Euridice

Euridice, also spelled Eurydice in English, is a figure in Greek mythology best known as the wife of the poet-musician Orpheus. The name derives from the Greek Eurydike, often interpreted as meaning “broad justice” or “wide justice.” In most versions, Eurydice is a nymph who dies from a snakebite while fleeing the pursuits of Aristaeus.

According to the myth, Orpheus travels to the underworld to retrieve her, playing his lyre to charm Hades and Persephone. They permit Eurydice to return with him to the world of the living on one condition: he must not look back at her until they have reached daylight. He looks back too soon, and Eurydice is lost to the living forever; various later tellings offer alternate endings or reunions, but the core tale centers on the failed escape from the underworld.

The Eurydice story has had a profound impact on Western art, music, and literature. It is the subject of early Baroque opera, notably Jacopo Peri’s Euridice (circa 1600), which is widely regarded as the first surviving opera, with a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. A later, more expansive treatment of the myth appears in Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607), which popularized the Orpheus narrative in a form that remains central to the repertoire. The tale also figures prominently in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and has inspired numerous poems, paintings, and films, making Eurydice a lasting symbol of love, loss, and the boundary between life and death.