Text and Image Archive
Orpheus Losing Eurydice to Hades
Gordian III, AE 34, Hadrianopolis, Thrace. Thracian Orpheus losing Eurydice to Hades or Hermes, three Thracian rivers flanking. Image courtesy of www.wildwinds.com. The tableau seems indebted to a 5th-c. BC bas-relief which survives in a number of Roman-era copies, one of which in the Naples Archeological Museum even names the doomed couple, with Hermes, the guide of the dead; for more detailed discussions of such representations see Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, IV, "Eurydike," I.B.5-6, and Jesnick, 12, nn. 35, 39.  Back to Famous Orpheus |
