| ORPHEUS was the son of Apollo and the
Muse Calliope. He was presented by his father with a Lyre and taught
to play upon it, which he did to such perfection that nothing could
withstand the charm of his music. Not only his fellow-mortals but
wild beasts were softened by his strains, and gathering round him
laid by their fierceness, and stood entranced with his lay. Nay, the
very trees and rocks were sensible to the charm. The former crowded
round him and the latter relaxed somewhat of their hardness,
softened by his notes.
Hymen had been called to
bless with his presence the nuptials of Orpheus with Eurydice; but
though he attended, he brought no happy omens with him. His very
torch smoked and brought tears into their eyes. In coincidence with
such prognostics, Eurydice, shortly after her marriage, while
wandering with the nymphs, her companions, was seen by the shepherd
Aristæus, who was struck with her beauty and made advances to
her. She fled, and in flying trod upon a snake in the grass, was
bitten in the foot, and died. Orpheus sang his grief to all who
breathed the upper air, both gods and men, and finding it all
unavailing resolved to seek his wife in the regions of the dead. He
descended by a cave situated on the side of the promontory of Tænarus
and arrived at the Stygian realm. He passed through crowds of ghosts
and presented himself before the throne of Pluto and Proserpine.
Accompanying the words with the lyre, he sung, “O deities of the
underworld, to whom all we who live must come, hear my words, for
they are true. I come not to spy out the secrets of Tartarus, nor to
try my strength against the three-headed dog with snaky hair who
guards the entrance. I come to seek my wife, whose opening years the
poisonous viper’s fang has brought to an untimely end. Love has
led me here, Love, a god all powerful with us who dwell on the
earth, and, if old traditions say true, not less so here. I implore
you by these abodes full of terror, these realms of silence and
uncreated things, unite again the thread of Eurydice’s life. We
all are destined to you, and sooner or later must pass to your
domain. She too, when she shall have filled her term of life, will
rightly be yours. But till then grant her to me, I beseech you. If
you deny me I cannot return alone; you shall triumph in the death of
us both.”
As he sang these tender
strains, the very ghosts shed tears. Tantalus, in spite of his
thirst, stopped for a moment his efforts for water, Ixion’s wheel
stood still, the vulture ceased to tear the giant’s liver, the
daughters of Danaüs rested from their task of drawing water in a
sieve, and Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen. Then for the first
time, it is said, the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears.
Proserpine could not resist, and Pluto himself gave way. Eurydice
was called. She came from among the new-arrived ghosts, limping with
her wounded foot. Orpheus was permitted to take her away with him on
one condition, that he should not turn around to look at her till
they should have reached the upper air. Under this condition they
proceeded on
their way, he leading, she following, through passages dark and
steep, in total silence, till they had nearly reached the outlet
into the cheerful upper world, when Orpheus, in a moment of
forgetfulness, to assure himself that she was still following, cast
a glance behind him, when instantly she was borne away. Stretching
out their arms to embrace each other, they grasped only the air!
Dying now a second time, she yet cannot reproach her husband, for
how can she blame his impatience to behold her? “Farewell,” she
said, “a last farewell,”—and was hurried away, so fast that
the sound hardly reached his ears.
Orpheus endeavored to
follow her, and besought permission to return and try once more for
her release; but the stern ferryman repulsed him and refused
passage. Seven days he lingered about the brink, without food or
sleep; then bitterly accusing of cruelty the powers of Erebus, he
sang his complaints to the rocks and mountains, melting the hearts
of tigers and moving the oaks from their stations. He held himself
aloof from womankind, dwelling constantly on the recollection of his
sad mischance. The Thracian maidens tried their best to captivate
him, but he repulsed their advances. They bore with him as long as
they could; but finding him insensible one day, excited by the rites
of Bacchus, one of them exclaimed, “See yonder our despiser!”
and threw at him her javelin. The weapon, as soon as it came within
the sound of his lyre, fell harmless at his feet. So did also the
stones that they threw at him. But the women raised a scream and
drowned the voice of the music, and then the missiles reached him
and soon were stained with his blood. The maniacs tore him limb from
limb, and threw his head and his lyre into the river Hebrus, down
which they floated, murmuring sad music, to which the shores
responded a plaintive symphony. The Muses gathered up the fragments
of his body and buried them at Libethra, where the nightingale is
said to sing over his grave more sweetly than in any other part of
Greece. His lyre was placed by Jupiter among the stars. His shade
passed a second time to Tartarus, where he sought out his Eurydice
and embraced her
with eager arms. They roam the happy fields together now, sometimes
he leading, sometimes she; and Orpheus gazes as much as he will upon
her, no longer incurring a penalty for a thoughtless glance.
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