Orpheus and His Lyre

Music rose from somewhere in the forest, and the whole forest seemed to hold its breath to listen. A deer that was grazing lifted its head, then crept closer on careful feet. The birds stopped their chatter and sat perfectly still on the branches. Even the wolf that had been snarling a moment before, fangs bared, lay down as gently as a little dog by the hearth. The music was clear as water and rang on and on. It slipped between the leaves, and not one living thing could resist it.

Then the oldest trees leaned softly toward the sound, as if they wanted to draw a little nearer. The rocks, cold and hard by nature, seemed to soften a little as they listened. A swift river heard the tune and slowed down at once. Then it changed its very course, just to linger by the music a little longer. Here was a sound that could make birds and beasts, trees, mountain stones and even running water stop to listen.

The maker of that wondrous sound was a young man named Orpheus. In ancient Greece, people said that his father was the god Apollo, the god of light and music. His mother was Calliope, one of the Muses who watch over poetry. The lyre he held was a gift from his father. Apollo taught his son to play with great patience, day after day. In the end the music of Orpheus grew so beautiful that no one and nothing could refuse it.

With that lyre, Orpheus could calm even the wildest hearts. The fierce beasts of the forest gathered around him and forgot all about the hunt. Then one day he met a gentle young woman named Eurydice and came to love her. The two of them were married. Yet even on that happy day, a few small things left people uneasy, as if this happiness were too fragile to last.

That joy did not last. Not long after the wedding, Eurydice was walking across a grassy meadow when she met a danger hidden in the thick grass. She ran to escape it, but her foot came down on a snake coiled right across her path. The snake gave her only a tiny bite, yet it was enough to make her slowly fade. Eurydice left this world, and Orpheus was left alone with a grief no words could tell.

From that day on, the lyre of Orpheus no longer rang with gladness. He played songs so sad that everyone who heard them wept, and the grass and trees around him seemed to droop in pity. But Orpheus would not give in to his sorrow. He set his heart on something few mortals had ever dared to think of. He would go down to the world of the dead and ask to bring Eurydice home.

The story goes that Orpheus found a deep, dark cave on Cape Taenarus, where a passage led straight down into the black depths of the earth. Holding his lyre close, he made his way down and down, through cold dark regions that had never known the sun. All around him drifted the shades of countless dead, silent as mist and smoke. Yet no one stopped him. Whenever Orpheus touched the strings, that whole gloomy realm grew hushed to listen.

So the music led him to the deepest place of all, before the throne of Hades and Persephone. They were the god and the goddess who ruled the underworld. Orpheus knelt, held the lyre to his chest, and began to sing. He sang of his love, of Eurydice, and of the vast emptiness he felt without her. He sang that everyone comes to this place in the end. And he begged them to lend him Eurydice for a few more short years on earth.

His song left the whole underworld spellbound. The harshest punishments suddenly paused, as if to listen. A man forever tormented by thirst forgot his thirst. A wheel that spun without end slowed and stood still. A heavy stone that always tumbled back down the slope lay still and rolled no more. Even the goddesses of vengeance, who had never known tears, felt their eyes brim for the first time.

Hades and Persephone looked at each other, softened by a song unlike any before it. They agreed to let Eurydice return to the world of the living with Orpheus. But there was a condition, just one and no more. All the way up to the surface, Orpheus must walk in front, with Eurydice following behind. And he must not turn back to look at her, not even once, until both of them had stepped fully out into the light.

Overjoyed, Orpheus thanked them again and again, then set off. The road from the underworld back to the earth was dark, long and steep. He kept walking in front, his heart restless beyond words. Behind him, the steps of Eurydice were as light as a breath, so light that often he heard nothing at all. He longed to glance back, just to be sure she was still there, still following quietly. But he held himself in check and walked on, step after step, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

Then the first light of the upper world appeared far off, faint at the mouth of the cave. Only a few more steps remained. At that very moment, out of too much love and too much worry, Orpheus forgot the warning. He turned his head to look at Eurydice. He had just time to see her gentle face before she was drawn back into the darkness, softly, like mist melting in the wind. They reached out to each other, but their hands touched only empty air. Eurydice whispered a farewell, without a trace of reproach. Then she faded into the depths, this time forever.

Orpheus returned to the earth alone, carrying a sorrow that would not easily ease. But his music was never lost. The ancient Greeks kept telling one another about the young man whose song moved beasts, trees and mountain stones. It softened even the hearts that seemed the coldest in the world. The music of Orpheus, they believed, lived on longer than grief, longer than a human life.

And then, as the tale is told, the lyre of Orpheus was carried high into the sky and set among the countless stars. From then on, the sound that once made the whole world listen became a quiet shape against the night. On a starry night, anyone who looks up may find a small constellation in the shape of a lyre. It no longer makes a sound. But it keeps on twinkling there, the trace of a song once so beautiful that birds and beasts, grass and trees, rivers and mountains, and even the stars could never forget it.