Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(51)

Eurydice is bitten by the snake and goes down to Dis, another name for Hades, the Underworld; the god who rules over Hades goes by the same pair of names. Now comes the part of the story we probably know best. Orpheus enters the Underworld, playing his lyre. The shades of the dead appear from the very darkest regions of Hades to hear him play. Even the Furies stop to listen, and Cerberus – the three-headed dog who guards Hades – stands with his three mouths agape.4 Ixion – who is tormented in the Underworld by being bound to a fiery wheel which never stops moving – comes to rest because the wind that blows him unceasingly is suddenly still. Virgil doesn’t mention the part where Orpheus makes his request to be reunited with his wife, but skips straight to the moment when Eurydice is handed over, following behind Orpheus as Proserpina (the Roman name for Persephone, queen of the Underworld) had ordered. But when they are almost back in daylight, a madness overcomes him and he forgets and looks behind him. All his hard work flows away in a moment.

Eurydice then speaks. What great madness has destroyed me, in my wretchedness, and you, Orpheus? The cruel Fates again call me back, and sleep settles on my swimming eyes. And now goodbye. Alas, not yours, I am carried away, surrounded by the vast night, reaching out my helpless hands to you. And then she disappears from his sight, like smoke on the breeze. Orpheus tries to cross into Hades again, but he cannot. He spends seven months crying over this second loss. He continues to mourn his wife and the worthless gift of Hades,5 and refuses to remarry. Eventually, the women of Thrace are so incensed by this rejection that, during one of their Bacchic revels, they tear him apart. His severed head floats down the River Hebrus, crying, ‘Poor Eurydice! Eurydice . . .’

There are several points of interest in this passage. The first is that it is being told for the purposes of censure: of course the gods are punishing Aristaeus, he is responsible for the death of Eurydice and therefore (indirectly) the death of Orpheus. The second is that Virgil spends four lines describing the last moments of Eurydice’s life, as she flees Aristaeus. He uses another four lines to tell us that the dryads (tree nymphs, as was Eurydice in this version – they are described as her equals),6 the mountains and the rivers mourn for her as she dies. Then he uses three more lines to describe Orpheus grieving, playing his lyre alone. The journey of Orpheus into the Underworld takes a lot longer: nineteen lines. But the part of their story which virtually every modern telling dwells on – the ascent, with Eurydice following – is incredibly brief. From the moment when Eurydice is returned to him, through to the moment where he loses her again: this entire section is only six lines long. The onerous condition placed on them – that Eurydice cannot accompany him but only follow him – is dealt with in a single line. The first we hear of the proviso that Orpheus cannot look behind him is when he forgets and does so.

I mention these numbers as a simple way of showing the emphases Virgil places on the different elements of the story. We might be expecting a drawn-out suspense-building narrative centred on the journey back to life, as so many later versions of this story will employ. The dramatic tension is inherent in the journey out of the Underworld, the tantalizing proximity of freedom and reunion. But for Virgil, the katabasis (the descent into Hades – from the Greek meaning ‘going down’) is by far the most interesting part. The detail he paints – of the spirits of the dead flocking to hear Orpheus’ song, of the Furies and Cerberus being struck still, of the torment of Ixion coming to a halt – tells us this is the really important scene. The bargain made with the gods of Hades, the specific condition of Eurydice having to follow behind and Orpheus not being allowed to turn and look at her, the journey back up: these elements interest him less. There is no mention of why this condition is placed on them by Persephone, incidentally. The psychological cruelty of it – which we are so familiar with seeing right at the heart of the story of these shattered lovers – is wholly undiscussed. All Virgil says is that Eurydice followed behind, for that was the law (or condition) that Persephone had given them.

In addition, we might note that the only person who speaks in this story is Eurydice. Orpheus is singing when he descends into the Underworld, but we don’t have any description of the words and he doesn’t speak to Persephone. We also don’t have her reply: we’re told about the imposed condition rather than hearing it in direct speech. The first time anyone says anything is when Eurydice is torn away from Orpheus and she delivers a five-line monologue bemoaning their fate. Orpheus won’t speak until he has been dismembered, and his disembodied head only cries out for Eurydice. Obviously, some of this story takes place in Hades, but it is interesting that only the dead speak, rather than the gods or the living. In terms of dialogue, the focus is on Eurydice and her sorrow at her wretched fate.

A few decades after Virgil wrote this version of Eurydice and Orpheus’ story, Ovid follows him in his retelling of Greek myths for a Roman audience, the Metamorphoses. But Ovid doesn’t seem to want his version of the story to overlap too closely with Virgil’s. So he takes Aristaeus out of the picture (though not for issues of taste: the poem isn’t short on sexual violence), and ramps up the pathos. His Eurydice is wandering through the grass with a gang of naiads7 – water nymphs. She is not the victim of a sexual predator, she is with her girlfriends because it’s her wedding day. Hymen – god of the wedding ceremony – is present. But Eurydice is bitten by a snake just the same. Orpheus then descends to Hades in record time. Five lines after Eurydice dies, Orpheus is speaking to Persephone (again called Proserpina here). And here we see another major departure from Virgil’s version. This Orpheus is given a huge speech, begging the queen of the dead to give him back his wife. He begins with a typically Ovidian flourish, addressing Persephone in all her grandeur and immediately promising he has not come to steal her dog. This is not a purely bathetic moment: Heracles had previously come down to Hades and made off with Cerberus. So Orpheus is explaining up front that he isn’t a thief, but a man who wants to reclaim his wife because she was stolen by a snake when she was still young. There is a definite suggestion here (which we’ll look at in more detail below) that the young don’t ‘deserve’ to die in the same way that the old do. However unreasonable this may sound to those of us who are no longer very young, it is the first point of his argument: she was young, too young to die.