Garcilaso de la Vega

Versions of Orpheus

The tale of Orpheus

From Virgil's Georgics, Book IV, 504-527

The function of the story in the Georgics presents classicists with a conundrum. It occupies part of the poem that deals with bee-keeping. Aristaeus, a bee-keeper, has lost his swarm through sickness and he sets out to enquire how it can be restored to life. In the course of his enquiries, he is directed to a river, where there are nymphs who weave stories, and from whom he hears the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. Because the story is in contrast to the agrarian theme of the Georgics and ressembles a minor epic, it is often referred to as the Aristaeus epyllion. The puzzle is how the tale relates to bee-keeping. The story of Orpheus is well-enough known; but the ending may not be so familiar, how Virgil brings his hero's story to a close after he loses Eurydice on the fateful journey back from Hades: he retreats to the frozen north, to the river Strymon, where he is murdered and dismembered by Bacchantes, and his severed head, cast into the river Hebrus, calls out her name as it is carried downstream.

    Virgil Georgics

  1. quid faceret? quo se rapta coniuge ferret?
  2. quo fletu manis, quae numina voce moveret?
  3. illa quidem Stygia nabat iam frigida cumba.
  4. septem illum totos perhibent ex ordine mensis
  5. rupe sub aeria deserti ad Strymonis undam
  6. flevisse, et gelidis haec evolvisse sub antris,
  7. mulcentem tigris et agentem carmine quercus;
  8. qualis populae maerens philomela sub umbra
  9. amissos queritur fetus, quos durus arator
  10. observans nido implumis detraxit; at illa
  11. flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
  12. integrat, et maestis late loca questibus implet.
  13. nulla Venus, non ulli animum flexere hymenaei.
  14. solus Hyperboreas glacies Tanaimque nivalem
  15. arvaque Rhipaeis numquam viduata pruinis
  16. lustrabat, raptam Euridicen atque inrita Ditis
  17. dona quaerens; spretae Ciconum quo munere matres
  18. inter sacra deum nocturnique orgia Bacchi
  19. discerptum latos iuvenum sparsere per agros.
  20. tum quoque marmorea caput a cervice revulsum
  21. gurgite cum medio portans Oeagrius Hebrus
  22. volveret, Eurydicen, vox ipsa et frigida lingua,
  23. a miseram Eurydicen! anima fugiente vocabat,
  24. Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripae.

    English translation

  1. What could he do? Where could he turn, twice robbed of his wife?
  2. With what tears move Hell, with what prayers its powers?
  3. She, alas, even now death-cold, was afloat in the Stygian bark.
  4. Month in, month out, seven whole months, men say
  5. beneath a towering cliff by lonely Strymon's water,
  6. he wept and deep in icy caverns, unfolded his tale,
  7. charming the tigers and bending the oaks to his song;
  8. even as the nightingale, mourning beneath the poplars shade,
  9. laments the loss of her brood that a churlish ploughman
  10. has spotted and torn unfledged from the nest: but she
  11. weeps all night long, and, perched on a twig,
  12. renews her piteous strain, filling the place around with sad laments.
  13. No love, no wedding-song could bend his soul;
  14. alone he roamed the northern ice, the snow-clad Tanais,
  15. and the fields ever-locked in Rhipaean frosts,
  16. bewailing Eurydice lost, and the gift of Dis withdrawn.
  17. But the Ciconian women, scorned by such devotion,
  18. in the midst of their sacred rites and midnight orgies of Bacchus
  19. tore the youth from limb to limb, and strewed him over the fields.
  20. Even then, while Oeagrian Hebrus swept and rolled in midstream,
  21. that head plucked from its marble neck,
  22. the voice and frozen tongue, with fleeting breath,
  23. cried Eurydice, ah, hapless Eurydice! Eurydice,
  24. the banks re-echoed, all the way down the stream.

Another version of the Orpheus story, in a minor work, De Orpheo, attributed to Virgil, highlights some of the features in the Georgics, especially the power of Orpheus song, making him into a culture hero, a civiliser.

    De Orpheo

  1. Threicius quondam vates fide creditur canora
  2. Movisse sensus acrium ferarum:
  3. Atque amnes tenuisse vagos,
  4. surda cantu concitasse saxa.
  5. Suavi sonosque modos testudinis arbores secutae
  6. Unbram feruntur praebuisse Vati.
  7. Sed placidis hominum dictis fera corda mitigavit:
  8. Doctaque vitam voce temperavit.
  9. Iustitiam docuit: coetu quoque congregavit uno:
  10. Moresque agresteis expoliavit Orpheus.

    English Translation

    On Orpheus

  1. By his melodious lyre,the erstwhile bard of Turacia is believed,
  2. to have moved the senses of strong, wild beasts,
  3. and to have held the flowing rivers,
  4. and by his song to have summoned deaf rocks;
  5. trees are said to have followed his notes
  6. and to have offered shade to the gentle bard.
  7. But with still words he softened the fierce hearts of men
  8. and with learned voice made their lives mild.
  9. He taught them justice and brought them together in one assembly,
  10. and refined their rough customsName=venusindex; HotwordStyle=BookDefault;