Orpheus & Eurydice

The very earliest musicians were, of course, the gods. In due time, there came into existence a few mortals so excellent in this craft they nearly equaled the divine. By far the greatest of these was Orpheus.

Orpheus was the offspring of Apollo and Calliope. His father, the great god of prophesy and a skilled musician in his own right, presented the boy with a lyre and taught him to play upon it. His mother, a Muse, inspired the state of mind in which for him to write and sing sweet songs.

With no trouble at all Orpheus learned to play upon his lyre with such perfection that nothing could withstand the charm of his music. All things he effortlessly entranced. Fellow mortals both friend and foe, and too the wildest of beasts, surrendered at the sound of his strings once struck. Nay, even trees and rocks were held his captive listeners. An arboreal audience of cypresses encircled him, and the hardness of a stone was softened somewhat by his notes.

In his youth the master musician sailed with Jason aboard the Argo in a famous expedition. When the Argonauts grew weary, Orpheus would play upon his lyre to arouse fresh zeal, and along to the melody the heroic sailors would smite the sea with their oars; or if a quarrel threatened to break out among the brood, Orpheus would play so soothingly that the fiercest men grew calm and forget their anger; even when the shipmates heard from far across the sea the deadly Sirens singing, Orpheus snatched up his lyre and played a tune so loud and clear it drowned away their fatal voices.

Sometime after his return from sea, Orpheus wooed and wed a fair maiden by the name Eurydice. The union was presided over by Hymen, but he brought no happy omens. At the ceremony, the flame of his torch smoked awfully and filled the couple’s eyes with tears. Surely this was a sign of bad luck.

Shortly after the wedding, Eurydice, wandered the meadow with her bridesmaids. A shepherd saw her and began to make a move on the newly wedded maiden. She fled, and in flying tripped over a snake in the grass. The serpent, a viper most virile, sank his teeth into her ankle. Eurydice died instantly.

Orpheus’ grief was overwhelming. He could not endure it. Thus he decided to venture to the underworld and retrieve his bride. He found an entrance to the river Styx in a cave aside a mountain’s crag. Passing bravely by ghost after ghost, and relaxing the three-headed guard dog with the sound of his lyre, Orpheus made the fearsome journey through the underworld to the thrones of Hades and Persephone.

“Mighty rulers of the dark and silent world,” said Orpheus in song, “to you all lovely things at last must come. For just a little while we toil upon the earth, and then are yours forever and ever.”

Intrigued by the musician’s verse, the rulers of the dead leaned in to listen.

Orpheus continued, “I seek a maiden who has a come to you much too soon. This bud you plucked before the flower bloomed, and I cannot bear this loss. Oh, Hades! Please! You know that if the tale men tell is true, about the child-queen you stole, then weave again for sweet Eurydice life’s pattern taken from the loom too quickly. I ask but a simple favor, not that you give to me but lend my love for a little while longer. She will be yours again someday.”

All in this place of death were touched. With Orpheus’ words the faces of the dreaded Furies were for the first time wet with tears. Persephone, so moved by the story, begged her husband to release the girl, and Hades himself thus gave in. He summoned Eurydice, her ankle still wounded, and from a line of new arrivals she limped towards her love.

“You may have her on one condition,” Hades said. “You may not look upon her until you both have reached the earth’s surface.”

Agreeing to this condition, Orpheus led the way out of dreadful underworld. Eurydice followed closely behind him. In total silence, through passages dark and steep, the couple had nearly reached an outlet to the upper world when Orpheus turned his head. In a moment of forgetfulness, he had looked back to assure himself that his wife still followed. The second he cast a glance in her direction, Eurydice fell down into the darkness.

“Farewell,” she said, “farewell, my love.” She slipped away so fast the sound hardly reached his ears.

Orpheus hurried after her, but what hope had he that she escape death for a second time? Now the gods refused him passage to the underworld, and Orpheus was forced to return to earth alone. In utter desolation, he wondered the world in absolute solitude save the comfort of his lyre. At last a band of gypsies found him. They tore from his torso both arms and both legs, throwing them into a nearby river. Later his limbs were gathered and placed in a sarcophagus at the foot of Olympus. Here, in the final resting place of Orpheus, the nightingale sings in memory of the musician more sweetly than anywhere on earth.