Orpheus and Eurydice

Orpheus, the Thracian singer whose music moved animals, trees and rocks, was by most accounts the son of the Muse Calliope and the Thracian Oeagrus, though Apollo is sometimes named as his father (Apollodorus, Library 1.3.2; Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.23–34). Orpheus and Eurydice is the story of his marriage, her death from a snake bite, his descent to the Underworld to bring her back, and the moment on the way out when he looked back and lost her. The tale is told most fully by Virgil and Ovid.

Orpheus played the lyre. In the account preserved by Hyginus, Hermes first made the lyre from a tortoise shell and it was handed on to Orpheus, who studied it closely (Astronomica 2.7; compare Homeric Hymn to Hermes 24–51). Pindar calls him the lyre-player and “father of songs” (Pythian 4.176–177). He sailed with Jason and the Argonauts, whom Jason enlisted on the advice of Chiron (Argonautica 1.32–34), and Apollodorus adds that he invented the mysteries of Dionysus (Library 1.3.2). Loved by many, he is said to have loved only his wife, Eurydice.

The Forgotten Blessing

In Ovid, Hymen, the god of marriage, left the wedding of Iphis and Ianthe in Crete, wrapped in a saffron mantle, and went to the land of the Ciconians in Thrace, where Orpheus called on him at his own wedding with Eurydice. Hymen came, but he brought no happy words or looks, and the torch he held spluttered and filled the eyes with smoke and would not burn properly, however much it was shaken. The end was worse than the omen (Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.1–10).

The Death of Eurydice

Soon after the marriage, Eurydice died of a snake bite. Ancient authors tell the story differently. In Ovid she was walking through the grass with a band of Naiads when a snake bit her ankle (Metamorphoses 10.8–10). In Virgil, the story is told by Proteus to the beekeeper Aristaeus: Eurydice was fleeing from Aristaeus’ pursuit along a river when she did not see a huge water-snake lying in the long grass at her feet, and the Dryads, her companions, filled the mountains with their cries (Georgics 4.457–463). Apollodorus says only that she was bitten by a snake (Library 1.3.2). Her soul went down to the Underworld.

Orpheus’ Descent into Hades

Orpheus Leaves the Earth

Orpheus mourned his wife in song, on the shore, from dawn until evening (Virgil, Georgics 4.464–466). In Ovid, when he had mourned her enough in the upper world, he decided to try the world of the dead too, and descended through the gate of Taenarum in Laconia, one of the few entrances to the Underworld, past the ghosts and the shades of the buried, until he reached Persephone and the lord of the shadows (Metamorphoses 10.11–17). Virgil likewise sends him through the jaws of Taenarus into the grove dark with horror (Georgics 4.467–469), and Apollodorus says that he went down to Hades wishing to bring her up (Library 1.3.2). Pausanias reports another tradition: that Orpheus came to Aornum in Thesprotia, where there was an ancient oracle of the dead, and believed that Eurydice’s soul followed him; when he turned round he lost her, and killed himself for grief (9.30.6).

Orpheus’ Song in the Underworld

In Ovid, Orpheus sang to the lyre before the rulers of the dead. He says that he has not come to see Tartarus or to chain the three-headed monster Cerberus, but for his wife, who had trodden on a viper and been cut off in her prime. He admits that Love is a god of this world and perhaps of the world below, and he begs the rulers of the dead, by this place of fear and these silent realms, to “renew the life-thread of my loving Eurydice.” She will be theirs again in the end, since all come to them; he asks only for a few years of her life as a loan. If it is refused, he says, he will not return, and they may triumph in the death of two (Metamorphoses 10.17–39).

The Effect of Orpheus’ Song

While he sang, the bloodless ghosts wept. Tantalus did not reach for the receding water, Ixion’s wheel stood still, the vultures stopped tearing at the liver of Tityus, the Danaids left their jars, and Sisyphus sat on his rock. For the first time, Ovid says, the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears (Metamorphoses 10.40–46). Virgil adds that even Cerberus held his three jaws open and the Eumenides, with snakes in their hair, stood amazed (Georgics 4.481–484). Neither the king of the dead nor his queen could refuse the prayer, and they called Eurydice. She came, still limping from her wound, among the new ghosts (Metamorphoses 10.46–49). They allowed Orpheus to take her back on one condition only: that he should not turn his eyes back until they had left the valley of Avernus (Metamorphoses 10.50–52). In Virgil the condition is Proserpine’s (Georgics 4.487), and Apollodorus has Hades promise to send her up if Orpheus did not turn round before he reached his own house (Library 1.3.2).

Orpheus Loses Eurydice

They climbed in silence up a steep, dark path through thick mist. They had almost reached the upper world when Orpheus, afraid that she might be failing and longing to see her, looked back (Metamorphoses 10.53–57). In Virgil he is seized by a sudden madness, forgivable “if Hell knew how to forgive,” and stops at the very threshold of the day (Georgics 4.488–491). Eurydice slipped back at once. As he stretched out his arms to hold her, he grasped only the air. Dying a second time, she made no complaint against her husband, Ovid says, and spoke a last “farewell” that he could hardly hear (Metamorphoses 10.57–63). In Virgil she cries, “What madness has ruined me and you, Orpheus?” and is borne off in the night, stretching out her helpless hands to him (Georgics 4.494–498).

Plato knows a harsher version, in which the gods sent Orpheus back from Hades with failure, showing him only a phantom of his wife, because he was a mere lyre-player who had not dared to die for love as Alcestis did, but had contrived to enter Hades alive (Symposium 179d). Euripides also mentions Orpheus’ power to charm the queen of the dead and win back a lost one (Alcestis 357–362).

The Death of Orpheus

Orpheus tried to go back, but the ferryman refused him, and for seven days he sat on the bank of the Styx, with no food but his grief (Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.72–73). In Virgil he wept for seven months under a crag by the river Strymon (Georgics 4.507–510). Ovid says that for three years he kept away from women, and that he taught the Thracians to love boys (Metamorphoses 10.73–85).

The Thracian women, or Maenads, killed him. In Virgil the Ciconian women, scorned by his faithfulness to his dead wife, tore him to pieces during their Bacchic rites, and his head, torn from his marble neck and carried down the Hebrus, still called out “Eurydice” (Georgics 4.516–527). In Ovid the women, with spears and thyrsi, first stoned him in vain because his song charmed the weapons, then drowned his voice with horns and drums and tore him apart (Metamorphoses 11.1–43). Pausanias gives other reasons: that the Thracian women plotted against him because he had persuaded their husbands to follow him in his wanderings, or that Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt because he revealed the sayings of the mysteries to men who had not heard them before (9.30.5). Hyginus says that Dionysus set the Bacchae on him, either because Orpheus had left Dionysus out when he praised the gods in the Underworld, or because he had spied on the rites of Dionysus (Astronomica 2.7).

According to Hyginus, the Muses collected his limbs and buried them (Astronomica 2.7); Apollodorus says that he was buried in Pieria (Library 1.3.2). The Macedonians below Mount Pieria and Dium showed a pillar with an urn said to hold his bones, and the Thracians said that nightingales nesting on his grave sing more sweetly than others (Pausanias 9.30.6–7). His head and lyre were carried by the Hebrus into the sea and came ashore at Lesbos (Ovid, Metamorphoses 11.50–55); Lucian adds that the people of Lesbos buried the head and hung up the lyre in a temple of Apollo (The Ignorant Book Collector 11). According to Hyginus, the Muses set the lyre among the stars as the constellation Lyra, with the consent of Apollo and Jupiter (Astronomica 2.7). In Ovid, Orpheus’ shade went down to the Underworld, where he found Eurydice and embraced her, and they walked together, sometimes side by side, sometimes she going ahead and he behind (Metamorphoses 11.61–66).

Orpheus and Eurydice Sources

The most famous retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice can be found in the first 85 verses of the tenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses; Ovid also recounts the death of Orpheus at the beginning of the eleventh book of the Metamorphoses (11.1–66). The pursuit by Aristaeus is told in Virgil’s Georgics (4.453–527). Other ancient testimony comes from Apollodorus’ Library (1.3.2), Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica (1.23–34), Pindar (Pythian 4.176–177), Plato’s Symposium (179d), Euripides’ Alcestis (357–362), Pausanias (9.30.4–12), Lucian’s The Ignorant Book Collector (11), Hyginus’ Astronomica (2.7) and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (24–51).

See Also: Orpheus, Eurydice, The Underworld, Hades, Persephone, Calliope, Maenads, Cerberus