OLD GREEK FOLK-STORIES

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

By Josephine Preston Peabody

When gods and shepherds piped and the stars sang, that was the day of musicians!  But the triumph of Phoebus Apollo himself was not so wonderful as the triumph of a mortal man who lived on earth, though some say that he came of divine lineage.  This was Orpheus, that best of harpers, who went with the Grecian heroes of the great ship Argo in search of the Golden Fleece.

After his return from the quest, he won Eurydice for his wife, and they were as happy as people can be who love each other and every one else.  The very wild beasts loved them, and the trees clustered about their home as if they were watered with music.  But even the gods themselves were not always free from sorrow, and one day misfortune came upon that harper Orpheus whom all men loved to honor.

Eurydice, his lovely wife, as she was wandering with the nymphs, unwittingly trod upon a serpent in the grass.  Surely, if Orpheus had been with her, playing upon his lyre, no creature could have harmed her.  But Orpheus came too late.  She died of the sting, and was lost to him in the Underworld.

For days he wandered from his home, singing the story of his loss and his despair to the helpless passers-by.  His grief moved the very stones in the wilderness, and roused a dumb distress in the hearts of savage beasts.  Even the gods on Mount Olympus gave ear, but they held no power over the darkness of Hades.

Wherever Orpheus wandered with his lyre, no one had the will to forbid him entrance; and at length he found unguarded that very cave that leads to the Underworld, where Pluto rules the spirits of the dead.  He went down without fear.  The fire in his living heart found him a way through the gloom of that place.  He crossed the Styx, the black river that the Gods name as their most sacred oath.  Charon, the harsh old ferryman who takes the shades across, forgot to ask of him the coin that every soul must pay.  For Orpheus sang.  There in the Underworld the song of Apollo would not have moved the poor ghosts so much.  It would have amazed them, like a star far off that no one understands.  But here was a human singer, and he sang of things that grow in every human heart, youth and love and death, the sweetness of the Earth, and the bitterness of losing aught that is dear to us.

Now the dead, when they go to the Underworld, drink of the pool of Lethe; and forgetfulness of all that has passed comes upon them like a sleep, and they lose their longing for the world, they lose their memory of pain, and live content with that cool twilight.  But not the pool of Lethe itself could withstand the song of Orpheus; and in the hearts of the shades all the old dreams awoke wondering.  They remembered once more the life of men on earth, the glory of the sun and moon, the sweetness of new grass, the warmth of their homes, all the old joy and grief that they had known.  And they wept.