OrpheusEurydiceANCIENT_Naples

OrpheusEurydiceANCIENT_Naples

OGCMA s.v. "Orpheus and Eurydice"
Classical Sources:
Plato, Symposium, 179c-e
Diodorus Siculus, Bibl., 4.25.4, 81-82
Vergil, Georgics 4.315-558
Ovid Metamorphoses 10.1-85, 11.66
Apollodorus Libr. 1.3.2
Hyginus Poet. Astron. 2.7

Marble relief, found at Torre del Greco (near Herculaneum), National Archaeological Museum, Naples, inv. no. 6727

ML p. 389

This relief panel is a Roman copy of a 5th-century Athenian original, originals deocrating a choragic or funerary monument in Athens. Its use in a Roman villa on the Bay of Naples spoke to the taste of the Roman owner.

The Louvre's "Relief d'Hermès, Orphée, et Eurydice" (click) is the same scene with different (erroneous?) captions. The Louvre website draws no attention to the Eurydice/Antiope misdirection.

Ancient Greek marble relief depicting Hermes, Eurydice, and Orpheus in flowing drapery, capturing a moment of interaction

Three individuals are named in Greek captions over their heads: Hermes, Eurydice, and Orpheus. (The last name is especially interesting for being written backwards, mirrored right-to-left.)

They don't need names: Hermes Psychopompos' broad-brimmed hat (petasus), Orpheus' lyre, Eurydice's tender look at her husband all belie the true identity each. The interpretation of the action, though, is more compelling.

Is Hermes gently pulling Eurydice away? Or, is Orpheus holding back Eurydice's veil at the moment of first meeting? Is Eurydice, who touches her husband's shoulder with her left hand, just now turning her right foot to follow Hermes?

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.