Ovid's Orpheus & Eurydice
Written in Stone: A Rhetorical Analysis
In his story of Orpheus and Eurydice, Ovid likens the poet hero to other mythological figures turned to stone to illustrate the gravity of his loss. First, he draws the parallel between Orpheus and Eurystheus, king of Tiryns, to convey his immediate terror-induced paralysis. Ovid refers to him from his appearance in the ancient Greek myth of the Labors of Heracles (the hero referred to in Roman mythology, and generally better known as Hercules). After Hera tricks him into killing his family, Heracles consulted the Oracle of Delphi on how to atone for his sins. The soothsayer bade him to complete a series of twelve tasks under his cousin Eurystheus. The king used this opportunity to give him the most dangerous tasks imaginable, with the intent of killing him. Ovid invokes Heracles’ twelfth and final labor, the capturing of Cerberus, to illustrate Orpheus’ immediate reaction to the ‘second death’ of his lover: “quam tria qui timidus, medio portante catenas. / colla canis visit, que non pavor ante reliquit, / quam natura prior saxo per corpus oborto” (66-7), or “Not differently than the coward who saw the three headed dog, chained by the middle neck, and whose fear vanished his his nature, as stone transformed his body.” In the myth, once Heracles successfully brings the three-headed dog back to Eurystheus, he retreats to a bronze wine jar out of fear of the beast, like how Orpheus freezes at the realization that he has inadvertently killed her. To be sure, Ovid writes that the king turned to stone. However, he could be likening his hidden and fearful state to one turning into stone, or he may have derived his rendition from a lesser-known, later Roman version of the myth. Notably, this is the second time he hides in his wine jar. He did the same after seeing Heracles wearing the Nemean Lion, the beast he told him to kill for his first task. With this second retreat, Ovid alludes to the fact that Orpheus experiences the death of Eurydice twice.
Eurystheus retreating into a wine jar. Triptolemos Painter, ~460 BCE
Second, immediately after, he likens him to Olenus, an inhabitant of Mount Ida, to illustrate both the misfortune and the sense of fault he carries regarding Eurydice’s death. Lethaea, Olenus’ wife, claimed that she was the most beautiful being in the world, more so than the goddesses themselves. Although originally, the heavens intended to turn only her to stone, he wanted to share her fate, so they punished him, too. Like him, Orpheus’ shock after looking back at Eurydice and killing her, figuratively turns him to stone: “quique in se crimen traxit voluitque videri / Olenos esse nocens, tuque, o confisa figurae, / infelix Lethaea” (68-70), or “like Olenos, and you, too confident of your beauty, his Lethaea, he wished to be charged with your crime, and seem guilty himself.” With his mention of Olenos, Ovid’s parallel implies that he brought this pain upon himself in two ways. One of which, broadly, being his retrieval as a whole. Although her death was sad, he could have avoided the magnitude of pain he feels now had he accepted it as fate. The second of which, more clearly, being his decision to look back at her.
Thus, that he employs the imagery of Orpheus turning into stone twice not only aptly illustrates his frozen state after looking back at her, but also the idea that this death is her second one. As if one single stone-centered metaphor was not clear enough, these two mythological allusions suggest that her death is final, and that he can do nothing to save her once more.