TL;DR When his wife Eurydice died, the musician Orpheus went down to the underworld and sang so beautifully that its rulers agreed to let her go, as long as he did not look back on the way out. Right at the end, he looked.
The myth in 60 seconds
- Orpheus played the lyre so beautifully that animals, trees and even rocks were said to follow his music.
- Soon after their wedding, his wife Eurydice died from a snake bite, and Orpheus went down to the underworld to bring her back.
- His song moved Hades and Persephone so deeply that they agreed to release her, on one condition: he must not look back at her until both of them had reached the world above.
- Almost at the exit, Orpheus turned around to check she was there, and Eurydice slipped back into the shadows for good.
- Heartbroken, he wandered the world singing of his loss, and his songs became a legend of their own.
That’s the whole myth. Switch the Q&A back on for the why.
Who was Orpheus, exactly?
A singer and poet from Thrace, in the north of Greece. Most writers make him the son of Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, so music was literally in the family. Ancient stories credit him with powers no other mortal musician had.
Why on earth did he look back?
The two big Roman versions give different answers. In Virgil’s Georgics, a sudden madness seizes him at the last moment. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, it is love and worry: he is afraid she is falling behind and longs to see her. Either way, it is the most human mistake in Greek myth. Nobody is tricked. He just cannot bear not knowing.
Was there ever a happy ending?
Possibly. A few early Greek references seem to imply that Orpheus succeeded, and some scholars think the sad ending was added later. Plato, meanwhile, offers a grumpier take in the Symposium: the gods showed Orpheus only a ghostly image of Eurydice, because he was not brave enough to die for love. Harsh, Plato.
What is the lesson? “Don’t look back”?
That is the bumper-sticker version. A better reading might be about trust: Orpheus had to believe something he could not see. It is also a story about the limits of talent. His music could move the gods of death, and it still could not change the ending.
Where might I have met this story before?
In a lot of places. One of the earliest operas ever written, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo of 1607, tells it, and so does Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. More recently it inspired the Tony-winning musical Hadestown. Musicians clearly cannot resist a myth about a musician.
How did he even get into the underworld?
Ovid sends him through the gate at Taenarum, at the southern tip of mainland Greece. Once he started to sing, the whole underworld paused: Tantalus stopped reaching for water, Sisyphus sat down on his boulder, and, Ovid says, the Furies wept for the first time. Not bad for one song.
Did Orpheus have anything to do with Persephone?
Yes. In most versions it is the king and queen of the underworld together, Hades and Persephone, who hear his song and agree to let Eurydice go. Persephone, who knew all about being kept below, is often imagined as the more sympathetic listener.