Now Perkin Warbeck had first appeared in Ireland in 1491, and had somehow been persuaded there to personate Richard, duke of York, the younger of the two princes murdered in the Tower, pretending that he had escaped, though his brother had been killed.
It was seriously believed in Germany for about a century after his death that Frederick was still alive, and many impostors attempted to personate him.
Orpheus, in the manner of his death, was considered to personate the god Dionysus, and was thus the representative of the god torn to pieces every year, a ceremony enacted by the Bacchae in the earliest times with a human victim, afterwards with a bull to represent the bull-formed god.
During his absence the Greeks were hard pressed, and at last he so far relaxed his anger as to allow his friend Patroclus to personate him, lending him his chariot and armour.
