Ep. 19 - Metamorphoses | Ovid

“To the music of his strings he sang, and all the bloodless spirits wept to hear; and Tantalus forgot the fleeing water, Ixion’s wheel was tranced; Sisyphus sat rapt upon his stone and the Furies’ cheeks, it’s said, were wet with tears; And Hades’ queen and He whose scepter rules the Underworld could not deny the prayer, and called Eurydice.” Such is the power of Orpheus’ melodious persuasion. With lyre in hand, and a song in his heart, the troubled troubadour is able to convince his every listener—inanimate or divine—with an eloquence by which not only god and Titan, but vegetable and stone were suddenly arrested, or magically moved. Here, at the outset of the tenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we follow the musical genius down into the depths of the chthonic beyond. To our great pleasure, a multitude of myths will greet us along the way.