Ovid's Metamorphose

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Recommended: Ovid's theme of transformation in metamorphosis

In his Symposium, Plato offers a different version of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. In his account, Orpheus is depicted as a wimp rather than a lover. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, when Orpheus is heart-wrenched over the loss of his love, he mourns her death by playing music so beautifully it moves the gods, leading Hades to invite Orpheus to the Underworld. There, he is offered a deal: if he walks back out of the Underworld to the land of the living without looking back to see if Eurydice is following him, they can both stay alive together. However, if he turns around, she will be pulled back to the Underworld and stay there. Sadly, Orpheus turns around towards the very end, unable to continue without seeing his love. Thus, in this version, Eurydice dies a second time and stays in the Underworld without Orpheus. Plato, however, takes a very different path. Rather than mourning the …show more content…

Orpheus not being a musician (due to Plato’s supposed hatred of music) both changes the course of the story and removes the romantic element from which inspiration can be drawn from; in Ovid’s account, Orpheus and Eurydice’s love was so strong that a mortal moved the gods to award him the opportunity to save the soul of his loved one from the depths of the Underworld. Plato crushes those romantic thoughts by not making Orpheus a musician, stripping a major component of his identity. Without the music, Orpheus is but a man who loves a woman. The development of Plato’s version is not very inspiring: his supposed love with Eurydice was rubbish, with him not even willing to take his own life in order to be reunited with her. Whereas Ovid presents Orpheus as a hero of sorts, Plato offers him up as a pathetic poser, unworthy of Eurydice. Ultimately, with the grim ending of Plato’s account of the Greek myth, it can be said that Plato’s version is hopeless and depressing in comparison with Ovid’s more positive

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