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Orpheus was the son of the river-god Oeagrus and the Muse Calliope (some traditions mention another Muse as his mother). He was born in Thracia, not far from Mount Olympus where the Muses too were born. He was the most gifted of musicians, and was said to be the inventor of the 9-string cithara (a number derived from that of the Muses). His songs were so sweet that they would tame wild beasts and rugged men and bend branches from trees.
Orpheus took part in the expedition of the Argonauts. Being too soft to row, he would keep the rowers in rythm with his songs and, because they were even sweeter than those of the Sirens, he saved his companions from them. He also managed, during an early stop in that island, to have them all initiated to the mysteries of Samothrace, of which he was already himself an initiate.
Orpheus' wife was Eurydice, a Dryad. One day she was wandering along a creek in Thracia, she was bitten by a snake hiding in the grass and died. So aggrieved was Orpheus that he descended into Hades to try and recover his beloved wife. With his music, he managed to subdue the monsters at the gates and the gods within. Hades and Persephone agreed to let Eurydice go provided she walked behind Orpheus and he didn't try to look at her till he had returned to the world above. Unfortunately, just before reaching the light of day, Orpheus, tortured by doudt, looked behind, and instantly, Eurydice died for the second time, this time forever and there was nothing Orpheus could do to help it.
Back on earth, Orpheus was so sad that he didn't want to have anything to do with women again. This is why Thracian women, angered at being so despised, decided one day to kill him, teared his body apart and threw the pieces into a river that brought them to the sea. And, so the story goes, his head and lyre eventually landed into the island of Lesbos, where the residents buried them with great honor. And it was said that, from the tomb, the song of a lyre could sometime be heard. This explains why the island of Lesbos was the center of lyric poetry (Mytilene, the main city on that island, was the birthplace of the poets Alceus and Sappho, among others). After Orpheus' death, his lyre became the constellation by that name in heaven, and his soul was transported to the Elysium where he keeps singing for the Blessed.

The legend of Orpheus gave birth, in the VIth century B. C., to mystery cults supposed to transmit the revelations that Orpheus himself was supposed to have brought back from his descent into Hades. Orphism later became mingled with the Eleusinian Mysteries and with Pythagoreanism, and it is in this state that he was known to Plato.

Attic traditions talk of a Musæus which is variously described as a friend or a pupil of Orpheus and, like him, a wonderful musician, capable of healing the sick with his songs. He was presented as the son of Selene (the Moon ; see Republic, II, 364e, where Adeimantus, in his introductory speech, refers to people presenting "books by Musæus and Orpheus, offspring of Selene and the Muses"). His father was sometimes said to be Eumolpus (whose name in Greek means "good singer"), a king of Thracia, son of Poseidon who was for a while exiled in Eleusis and returned there after having regained his Thracian crown, to help the Eleusinians in a war against Athens in the time of king Erechtheus. Some traditions ascribed to Musæus (or to his father Eumolpus) the institution of the Eleusinian mysteries.

References to Orpheus and Orphism by name (and to Musæus, who is never mentioned alone, but always, when mentioned, associated with Orpheus) in the dialogues are at :

• Protagoras, 315a (in the description of the scene in Callias' house invaded by sophists, Protagoras is described as "enchanting his followers with his voice like Orpheus") ; 316d (also Musæus : in his attempt to make sophistry look like an antique art, Protagoras describes Orpheus and Musæus as sophists masking their trade behind mystery religion and prophecy) ;
• Apology, 41a (also Musæus : in his final speech to the jurors, Socrates suggests that most of them might be willing to give anything to "keep company with Orpheus, Musæus, Hesiod and Homer") ;
• Symposium, 179d (reference in Phædrus' speech to the story of Orpheus' descent to Hades for the sake of love, criticized, in comparison with Alcestis, for not having had the courage to die for his beloved, but to have tried to get in Hades alive) ;
• Republic, II, 363c (Musæus : Adeimantus, in his introductory speech, refers to the fate that awaits the justs at death according to "Musæus and his son", without naming that son) and 364e-365a (he continues, mentioning now the rituals inspired by "a noisy throng of books by Musæus and Orpheus, offspring of Selene and the Muses" to help initiates win purification from their injustice) ; X, 620a (in his description of how souls choose their new life based on their earlier life, Er gives the example of Orpheus choosing the life of a swan because, in his hate of the female sex at whose hands he had died, he didn't want to be born from a woman) ;
• Cratylus, 400b-c (in his search for etymologies, when dealing with the word sôma (body), Socrates ascribes the institution of this name to "the followers of Orpheus" looking at the body as a prison (sèma) for the soul ; this same theory is mentioned also, without reference to Orpheus by name, at Gorgias, 493a and at Phædo , 62b, while purification rites for initiates are mentioned at Phædo , 69c-d and reinterpreted in philosophical terms at Phædo , 82d, sq) ; 402b (while investigating the names of the primeval gods, Cronus and Rhea, and trying to link them to Heraclitus' theory of perpetual flow, Socrates quotes two verses he ascribes to Orpheus, to the effect that Ocean and his sister Tethys, the children of Uranus (Heaven) and Gæa (Earth) and the parents of all the springs and rivers, were the primeval couple) ;
• Ion, 533c (Orpheus is mentioned in a list of musicians and raphsodes people versed in music could comment upon as well as on Ion, in opposition to Ion himself, who says he can talk beautifully about Homer but not about any other poet) ; 536b (also Musæus : in his theory about the "chain of inspiration" from the Muses, Socrates mentions Orpheus, Musæus and Homer as poets making up the first set of rings) ;
• Philebus, 66c (toward the end of his hierarchy of lifestyles, Socrates quotes a verse from Orpheus to the effect that a well-ordered song stops at the sixth generation) ;
• Laws, II, 669d (in a speech on the difficulties of composing good "music", the Athenian quotes a few words from Orpheus) ; III, 677d (Orpheus is mentioned in a list of inventors of old, along with Dædalus, Palamedes, Marsyas and Amphion) ; VI, 782c (the Athenian refers to vegetarianism as an Orphic lifestyle)  ; VIII, 829e (no one should sing unauthorized songs, even if they are sweeter than the hyms of Orpheus).