Eurydice

Eurydice is a figure in Greek mythology, best known as the wife of the legendary musician Orpheus. The name is of Greek origin, commonly interpreted as meaning “wide justice” or “broad justice.” In most traditions Eurydice is described as a mortal woman or a nymph who dies shortly after her wedding when she is bitten by a snake.

Her story centers on Orpheus’s journey to the underworld to retrieve her. Struck by grief and armed with his extraordinary musical talent, Orpheus persuades Hades and Persephone to allow Eurydice to return with him to the world of the living. They are granted a conditional release: Eurydice must follow him and he must not look back at her until they have reached the upper world. At the last moment, Orpheus glances back, and Eurydice is lost to the realm of the dead forever, returning to the Underworld as they near the surface.

The myth has many variants and has profoundly influenced Western art and literature. It is the subject of numerous visual works, poems, and musical compositions. Notable early operatic adaptations include Jacopo Peri and Giulio Cacciini’s Euridice (early 1600s), one of the first operas, and Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1774/1762 in different versions), which emphasizes the emotional arc of loss and redemption.

In modern usage, Eurydice and her lover Orpheus symbolize themes of love, memory, and the peril of looking back at what one seeks to reclaim. The tale remains a touchstone for explorations of mortality, longing, and the limits of human agency.