The ancient greeks tell alot of stories about individuals going to Hell and back. Some center around the death of someone and another going down to the otherworld to bring them back. The story we will look at today is the story of Orpheus.
Orpheus was a man of disputed origins. Not like the bible verses which make the origins of it’s protagonists clear, Orpheus has a couple of origin accounts. His father may have either been Apollo or that of a human king. The mother of Orpheus was either a mortal woman or a muse. Most today will agree that he was a real person. It is then reasonable to assume that he was an actual person that was surrounded by stories. Obviously, it was he that started the Orphic cult and since we see music play prominately in his stories, he must have been quite a musician.
Oddly enough, many early Christian believers took bible verses as well as the account of Orpheus and placed them with each other. Early Christian saw parrallels. The account of Orpheus going down to Hell starts like this. While his wife was trapsing among the grasses, she was hit by the satyrs. In her efforts to escape, Eurydice fell among vipers and she was killed. She was found by Orpheus who, overcome with grief, played such sad and mournful songs that all the gods mourned with him. They advised him to go down to the Otherworld to bring her back. Orpheus went down and played music for Hades and his wife, the music melted their hearts. They let Eurydice go on one condition: Orpheus must walk in front of Eurydice and not look back until both had reached the middle earth. Both did a good job for a while. But overcome with anxiety, once he reach middle earth, Orpheus turned to look at his bride. But he forget that both needed to be in middle earth before he turned around, and she vanished forever.
This has echoes back to the Gilgamesh story in which Gilgamesh is able to see his lost companion but only for a while and is unable to hold onto him. The Bible also tells of the fact that it is appointed for man to die once. Once a person dies, they will not come back to the earth, until the final judgement. Both old stories and bible verses tell the same tale that as difficult as it seems to be to let our cherished ones go – we should, because they can never return.