Abstract
Originally a Greek character, Orpheus begins to be connected with Thrace in the first half of the fifth century BC, when the same happens to Dionysus. Orpheus’ murder at the hand of Thracian women, attested in both Aeschylus and vase painting, had a strong link with Dionysism, though from the mid-fifth century its religious dimension ends up being supplanted by the aetiological myth of Orpheus’ misogyny causing his death.
