The Look Back: Orpheus and the Song That Failed the Underworld

In the hills of Thrace, Apollo gave a young man named Orpheus a lyre, and with it, a gift no mortal had known before: music that nothing could resist, not wild beasts, not enemies, not even the dead. Orpheus was the son of Oeagrus and the Muse Calliope, though some said Apollo himself had fathered him. Whatever his origin, the songs he drew from the strings could still a storm or soften a heart of stone.

His love was Eurydice, a woman of beauty and grace. They married, and for a short while lived in the kind of happiness poets are wary of trusting. Even Hymen, the god summoned to bless their union, sensed something wrong — he predicted their perfection could not last.

He was right. Not long after, Eurydice wandered into the forest among the Nymphs. In one telling, the shepherd Aristaeus spotted her, was struck by her beauty, and chased her through the trees. In another, she was simply dancing with her companions on her wedding day, innocent of any pursuit. Whichever it was, a snake bit her, and she died where she fell.

Orpheus's grief became song, and his song moved everything in the world, living and dead, human and divine, until even the gods knew of his sorrow. Unwilling to accept the silence, he resolved to do what no mortal had dared: descend into Hades and bring his wife back through music alone.

Protected by the gods, he passed through the realm of shades, unrecognized ghosts drifting around him, until he reached the three-headed dog Cerberus, who — like everything else — could not resist his playing. He stood before Hades and Persephone themselves and played a song so full of sorrow that even the god of the dead was moved to pity.