my wife. Then I described the sacred test of the Egyptians in Memphis that is used to convey prophesy, and I described the sacred city of Apis, which is surrounded by the river Nile.

All this have you learned truthfully from my soul. Now in truth, when instigated by the burning air I abandon this body and fly away into the ample heavens, you will hear from my voice what at first was hidden.

Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.40.6
When you have ascended the citadel of Megara, which even at the present day is called Karia from Kar, son of Phoroneus, you see a temple of Dionysos Nyktelios (Nocturnal), a sanctuary built to Aphrodite Epistrophia (She who turns men to love), an oracle called that of Nyx and a temple of Zeus Konios (Dusty) without a roof. The image of Asklepios and also that of Hygeia were made by Bryaxis. Here too is what is called the Chamber of Demeter, built, they say, by Kar when he was king.

Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.30.4-12
By the side of Orpheus the Thracian stands a statue of Telete, and around him are beasts of stone and bronze listening to his singing. There are many untruths believed by the Greeks, one of which is that Orpheus was a son of the Muse Calliope, and not of the daughter of Pierus, that the beasts followed him fascinated by his songs, and that he went down alive to Hades to ask for his wife from the gods below. In my opinion Orpheus excelled his predecessors in the beauty of his verse, and reached a high degree of power because he was believed to have discovered mysteries, purification from sins, cures of diseases and means of averting divine wrath.

But they say that the women of the Thracians plotted his death, because he had persuaded their husbands to accompany him in his wanderings, but dared not carry out their intention through fear of their husbands. Flushed with wine, however, they dared the deed, and hereafter the custom of their men has been to march to battle drunk. Some say that Orpheus came to his end by being struck by a thunderbolt, hurled at him by the god because he revealed sayings in the mysteries to men who had not heard them before.

Others have said that his wife died before him, and that for her sake he came to Aornum in Thesprotis, where of old was an oracle of the dead. He thought, they say, that the soul of Eurydice followed him, but turning round he lost her, and committed suicide for grief. The Thracians say that such nightingales as nest on the grave of Orpheus sing more sweetly and louder than others.

The Macedonians who dwell in the district below Mount Pieria and the city of Dium say that it was here that Orpheus met his end at the hands of the women. Going from Dium along the road to the mountain, and advancing twenty stades, you come to a pillar on the right surmounted by a stone urn, which according to the natives contains the bones of Orpheus.

There is also a river called Helicon. After a course of seventy-five stades the stream hereupon disappears under the earth. After a gap of about twenty-two stades the water rises again, and under the name of Baphyra instead of Helicon flows into the sea as a navigable river. The people of Dium say that at first this river flowed on land throughout its course. But, they go on to say, the women who killed Orpheus wished to wash off in it the blood-stains, and thereat the river sank underground, so as not to lend its waters to cleanse manslaughter.

In Larisa I heard another story, how that on Olympus is a city Libethra, where the mountain faces, Macedonia, not far from which city is the tomb of Orpheus. The Libethrians, it is said, received out of Thrace an oracle from Dionysus, stating that when the sun should see the bones of Orpheus, then the city of Libethra would be destroyed by a boar. The citizens paid little regard to the oracle, thinking that no other beast was big or mighty enough to take their city, while a boar was bold rather than powerful.

But when it seemed good to the god the following events befell the citizens. About midday a shepherd was asleep leaning against the grave of Orpheus, and even as he slept he began to sing poetry of Orpheus in a loud and sweet voice. Those who were pasturing or tilling nearest to him left their several tasks and gathered together to hear the shepherd sing in his sleep. And jostling one another and striving who could get nearest the shepherd they overturned the pillar, the urn fell from it and broke, and the sun saw whatever was left of the bones of Orpheus.

Immediately when night came the god sent heavy rain, and the river Sys (Boar), one of the torrents about Olympus, on this occasion threw down the walls of Libethra, overturning sanctuaries of gods and houses of men, and drowning the inhabitants and all the animals in the city. When Libethra was now a city of ruin, the Macedonians in Dium, according to my friend of Larisa, carried the bones of Orpheus to their own country.

Whoever has devoted himself to the study of poetry knows that the hymns of Orpheus are all very short, and that the total number of them is not great. The Lycomidae know them and chant them over the ritual of the mysteries. For poetic beauty they may be said to come next to the hymns of Homer, while they have been even more honored by the gods.

Pauasnias, Description of Greece 10.9.11
The Athenians refuse to confess that their defeat at Aegospotami was fairly inflicted, maintaining that they were betrayed by Tydeus and Adeimantus, their generals, who had been bribed, they say, with money by Lysander. As a proof of this assertion they quote the following oracle of the Sibyl:—

“And then on the Athenians will be laid grievous troubles
By Zeus the high-thunderer, whose might is the greatest,
On the war-ships battle and fighting,
As they are destroyed by treacherous tricks, through the baseness of the captains.”

The other evidence that they quote is taken from the oracles of Musaeus:—

“For on the Athenians comes a wild rain
Through the baseness of their leaders, but some consolation will there be
For the defeat; they shall not escape the notice of the city, but shall pay the penalty.”

Phanocles as preserved in Stobaeus, Eclogae 20.2.47, IV 461-2
Or how Thracian Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, loved Calaïs, the son of Boreas, with all his heart and often he would sit in the shady groves singing his heart’s desire; nor was his spirit at peace, but always his soul was consumed with sleepless cares as he gazed on fresh Calaïs. But the Bistonian women of evil devices killed Orpheus, having poured about him, their keen-edged swords sharpened, because he was the first to reveal male loves among the Thracians and did not recommend love of women. The women cut off his head with their bronze and straightaway they threw it in the sea with his Thracian lyre of tortoiseshell, fastening them together with a nail, so that both would be borne on the sea, drenched by the grey waves. The hoary sea brought them to land on holy Lesbos [...] and thus the lyre’s clear ring held sway over the sea and the islands and the sea-soaked shores, where the men gave the clear-sounding head of Orpheus its funeral rites, and in the tomb they put the clear lyre, which used to persuade even dumb rocks and the hateful water of Phorcys. From that day on, songs and lovely lyre-playing have held sway over the island and it is the most songful of all islands. As for the warlike Thracian men, when they had learned the women’s savage deeds and dire grief had sunk into them all, they began the custom of tattooing their wives, so that having on their flesh signs of dark blue, they would not forget their hateful murder. And even now, the women pay reparations to the dead Orpheus because of that sin.

Philostratos, Heroikos 28.8-13
The Achaeans customarily consulted their own oracles, both the Dodonian and the Pythian, as well as all the renowned Boeotian and Phocian oracles, but since Lesbos is not far from Ilion, the Hellenes sent to the oracle there. I believe that the oracle gave its answer through Orpheus, for his head, residing in Lesbos after the deed of the women, occupied a chasm on Lesbos and prophesied in the hollow earth. Hence, both the Lesbians and all the rest of Aeolia, as well as their Ionian neighbors, request oracles there, and the pronouncements of this oracle are even sent to Babylon. His head sang many prophecies to the Persian king, and it is said that from there an oracle was given to Cyrus the elder: “What is mine, Cyrus, is yours.” Cyrus understood it in this way, namely, that he would occupy both Odrysai and Europe, because Orpheus, once he had become wise and powerful, had ruled over Odrysai and over as many Hellenes as were inspired in his rites of initiation. But I think that he instructed Cyrus to be persuaded by his own fate, for when Cyrus had advanced beyond the river Istros against the Massagetai and the Issêdonians who ruled those barbarians, and this woman cut off the head of Cyrus just as the Thracian women had done with that of Orpheus. This much, my guest, I have heard about this oracle from both Protesilaos and the Lesbians.

Philostratos, Life of Apollonios of Tyana 4.14
He also visited in passing the shrine of Orpheus when he had put in at Lesbos. And they tell that it was here that Orpheus once on a time loved to prophesy, before Apollon had turned his attention to him. For when the latter found that men no longer flocked to Gryneium for the sake of oracles nor to Klaros nor to Delphi where is the tripod of Apollon, and that Orpheus was the only oracle, his head having come from Thrace, he presented himself before the giver of oracles and said: “Cease to meddle with my affairs, for I have already put up long enough with your vaticinations.”

Plato, Ion 533e-534b
For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. And as the Corybantic revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysos but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves say; for they tell us that they bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; they, like the bees, winging their way from flower to flower. And this is true. For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles.

Plato, Republic 2.364a–365b
But the most astounding of all these arguments concerns what they have to say about the gods and virtue. They say that the gods, too, assign misfortune and a bad life to many good people, and the opposite fate to their opposites. Begging priests and prophets frequent the doors of the rich and persuade them that they possess a god-given power founded on sacrifices and incantations. If the rich person or any of his ancestors has committed an injustice, they can fix it with pleasant things and feasts. Moreover, if he wishes to injure some enemy, then, at little expense, he’ll be able to harm just and unjust alike, for by means of spells and enchantments they can persuade the gods to serve them. And they present a hubbub of books by Musaeus and Orpheus, offspring as they say of Selene and the Muses, according to which they arrange their rites, convincing not only individuals but also cities that liberation and purification from injustice is possible, both during life and after death, by means of sacrifices and enjoyable games to the deceased which free us from the evils of the beyond, whereas something horrible awaits those who have not celebrated sacrifices.

Sophokles, Oeneus frag. 1130
You shall learn all! We come as suitors, we satyrs, we sons of nymphs and ministers of Bakchos, living near to the gods. We have mastered every proper trade — fighting with the spear, contests of wrestling, riding, running, boxing, biting, twisting people’s balls; we have songs and music, we have oracles quite unknown and not forged, we know how to heal with poison; we know the full measure of the skies, we can dance, we can juggle, and we can speak out of our backsides. Is our study fruitless? I will teach you all of these things, and countless more — if you’ll just give me your daughter.

Suetonius, Augustus 94
Later, when Octavius was leading an army through remote parts of Thrace, and in the grove of Father Liber consulted the priests about his son with barbarian rites, they made the same prediction; since such a pillar of flame sprang forth from the wine that was poured over the altar, that it rose above the temple roof and mounted to the very sky, and such an omen had befallen no one save Alexander the Great, when he offered sacrifice at the same altar.