Orpheus and Eurydice

Foreshadowing occurs when an author gives an indication of something that will happen later in the work. Foreshadowing is like an omen, good or bad, that suggests a future development of the plot. This may not be entirely obvious at the time but becomes more apparent in retrospect. Ovid uses this literary device at the beginning of his version, when he describes all the things that go wrong on the wedding day—Hymen cannot do anything right—before Eurydice is bitten by the snake.

Another example of foreshadowing in Ovid occurs while Orpheus is mourning Eurydice. He refuses the attentions of other women, thus upsetting them: “Yet many a woman burned with passion for / The bard, and many grieved at their repulse” (Book 10, Lines 86-87). This foreshadows the death of Orpheus, which Ovid relates in Book 11, when the scorned women tear him apart.

An allusion is a brief mention or indirect reference to another work of literature, or a historical or mythological event, person, or place. The author expects the reader to recognize the reference, which may add depth, resonance, and a new perspective to the poem. Both Virgil and Ovid densely pack their versions of the story with allusions to Greek mythology and Greek topography.

Mythological allusions in these poems refer to Hymen, Cerberus, Tantalus, Ixion, the Danaids, Sisyphus, the Furies, Olenos, Lethaea, Apollo, the Maenads (female followers of Dionysus), and Naiads and Dryads, as well as the mythological story of the ravishment of Persephone by Hades. The authors also allude to historical and mythological places: Thrace, Thessaly (in Greece), Rhodope (a mountain range in Thrace), Hebrus (a river in Thrace), as well as the river Styx in Hades.

Mentioned in Virgil but not in Ovid are Cocytus (a river in Hades), Avernus (a lake near Naples that the Romans regarded as the entrance to the underworld), Pangaeüs (a mountain in western Thrace), Tanaïs (the Greek name for the river Don, in Russia, which was sometimes regarded in ancient Greece as the border between Europe and Asia), Strymon (a river in Thrace), Rhesus (a region in Thrace), and the princess Orithyia.

The pathetic fallacy is a literary device in which human qualities are attributed to inanimate forces or objects. In Virgil’s version, the mountains and rivers mourn and weep after Eurydice dies from the snake bite. In Ovid’s version, it is Orpheus rather than Eurydice whose death is mourned by nature in an even more thorough manner:

The sorrowing birds, the creatures of the wild,

The woods that often followed as he sang,

The flinty rocks and stones, all wept and mourned

For Orpheus; forest trees cast down their leaves,

Tortured in grief, and rivers too, men say,

Were swollen with their tears (Book 11, Lines 47-52).

The pathetic fallacy occurs again in the final line of Virgil’s version: After the severed head of Orpheus still calls out Eurydice’s name as it floats down the river, “the river banks repeated that ‘Eurydice’, a dolorous refrain” (Line 75). This is echoed by Ovid at the same point in the narrative. As Orpheus’s head floats down the Hebrus, “His lyre sent sounds of sorrow and his tongue, / Lifeless, still murmured sorrow, and the banks / Gave sorrowing reply” (Book 11, Lines 49-51).

Anaphora is a poetic device in which a word or a phrase is repeated at the beginning of several grammatical units to create emphasis. Virgil, for example, repeats the word “te” (“you”) four times in two lines to emphasize the depths of Orpheus’s sorrow at the death of Eurydice and how much he is thinking of her: “te, dulcis coniunx, te solo in litore secum, / te veniente die, te decedente canebat” (Lines 13-14). Here are those two lines in Fallon’s translation; “Of you, sweet wife, of you, he sang his sorry song, / all lonesome on the shore, at dawning of the day, of you, at day’s decline, of you.”

There is also an example of anaphora in Ovid’s version, which he modeled closely on Virgil. It comes in Book 11, and is a direct address (a literary device known as apostrophe) to Orpheus immediately after his death. There is the same fourfold repetition of “te”: “Te maestae volucres, Orpheu, te turba ferarum, / te rigidi silices, te carmina saepe secutae / fleverunt sylvae” (Lines 44-46). The four occurrences of “you” are captured in Lee Yen-fen’s translation: “For you the sorrowful birds, Orpheus, for you the crowd of wild animals, / For you the hard stones, for you the trees which often / Followed your songs, wept” (“Ovid Rewriting Virgil: Two Versions of ‘Orpheus and Eurydice.’” Foreign Language Studies, Vol. 7, Issue 7, January 2008).