0774ANCIENTOrpheus

Ovid. "Orpheus the Pederast." Books 10-11 in Metamorphoses. 8 AD.

According to some versions of the story—most famously Ovid’s, from books ten and eleven of “Metamorphoses”—Orpheus swears off women after losing Eurydice, and turns instead to young men. Ovid portrayed Orpheus as the first figure to introduce “pederasty,” or the love of adolescent boys, to the Thracians. “Three times the sun had ended the year, in watery Pisces,” he writes, “and Orpheus had abstained from the love of women…. Indeed, he was the first of the Thracian people to transfer his love to young boys, and enjoy their brief springtime, and early flowering, this side of manhood.”

Some artists and writers have drawn upon Ovid’s description of Orpheus as the pioneer of “pederasty.” The fifteenth-century German artist Albrecht Dürer, for example, highlighted this detail in his famous “Death of Orpheus” drawing (1494), which shows the Maenads whipping Orpheus before they kill him. A ribbon in a treetop behind this violent scene holds the German words Orfeus, der erst puseran: “Orpheus, the first pederast.” Dürer clearly enjoyed embellishing his death scene with Ovid’s controversial line. I much prefer Ovid’s version in its entirety—especially his heartbreaking description of the natural world’s grief over Orpheus’s murder, sung poet to poet: “The trees that often gathered to your song, shedding their leaves, mourned you with bared crowns.” - Rachel Arons, The New Yorker.