ABSTRACT
This tradition is, in itself, a composite one. Indeed, the myth owes its popularity with modem listeners and readers to what might be called its romantic, almost Tristanian quality: the tragic fate of a pair of lovers separated by death, and Orpheus’s subsequent failure to rescue his beloved from the underworld due to his inability to resist the impulse to rest his eyes on Eurydice for an excess of love (‘avidus ... videndi’, ‘eager to see her’ (Metam., X, 56), as Ovid put it)2 - a perfect combination of eros and thanatos if ever there was one. However, both Ovid’s and Virgil’s versions (with Virgil, not surprisingly, much more attuned than the former to the socio-ethical implications of the myth, as Charles Segal,3 among others, has shown) still retain visible traces of a different, more ancient tradition, centred on the magic or, better, shamanic dimension inherent in the Greek Orpheus, gifted as he is with the supernatural powers of the singer and poet who brings order to the world especially through music.4
