Orpheus

Mythical Greek poet and musician of Thrace; the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope. Orpheus ventured into Hades, the underworld, to bring back his wife Eurydice, who had died from a snakebite. His lyre playing was so charming that Pluto granted her return to life, but on condition that Orpheus walked ahead without looking back. He turned at the entrance and Eurydice was irretrievably lost. In his grief, he offended the maenad women of Thrace, and they tore him to pieces.

His head and lyre were thrown into the River Hebrus, and carried out to sea to Lesbos. The Muses collected the remains of his body and buried them at the foot of Olympus, while Zeus placed his lyre in the sky as the constellation Lyra.

Orphic theology
The mystery cult of Orphism, reputedly deriving from the poems of Orpheus, was concerned with death and the practice of secret rites to ensure entry into the afterworld of Elysium, or the Islands of the Blessed. Many poems ascribed to Orpheus were current in classical Greece; the existing verses bearing his name are forgeries, but some contain some genuine fragments of later Orphic hymns.