Miraculous Myths IV: Analysis of Orpheus in Ovid.

Ovid’s take on Orpheus

From the translations of book 10 and 11, we can read a heart-breaking story of the hero Orpheus whose poetic prowess, though impressive enough to persuade deities and shades, cannot bring back his beloved wife. His sequential abjection of womanly love is suggested to be his downfall. Reading Orpheus’s story in this manner is a subtle implication of Ovid's own poetical superiority over Orpheus.

No transformation of Orpheus & Eurydice

A key point of Ovid’s work is its theme of describing transformations, i.e. metamorphoses

in nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora,  
my soul brings me to speak of figures changed into new
bodies (Ovid. Met.I.1-2)

This aspect of changing forms into new bodies seems completely absent from the characters Orpheus and Eurydice. It is only the surrounding characters that undergo metamorphoses. The first of them is the transformation of Cyparissus into a tree when Ovid narrates how Orpheus creates a grove of trees by making music after his return of the underworld. In the embedded narratives of Orphic songs, that is to say stories within stories, Orpheus narrates several metamorphoses of other characters (Hyacinthus, Myrrha, Adonis and more)¹.

    Before these Orphic songs, there is no actual transformation. The only thing coming close to it is Eurydice dying and becoming a shade (umbra). This shift from died to alive and her possible retransformation into a human (if Orpheus had succeeded) could maybe be called metamorphoses. However, this would not be an actual metamorphosis, as we are describing a transformation of having a body into a state of having no body and vice versa.  

    Outside of the embedded narratives, there’s only one actual metamorphosis at the very end of the story: Bacchus transforms the Maenads into oaks as punishment for killing the poet of his sacred rites. Yet, there is no transformation into a new body when he describes the gruesome death of Orpheus. The Maenads rip his band of accompanying animals to pieces before they set their work on his body. Maybe, this could be seen as a transformation, a transformation of Orpheus the hero reduced to a severed, lamenting head that lands on the shore of Lesbos. Though, this transformation would lack the component of nova corpora (“new bodies”).

    On the Lesbian beach, we encounter also a quick transformation: Apollo transforms an attacking snake (as revenge) into stone, which would qualify as novum corpus. This is still an accompanying story element and not the main subject that is transformed, which is a key aspect of the transformations we have seen throughout the Metamorphoses before book 11. As such, I would like to suggest we have to look for a transformation not in content of the story itself, but in the narration of the plot by the poet.

Orpheus in other sources

A way to engage into the transformative pursuit of Ovid’s Orpheus is having a context the descriptions of Orpheus by earlier writers. By engaging in this intertextual analysis of Orpheus, we are better equipped to appreciate which aspects Ovid highlights or even alters in comparison to his sources and peers. It is also a way for me to incorporate a scheduled blogpost into this one, so we can dig into the meat sooner: the review/analysis of Orphia and Eurydicius. Without any delay, let us discuss earlier writings of Orpheus.

The mythological hero Orpheus is described in Greek sources quite sporadically before the Hellenistic time. He is never mentioned by Homer or Hesiod, gets mentioned several times by lyric poets like Pindar later on, and even meets critique from Plato. These early mentions of Orpheus mainly involve his status as a son of the muse Calliope and his artistry of playing the cither (for an overview). As pseudo-Apollodorus would later remark, he is a professional in the art of cither playing with songs (ἀσκήσας κιθαρῳδίαν). Sometimes, they even attribute a magical component to his music, being able to entrance wild animals and even move inanimate objects like rocks and trees. Classical poets like Simonides even refer to him as the greatest of all musicians and poets.

Next to this status of musician and poet are the events that he partakes in, his role in the story of the Argonautica and his own descend to Hades. Plato is one of the earliest writers to mention that Orpheus went down to the underworld to save his wife (Symposium 179d). He is not very positive about that decision, calling Orpheus weak as fitting to a κιθαρῳδός (cither-player/singer) and criticising him for not having the guts to die for love like Alcestis. This mention of Alcestis is remarkable as the play of Euripides named Alcestis is the other early source mentioning Orpheus’s quest. Are Alcestis and Orpheus somehow linked? That’s hard to say as there are no other sources making this connection between the two. Anyways, Plato goes on to tell that Orpheus would not get to see his wife, only a φάσμα (“phantom”). Orpheus would receive his deserved punishment, according to Plato, for entering Hades alive in the form of dying afterwards by the hand of women. Hence, Plato refers both to the journey and failure of Orpheus Ovid describes in book 10 and his death by the Maenads described in book 11

His role as an Argonaut is mostly known from the writer of the epic Argonautica, Apollonius of Rhodes, from the 3^rd century BCE. This Hellenistic epic poem relates the journey of Jason and the Argonauts on their quest to obtain the golden fleece (Stephen Frye masterly elucidates the origins of the Fleece and the way it got to Colchis in his book Heroes). The importance of Orpheus in this work (although not frequently appearing) cannot be underestimated, as the poet shows by naming him first in his list of heroes that Jason assembled. Furthermore, he underlines Orpheus’s importance by referring to the promise Jason made to Cheiron, the centaur that mentored Jason during his youth. This foreshadowing of the plot, prolepsis, comes into fruition in book 4, when the Argonauts have captured the golden fleece and are returning homewards. Orpheus is at that point instrumental, for the Argonauts would not be able to pass by the island called Anthemoessa without him. Here, the Sirens, well-known from their appearance in Homer’s Odyssey, dwelled and could only be conquered by the music and songs of Orpheus according to Cheiron.

Interestingly, Apollonius doesn’t convey Orpheus voice directly to the reader in his narrative. In book 1, during the evening before the Argo is setting sail, there is a strife among the assembled heroes. This strife is suggested to bleed out in violence amongst them, hadn’t it been for Orpheus and his song. This song, though, is not directly told to us, but indirectly (ἤειδεν δ᾽ ὡς - “he sang how…”, Apollon. 1.496). So we only get a glimpse of the subjects he’s singing about, the order of things before Zeus ruled Olympus. This is in contrast to the words of the heroes we were having an argument beforehand, those words were narrated directly. It’s almost like Apollonius know his version of Orpheus’s words wouldn’t measure up to the real thing. Likewise, when describing Orpheus’s feat of diverting the Siren’s song in book 4, he only narrates about the actions, there’s no mention of how the music and/or song sounded on either side.

Lastly, there’s also a contemporary peer who wrote about Orpheus and the rescue mission of his wife Eurydice (even using her name this time). It’s Vergil, who wrote about them in his book Georgica, a didactic poem centred on the theme of agriculture. In book 4, the book about the lives of bees and beekeeping, we are introduced to the character of Aristaeus. This hero is suggested to be the originator of beekeeping but in Vergil’s work he has recently lost his bees. To find the culprit, his mother (the river-goddess Cyrene) advises him to inquire with Proteus who can help him discover which deity he has made upset and must appease to return his bees. Proteus reveals it’s the nymphs for he caused Eurydice’s death by chasing after her. Then, the rest of the story is similar to that of Ovid’s including Orpheus’s quest to return Eurydice, his failure and his death by Maenads. Importantly, we don’t get to hear Orpheus’s song that he sang in the underworld like in Ovid. The only sounds Vergil’s Orpheus does utter are the words of his dying breath, the name of his wife “Eurydice."

Ovid providing the orphic voice

As I’ve shown in the previous paragraphs, Ovid’s take on the Orpheus scène is highly remarkable both within the subject matter of the Metamorphoses and outside intertextually as a version that does incorporate the Orphic voice. In a way, I would like to suggest we can combine these two observation in a single hypothesis about Ovid’s take on Orpheus. Although Orpheus doesn’t suffer a metamorphosis in the technical sense set out by Ovid in the beginning of his work, the Orphic voice has underwent one intertextually: it has transformed from a voice that used to be unnaturally achieving things, but too magnificent to be heard, into one that can be heard, but has no more success. In a way, Ovid does transform the Orphic voice into his own by actually relating them directly, and marking that his voice is the one that can actually achieve things in the story. To argue this, I will first look at book 10 at the song Orpheus directs the Hades and Persephone and the described effects. Secondly, we will see how Orpheus is made ineffective in book 11. Lastly, I will point out how Ovid takes over Orpheus voice by addressing him (Apostrophe).

            So to say that Ovid’s version of Orpheus’s song to Hades and Persephone is the first actual representation of his words is not far off the truth. How do we then appreciate the words of the poet whose words were believed to have even moved rocks and trees? Frankly, they are quite dull. While Apollonius gives us the impression of words that were finely tuned to the music and spoke off greater themes like the origin of dominion among the gods, Ovid provides a song that magnifies the god Love in epic hexameters. The song starts by introducing Orpheus’s reason for coming, his dead wife, before glorifying that Love is everywhere and his mean reason. The fact that he tries to contribute love to Persephone’s abduction is kind of repulsive and even disturbing in the Latin (famaque si veteris non est mentita rapinae, vos quoque iunxit Amor – “and if the tale about your old booty is not lied about, Love has connected you two as well.”) How abduction (rapina) can be linked to love except for Stockholm syndrome is a miracle to me. After his eulogy to love, he uses the tactic of pleading, insisting that the two of them would arrive at Hades anyways soon enough. And his ultimatum? To stay here anyways, as he has no will to keep on living (an ultimatum he’s not going to fulfil when he has lost Eurydice). It’s no wonder that that critics have deemed this song argumentatively inept ( see this article). It’s not wrong to say that the effect described by Ovid on the inhabitants of the underworld is not hyperbolic. This is either a way to construe the ineptitude of people of the underworld with culture from the living or to mock (as the article suggest) Roman practices of rhetoric.

Orpheus Floor Mosaic from Palermo, 3rd century CE,
Antonio Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum,
Palermo, Sicily