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Ovid, VirgilOrpheus and Eurydice
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 8A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Crime, Punishment, and Atonement
The motif of crime, punishment, and atonement underlies Virgil’s version, although to understand this emphasis, one must take into account the context that Virgil gave the myth via his framing narrative in Book 4 of the Georgics. Virgil contrasts Orpheus with Aristaeus, the shepherd and beekeeper. Both men act wrongly and pay a price for it, but while Aristaeus atones for his fault, Orpheus does not.
Aristaeus chases Eurydice with the intention of raping her; some time after that all his bees die—a divine punishment for the crime of sexual assault. Orpheus’s offense is lesser, but it also involves giving in to passion; he allows his emotions to rule him rather than following the path of submission to divine authority. Aristaeus, however, is willing to learn from his mistake: The beekeeper’s divine mother Cyrene tells him he should make gifts to the nymphs to assuage the wrath they feel for him and slaughter some bulls and heifers in the manner she prescribes to make amends to both Orpheus and Eurydice. Aristaeus follows her instructions, and from the rotting carcasses of the sacrificed animals, swarms of bees emerge. Thus Aristaeus, by acknowledging his fault and making atonement, restores his good standing in the eyes of the gods and regains what he lost. Orpheus, on the other hand, never acknowledges his fault of favoring his personal and emotional desires over divine authority; without atoning for that fault, he therefore meets a very different end than the beekeeper.
“Madness” and Frenzy
Both versions of the story feature an episode of madness and frenzy (terms that now have derogatory associations, but would in the ancient world have been seen as symptoms with divine origins). However, Virgil and Ovid position this motif in different parts of the story.
Orpheus, a singer and poet who lives in the imaginative rather than the practical realm, nonetheless has the skill and the focused attention to concoct a plan for recovering his dead bride from Hades. He almost succeeds, but then in one impulsive moment, everything comes crashing down, and the anticipated happy ending is thwarted. For Virgil, this moment of the backward glance is a “stroke of madness” (Line 36): Orpheus loses his ability to remain coolly rational and does something stupid. The Latin word Virgil uses is “dementia,” meaning, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, “derangement, insanity, folly,” derived from the Latin root “demens,” meaning “out of one’s mind, frenzied, insane.” It may be a harsh word for Orpheus’s moment of concern for Eurydice’s welfare, but Virgil will use a word of similar meaning just seven lines later, when Eurydice herself adopt the narrator’s point of view. In her distress she evokes the “burning need” (Line 43) that she assumed had assailed Orpheus at that crucial moment. The Latin word here is “furor,” which also means “madness, rage, or frenzy.” In Ovid’s telling of the backward glance, however, neither of these Latin words appears. For Ovid, Orpheus’s looking back is caused by his love and concern for the limping Eurydice—by love, rather than folly.
The authors differ again in their descriptions of Orpheus’s death. In Virgil, the Thracian women are performing Bacchic rites; while this religious ceremony involves “one night of rites and reveling” (Line 69), Virgil downplays the mob mentality that prevails until one reads the line that follows, in which the same women tear Orpheus apart. By contrast, Ovid makes it clear that the Maenads are driven by blood lust. The women form a “frenzied band” (Book 11, Line 4); their “fury knew / No bounds: stark madness reigned” (Lines 16-17). Ovid’s sympathies are entirely with Orpheus during this deadly assault, whereas Virgil stands somewhat aloof. Their different perspective on what constitutes “madness” is indicative of their different approaches to the myth as a whole.
The Underworld
Hades, or the underworld, represents the ancient Greek vision of life after death. They conceived of Hades as an unforgiving place populated by grotesque creatures and the shades of the dead, some of whom have been condemned by the gods to eternal punishment. These phantoms are ghost-like forms without bodies or consciousness (“wraiths and grave-spent ghosts,” according to Ovid [Book 10, Line 16]). The underworld’s physical landscape reflects its emotional and psychological oppressiveness. For Virgil, “darkness reigns like a dismal fog” (Line 16) in Hades, which is full of “stagnant pools and murky marshes” (Line 27). Ovid’s version has similar details: Orpheus refers to “the glooms of Hell” (Book 10, Line 24), and he piles up multiple clauses to convey what the underworld is like: “these regions full of fear, / […] this huge chaos, these vast silent realms (Book 10, Lines 34-35).
In both versions of the story, Hades is the main setting; the narrative moves from the upper world to the underworld and then back to the upper world. Orpheus is a very different figure when he returns from Hades than when he entered it.
In Ovid, however, at the end of the story, Orpheus returns to the underworld after his death—just as he had argued he would in his plea to Hades and Persephone. Ovid shows Orpheus and Eurydice happily reunited in the Elysian Fields, a happier section of Hades reserved for those who won the special favor of the gods, where they could live happily, enjoying all the activities they pursued in life. Thus, Orpheus and Eurydice can stroll around together hand in hand, or with one in front and the other behind. Now, there are no consequences for any backward glance.
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