ORONTES, the principal river of Syria, rises in the western slopes of Anti-Lebanon, and flows northward through Syria, turning at last SW. to the Mediterranean; its course of 150 m. is through country in many parts well cultivated, past the towns of Hems and Hamah, and latterly through a woody ravine of great beauty.

OROSIUS, PAULUS, Spanish Christian apologist of the 5th century, born at Terragona, a disciple of Augustine; wrote at his suggestion against the pagans a history of the world used as a text-book in the Middle Ages.

ORPHEUS, in the Greek mythology son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope, famed for his skill on the lyre, from which the strains were such as not only calmed and swayed the rude soul of nature, but persuaded even the inexorable Pluto to relent; for one day when his wife Eurydice was taken away from him, he descended with his lyre to the lower world and prevailed on the nether king by the spell he wielded to allow her to accompany him back, but on the condition that he must not, as she followed him, turn round and look; this condition he failed to fulfil, and he lost her again, but this time for ever; whereupon, as the story goes, he gave himself up to unappeasable lamentings, which attracted round him a crowd of upbraiding Maenades, who in their indignation took up stones to stone him and mangled him to death, only his lyre as it floated down the river seaward kept sounding “Eurydice!  Eurydice!” till it was caught up by Zeus and placed in memorial of him among the stars of the sky.

ORRERY is a mechanical toy which exhibits, by an arrangement of rods, balls, and toothed wheels, the sun, the planets, and their moons, all performing their respective motions; so named after the Earl of Orrery, for whom Charles Boyle made the first one in 1715.

ORSINI, FELICE, Italian conspirator, born of a noble family, but bred in the atmosphere of revolution and secret plotting; with three others attempted the life of Louis Napoleon; was defended by Jules Favre, but condemned to death and guillotined (1819-1858).

ORSOVA, two fortified towns on opposite banks of the Danube, at the Iron Gates:  Old Orsova (3), in Hungary, is a trading and shipping centre; New Orsova, in Servia, was repeatedly taken and retaken in the wars of the 18th century.

ORVIETO (7), an Italian city in Perugia, 78 m. by rail N. of Rome, is noted for its wines; it dates from Roman times, and in the Middle Ages was a frequent refuge of the Popes.

OSCANS, a primitive people of Italy occupying Campania; were subjugated in the 5th century B.C. by the Samnites, who amalgamated with them and were subsequently incorporated with the Romans; the Oscan tongue, a cruder form of Latin, may have had its own literature, and is still extant on coins and in inscriptions.

OSCAR I., king of Sweden and Norway, son of Bernadotte, born at Paris, reigned from 1844 to 1857 (1799-1858); OSCAR II., king of Sweden and Norway, son of preceding, succeeded his brother Charles XV. in 1872, has distinguished himself in literature by translating Goethe’s “Faust” into Swedish, and by a volume of minor poems under his nom de plume Oscar Frederick; b. 1829.