Episode 68 – Don’t Look Back – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 68 Show Notes

Source: Greek Mythology

This week on MYTH, we will fight death with the power of music. You’ll learn that you should always follow the directions, that rock stars have always been sexy, and that music hath charms to soothe the savage beast and/or breast. Then, in Gods and Monsters, the moon is getting kidnappy again. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 68, “Don’t Look Back”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Before we get started on today’s episode (covering one of my all-time favorite stories), I wanted to acknowledge a little milestone that we’ve just hit: this, right here, right now is the 100th episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated (those multi-part epics really threw off the numbering). I went back and did a little word count of my transcripts and over the last 100 episodes (this one included), I’ve written 612,000 words over just under 3 years. Thank you all for listening to me ramble on about one of my favorite topics to annoy people I’ve just met. And now, onto the story.
This week, we’re getting into the tale of Orpheus and his beloved Eurydice. Other than Aristotle, all of the ancient writers were of the opinion that Orpheus had once been a real, living human being, most likely living and dying several generations before Homer and most likely from the ancient city-state of Thrace (with Pindar of Thebes identifying him as the son of the Thracian king Oeagrus and Calliope, the Muse of lyrical poetry. The earliest surviving reference comes from a fragment of a 6th century BC poem by Ibycus, though he is not mentioned by either Homer or Hesiod.
Different ancient writers ascribed a lot of mythical knowledge as originating with Orpheus, though several claim that he had instead introduced order and civilization to a savage and brutal people. He was widely believed to be a seer and to be practiced in the magical arts (and was often mistrusted as a trickster). His first major heroic deed was journeying with the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece. That is an epic story entirely deserving of its own episode, so I won’t get into the background now, but suffice it to say that a group of legendary heroes had all gathered together to seek out a magical MacGuffin on a ship known as the Argo. Along the way, the sailors encountered the sirens (who pop up later and more famously in the Odyssey, the tale that picks up immediately after the Iliad, which we covered back in Episodes 26A-O).
The sisters (different writers claim anywhere from 2-8) lived on three small, rocky islands known as the Sirenum Scopuli, sharp rocks south of the Isle of Capri, usually depicted as beautiful, naked women (though some statues show them having the feet, wings, and tail of a lovely bird). They would sing from these deadly rocks, and their song was said to be so hauntingly beautiful that anyone who heard it would be irresistibly drawn to it (though mythology is rife with examples of stories claiming that women were so beautiful that the men just couldn’t help themselves, and I call bullshit). Some later writers have interpreted them as cannibals, killing and eating the doomed sailors, but Circe’s description is more evocative of women surrounded by the corpses of everyone who tried to take the claim the siren song as their own and dashed themselves onto the jagged rocks, sinking into the sea and drowning due entirely to their own arrogance and stupidity or else clinging to the rocks and eventually starving to death (since the Sirens had no need for food, being kept alive through their divine natures). Either way, the song of the siren was almost certainly meant to sing to the soul rather than the flesh (based off of Odysseus’ response when he hears their song in his story). It is implied that the Sirens know something of the mysteries of the past and the future, and these mysteries are hinted at in the siren song.
Jason, who led the Argonauts, had been warned by the centaur Chiron that the journey would be impossible without Orpheus. You see, Orpheus was a musician, although that doesn’t even begin to do him justice. Orpheus was said to play a golden lyre (a stringed instrument akin to a harp) given to him by Apollo himself, who also taught him to play (some versions of the story claim that Apollo, god of music, was Orpheus’ true father). All of the sources agreed that only the gods ever created more beautiful music than Orpheus. When the Argo came to the island of the Sirens, rather than plugging their ears with wax (as Odysseus’ crew would later do), Orpheus simply drew his lyre and outplayed the shit out of the Sirens. His music was so incredibly beautiful that men at sea would rather listen to him than a group of beautiful, naked women speaking forbidden knowledge. He was said to be able to charm the beasts and even the very rocks themselves into following after him with his music.
The most famous story of Orpheus is undeniably the tale of his love of the beautiful Eurydice. The story is covered by both Virgil and Ovid (two Roman poetry powerhouses), and I’ll be using the version from the fantastic book by Edith Hamilton (which is the version I first read and which sparked my love of mythology in the first place).
Orpheus was the rock star of his day, only mixed in with the deep soulfulness of one of the great poets (his mother being the Muse of epic poetry after all). He could have had his pick of pretty much anyone he wanted (and this is normally where you would say something like ‘women wanted him and men wanted to be him’, but Orpheus was Freddy Mercury, Mozart, Frank Sinatra, and Jimi Hendrix all rolled into one, so I’m guessing pretty much everyone wanted to be him and wanted to fuck him, especially since many Greek heroes were totally down with a little dick). It was Eurydice though that caught the master musician’s heart (although we are not told when or how that happened exactly). The two fell deeply and totally in love and were soon pledged to be married to each other (much to the consternation of many, many ancient groupies, I imagine).
In celebration of their happiness (and because Orpheus had the blood of the Muses, and maybe the gods, in his veins), Hymen, god of marriage, was called upon to bless their nuptials. He came, but the tidings he bore were not happy ones. According to Thomas Bullfinch, when Hyman arrived, the torches lighting the wedding ceremony smoked so badly that everyone in attendance was brought to tears – an ill omen, though none in attendance knew just how dire it was to be.
There are several versions of what happened next, though all end the same way. In each of them, Eurydice was out wandering in the forest with her bridesmaids, who happened to be nymphs (minor nature deities). In the version related by Hamilton, the woman and the nymphs were dancing in the woods, celebrating her wedding (it’s unclear just how long after the actual marriage this happens, but definitely not very long). In Virgil’s version, a shepherd and minor god (mostly to the Athenians) by the name of Aristaeus was also out in the woods on that particular day. His name loosely translates to ‘the best’, and was a sort of cult title in many places, so it’s likely that the actions of a bunch of different people all ended up getting lumped into one guy, depicted as traveling to all of these different places and doing all of these different things (most famously introducing the art of bee-keeping).
In a third version, Eurydice was out walking with her people, the Cicones, in tall grass immediately after the actual ceremony and caught the attention of a satyr (a male nature spirit), instead of Aristaeus. This is the version that always made the most sense to me, so that’s the one I’m going with. Satyrs were mostly human, though with the ears and tail of a horse (and sometimes horse-like legs, though typically not) and, most importantly, a constant, massive, throbbing erection. They are hideous creatures, with wiry, mane-like hair, bestial faces, and snub noses that are almost snouts. They were companions of Dionysus, god of wine, and were always naked, usually drunk, and definitely down to party. Satyrs were sometimes depicted in masturbation or bestiality, just to give you an idea of what’s about to go down.
As you can almost certainly guess, satyrs are well-known for frequently attempting to seduce mortal women and nymphs alike, though just as often, they decided to skip seduction and go straight to violent rape. The satyr saw Eurydice, who was even more beautiful than her divine bridesmaids, and she in turn saw him seeing her. She could see the lust in his eyes and she could see his already-erect dick turning in her direction, so she did the sensible thing and got the fuck out of Dodge. Her bridesmaids scattered as well, all of them fleeing the brutal attentions of this sexual predator. Unfortunately for Eurydice, she was the one he gave chase to.
The newlywed raced through the tall grass, terrified and trying to get back to the party and the relative safety of the crowd. In her completely justified fear, Eurydice didn’t pay attention to where she was stepping, and she felt a flash of white hot agony in her heel and her leg gave out from underneath her. She crashed to the ground, rolling with her momentum, and came to a stop looking back in the direction she had come. There, thrashing in its death throes in the crushed grass, was a massive viper (or a nest of vipers, according to some versions). She had stepped on it, breaking its back, and it in turn had bit her on the foot. She could feel the poison burning in her blood as it was carried up her leg and into her heart. Only seconds after she fell to the earth, Eurydice was dead.
She hadn’t quite made it back to the wedding, but she had gotten close enough for a group of men to chase the fucking satyr away and for Orpheus to rush to his brand-new bride and hold her already-cooling corpse in his arms. He had loved her truly and deeply, and he screamed his pain to the heavens. When he was finally persuaded to stop clutching her body and weeping over it, he did the only thing he could do in the face of such unbearable agony – he poured it into his music. Orpheus took up his lyre and played a dirge for his beloved wife, taken in the prime of her life and far too soon, and he put every bit of talent and raw emotion he had into it. Such was the power of his gift and his grief that the entire planet heard it, and all wept with his pain. And when I say all, I don’t just mean the people; I don’t mean just the gods; I don’t even just mean the living animals. By all, I mean motherfucking all. The rocks wept stone tears to mourn dead Eurydice, and the very mountains shook with Orpheus’ rage and despair.
Even after he finished the dirge, the emotion was too much. He couldn’t bear such pain, and he was at a loss for how to go on with his life without her. In some versions, Apollo (who was either simply moved by Orpheus’ music or may have been grieving with his son) gives Orpheus advice. In the versions from Ovid and Virgil though, Orpheus is left alone with the absence where his wife should be, and he decides he’s not going to fucking take this. Eurydice didn’t deserve to die like that, and he was her husband goddammit, so he was going to do something about this.
I mean, he’s probably going through the 5 stages of grief right about now, and is experiencing a nice melange of denial, anger, and bargaining, and were he almost any other man, his refusal to accept his wife’s death would have been completely understandable madness. Orpheus was semi-divine though, and he had a gift for music that no one else before or since has ever matched. He had himself an idea, and it was completely batshit crazy: Orpheus was going to kick in Hades’ fucking door and bring his wife back from the land of the dead. This was almost certainly a suicide mission, but fortunately, Orpheus didn’t give a shit about dying. One way or another, he was going to be with Eurydice. He would save her or die trying.
It’s unclear exactly how he went about finding the entrance to Death, which is notoriously hard to find without, you know, dying first, but as I mentioned before he was a seer and a magician, so I’m guessing he made with the magic. Or maybe he asked Apollo. Either way, he found the entrance, home to a number of minor gods: Penthos, Curae, Nosoi, Geras, Phobos, Limos, Aporia, Algea, Hypnos, and Thanatos (Grief, Anxiety, Disease, Old Age, Fear, Hunger, Need, Agony, Sleep, and Death) live on this side of the threshold (sometimes with Gaudia, or Guilty Pleasures). On the other side live Polemos, the Erinyes, and Eris (War, the Furies, and Discord), along with a number of terrible monsters, which vary depending on the version of the story. They made for a pretty formidable border guard to keep the living out and the dead in, but pretty much everyone had planned for a violent assault, not a lone musician. Orpheus was able to walk up to the gate and, through the sheer beauty and pathos of his playing, entrance all of the gods and monsters into stillness until he was safely past.
There are six rivers in the land of the dead, with names that reflect the emotions associated with death: Styx, the river of hatred, which circles the Underworld 7 times; Acheron, the river of pain, where souls must be ferried across by the dread ferryman Charon if they have the coin to pay his fee, described by Virgil in the Aeneid as having hollow eyes that belch fire like a furnace above a wild, unkempt beard and a filthy, greasy body wrapped in a soiled loincloth; Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, whose waters bring oblivion; Phlegethon, the river of fire, which leads into the depths of Tartarus according to Plato; Cocytus, the river of wailing; and Oceanus, the river that encircles the world and marks the eastern edge of the Underworld.
Orpheus came to the Acheron and, as a few other heroes had managed, convinced the ferryman to take his living body across the river and into the depths of Hades. Once across, Orpheus approached the gates of the Underworld and their famous guardian – Cerberus, the monstrous three-headed dog (who you will find on our logo because he’s freakin’ awesome). The offspring of Echidna and Typhon (remember him from back in Episode 26H?), he usually (but not always) has three heads and a serpent for a tail. As much as I want the derivation of Cerberus to be kerberos, or spotted (which would make his name Spot), a lot of scholars dispute this origin and it probably isn’t true. Sorry. There have been a lot of options put forth as to where the name came from, but none are definitive. Some ancient scholars (and by early, I mean as early as 6th century BC) claim that Cerberus was not a dog at all but a large, venomous snake and was only described as the hound of Hades because it functioned as a watchdog, killing anyone it bit immediately. Homer doesn’t actually describe Cerberus during his account of the labors of Hercules (which we haven’t covered yet), so it’s possible.
Outside of the story of Hercules, this is one of the few where Cerberus is actually mentioned. If you’re a fan of Harry Potter (and only Harry Potter because Rowling is dead to me), you might remember the scene in the Sorcerer’s Stone where the only thing that can allow them to bypass Fluffy, the giant three-headed dog, is a bit of music. That is a direct result of this story because Orpheus lulls the hound of Hades to sleep, maybe the only time in the dog’s life that it slept on the job. The bitter music that issued from his lyre washed through the realm of Death, and all of the famously tortured souls knew peace for a brief moment. The wheel of Ixion (Episode 26K) stopped its fiery spin; Tantalus (Episode 26O) forgot his thirst; Sisiphus (Episode 26G) set his burden aside and sat down. Even the Furies (Episode 26K) found themselves weeping for the first (and probably last) time in all of eternity. No one and nothing could be unmoved by the passion and sorrow wound through the music of Orpheus.
Down and down he went, following the road of death, until he came to the thrones of the dread lords of the Underworld. There sat Hades and Persephone, their expressions as cold and unyielding and certain as death, quite literally. Orpheus looked upon the stony faces of two incredibly powerful deities, and he began to play. The music stirred even their hard souls, and then Orpheus began to sing. Edith Hamilton’s translation is powerful, so I’m going to quote it here.
“O Gods who rule the dark and silent world, To you all those of a woman born must come. All lovely things at last go down to you. You are the debtor who is always paid. A little while we tarry up on earth, then we are yours forever and forever. But I seek one who came to you too soon: the bud was plucked before the flower bloomed. I tried to bear my loss; I could not bear it. Love was too strong a god. O king, you know, if that old tale men tell is true, how once the flowers saw the rape of Persephone (rape here used to mean kidnapping). Then weave again for sweet Eurydice life’s pattern that was taken from the loom too quickly. See, I ask a little thing: only that you will lend, not give, her to me. She will be yours when her years’ span is full.”
And jealous Hades, who never, ever gives up a soul that rightfully belongs to him, thought on his own devotion to his beloved wife (and he is maybe the only major god in the Greek pantheon without out any demigods from fucking around on the side, so I think it stands to reason that he really did love Persephone, and some of the stories say that Hades seduced Perspephone rather than kidnapping her, so she may have loved him right back). Not many remember this, but Hades has a poet’s soul (as he is called upon as a judge of poetry in Aristophanes’ Frogs) and Orpheus’ song touched his iron heart enough for him to shed an iron tear. Hades gave a small nod of permission. Orpheus would be permitted to take his beloved bride back to the living world again.
Of course, there was one condition. Hades summoned the dead woman’s soul and brought her to Orpheus. “This is a thing that has never been done before, and it must be done a certain way. If you would lead this dead soul back to the mortal world, then your mortal soul must be her guide. You will lead, and she will follow in your shadow until you reach the light of the sun again. You must not look back at her until she stands in the light, or she will forever be trapped in the shadows of the Underworld. Do you understand?” Orpheus nodded, his throat too choked with emotion to speak. He was going to have Eurydice back again! He had done it!
With a deep bow of thanks, Orpheus began to retrace his steps. Back up the dread road he went, past the tormented souls (who were once again being tormented), past Cerberus (who I presume had been given instructions to let them pass unmolested), and back to the ferry over the river Acheron. Charon carried them across the water and Orpheus began his final ascent. Here, in the quiet place between the land of the living and the dead, Orpheus could hear the quiet sound of his footsteps echoing in the empty caves. His steps slowed slightly. He heard his steps, and nothing else. There was only one set of feet striking the stone. Now that it was quiet, he was certain.
Orpheus knew the stories. Hades was an honorable god, and the river Styx, the boundary of his domain, was the thing that the gods would swear unbreakable oaths on. Hades had given him his solemn vow that Eurydice would follow behind him, and Hades was not a trickster god. Most likely, he wasn’t hearing the sound of another’s steps because a ghost didn’t walk on stone. It made perfect sense. Of course she was there. Of course she was behind him. Of course she was following him.
Orpheus repeated this to himself over and over as he climbed and the light went from pitch black to gray to dim light. Ahead, he could see the bright glow of day from the entrance. He was almost there. One hundred yards. Fifty. Ten. Orpheus stepped over the threshold, the sun warming skin grown icy in the realm of the dead, and he couldn’t wait any longer. He was out, right? He turned around to watch his beloved reenter the world.
There she stood, exactly as Hades had promised, and every bit as beautiful as he had remembered. He held out his arms, desperate to embrace her, to feel the warmth of her skin against his, but she didn’t move from where she stood just inside the cave entrance. And her face…the look of utter anguish shattered his heart as he remembered the words that Hades had spoken. She hadn’t yet stepped out into the light, and now she could not. Ghostly tears glistened on translucent skin as she whispered a single word to her beloved husband: “farewell.” And then she was gone.
He screamed his anguish and rushed for the cave. He had done it once, he could do it again! Except he couldn’t. The gods had already bent the rules by allowing a mortal man to enter the Underworld and return again (an opportunity granted to a few worthy heroes and demigods), but no man could be permitted to enter that dread place a second time until the hour of his death. Orpheus clawed desperately at the gates, but could find no purchase: he was trapped in the land of the living without his wife because he had let fear make him careless and impatient. Eurydice would stay dead because of his failure.
Orpheus had only thought he had known despair before. When she had died, he had been powerless to stop it, but he had also been utterly blameless. Now, he cursed himself for a fool. Orpheus went mad with grief and utterly abandoned his will to live. He began to play one final song, a dirge begging for the sweet embrace of death so that he might journey once more into the sunless depths and be with Eurydice again. If she could not come to him, then he would go to her.
There are a few different versions of what happened next, but they all end the same way: Orpheus gets his death wish. In one, wild beasts are drawn by his music and devour him. In another, Zeus strikes him down with a lightning bolt, fearing that Orpheus will reveal the secrets of the Underworld to any who find him since he doesn’t give a fuck about anything anymore and has no reason to stay silent.
In the version from Hamilton, he wanders alone in the wilderness, coming again to his native Thrace. The cities of man hold no appeal for him, so he abandons them for the wilds, alone but for the rocks and the trees and doing nothing but playing his own death knell on his lyre. He came upon a band of the Maenads, the female followers of Dionysus (the counterparts of the satyrs from earlier) whose name translates to “raving ones”. They were known for getting blind drunk and celebrating by fucking shit up. They were immune to fire and invulnerable to all mortal weapons, and were fond of ripping apart fully-grown bulls or massive trees with their bare hands for shits and giggles (a reflection of the madness of Dionysus himself, since wine can lead to dancing or destruction with equal ease). They saw Orpheus and were driven mad by the despair in his song, and they ripped him to bloody shreds to shut him the fuck up. His head was torn from his body and cast into the river Herbus, floating along until it was found by the Muses (his mother and aunts, remember). They gently recovered his severed head and gathered up his mutilated limbs and torso and brought them all to a tomb at the base of Mount Olympus. There, it is said, the nightingales sing more sweetly than anywhere else in the world.
And that’s the depressingly amazing story of Orpheus and his lost love. I don’t think I’ve ever come across another story of doomed romance that touched me quite the way this one does. There’s something about Orpheus walking boldly into the very jaws of Death for the sake of love and doing the impossible, but losing it at the last moment because he couldn’t bear to wait just a few moments longer that just strikes a powerfully bittersweet chord. It’s a tale that has always stuck with me, and it seemed appropriate for this 100th episode, with its themes of passion and patience and perseverance (and probably some other alliterative p-words). When I first started this show almost three years ago, I had no idea if anyone would actually be following along behind me. I had to keep going, sitting here alone in the quiet stillness of my library where I record, and trust that there was someone out there listening. It means so much to me that you have all come along with me on this strange journey, and I’m looking forward to continuing on. So now that I’ve got this melancholy out of my system, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s goddess is Selene.
Selene is the Greek goddess of the moon in the same way that Helios is the god of the sun, and is linked to the moon goddess Artmeis in the same way that Helios is linked to Artermis’ twin brother Apollo. She is the incarnation of the moon, driving across the sky each night in her silver chariot drawn by winged horses and her Roman equivalent, Luna, gave us the word lunar as well as the name Phoebe (the feminine form of the word ‘bright’), much as the sun was also called Phoebus.
Hesiod gives the version of her origin that is most common. In his Theogony, the sun Titan Hyperion wedded his sister Theia, and they had three children: Helios, Selene, and Eos, or the sun, the moon, and the dawn. Her most famous story, however, is of her doomed love of the mortal man Endymion.
There are a number of conflicting accounts of exactly who Endymion was, with some versions claiming him as a prince, while Theocritus calls him a shepherd and Pliny the Elder describes him as an astronomer, and the first human to make note of the movements and phases of the moon. Both the role of astronomer and shepherd are widely used as both give him a very good reason to be out in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. Going again with Edith Hamilton, I’ll be using the version from Theocritus.
Endymion’s name is derived from endyein, which means ‘to dive’, and probably refers to the process of the sun diving into the sea as the moon rises, and a likely origin for this story. He was apparently a very pretty man but, being a shepherd, he spent most of his time alone in the wilderness, watching over his flock during the day and sleeping alongside them to protect them if anything came near at night. Selene looked down from her chariot each night on a mostly empty world, and Endymion’s incredible beauty caught her eye.
Each night, she rode through the heavens, and each night, she gazed down at the beautiful, sleeping form of this young shepherd. Selene grew to love this mortal man, and she decided that she needed to have him for her own. One night, she descended down to the mortal world and to the blissfully sleeping Endymion. Showing about as much restraint as we’ve come to expect from Greek gods, she covers his unconscious form with kisses without ever considering if she should bother to ask first. They’re not great with the whole concept of ‘consent’.
She took the sleeping mortal and carried him to a cave high on the side of Mount Latmia and she gifted him with immortality so that she might never lose him, but this gift came at a terrible price. Endymion would remain forever young and beautiful, but he would also never wake up ever again. Each night, Selene comes to him and, while he presumably has some very sexual dreams, she rapes him and then goes on her way. Thus are the two ever together and ever apart, doomed to never actually meet each other.
There are actually a couple of alternate versions of what exactly transpired, though all end with Endymion immortal and comatose. In the version from Apollonius of Rhodes, Endymion is a son of Zeus, and so Selene asks him to grant the mortal man eternal youth so that he will never leave and apparently Zeus had a twisted sense of irony and a total lack of any fatherly urge to protect his son (which is completely on-brand for Zeus because, say it with me, sky gods are assholes). In another version, it’s Selene herself who asks for perpetual sleep specifically because she is so entranced with the beauty of his peaceful repose, and Zeus grants her request that he forever remain exactly like that. In still another version, Endymion either has or tries to have an affair with Hera and Zeus, being totally hypocritical, flies into a jealous rage and punishes him by putting him to sleep forever (and Selene falls in love with the eternally sleeping youth and cares for him, coming to him each night and fucking his sleeping brains out, eventually giving birth to 50 daughters (which some scholars equate to the 50 months of the ancient Olympiad). Whatever the reason, Endymion lies in his cave to this very day, asleep and beautiful and cared for by the lovely, distant moon.
I just recorded a guest spot on the View from the Carnival podcast, talking about mental health and what it was like growing up as an undiagnosed autistic. It’ll be up on Spotify in the not too distant future, so check it out!
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll climb the ancient peaks of wind-swept Tibet. You’ll discover that children shouldn’t trust adults, that human hearts are best served in sesame oil, and that guilt can literally kill you. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll meet the half-human, half-snake, and all sexy water gods from a secret underground kingdom. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.