Mitchell's version of the Orpheus story compared to Virgil and Ovid (Hadestown 3/8, episode 32)
Description
The ancient poet Virgil died of a fever with his master work still unfinished…and it was left to his executors to finish the work. The book was the Aeneid, and it would be, in its time, the definitive work on the founding myths and stories of the Roman state. This would cement his role as the greatest poet of his day, and it is a legacy that has never died. Virgil is still read today.
But the stories he told were his own adaptations. His version of Orpheus was different from that of Homer and Euripides. He wasn’t even re-telling the story so much as inventing it.
He was followed by Ovid, who would also have impacts at a historic level. His books, too, are still read, and his contributions, too, carried on the Greek and Roman tradition in a way that is still recognizable today. And he, too, told the story in his own way. Scholars would write that he very consciously not only adapted the ancient stories for his own use, he would take VIRGIL’S story and freely change them for his own use.
And twenty centuries later, a folk musician named Anais Mitchell would take this great story, powerfully carried forward in these two great works, and do what Virgil and Ovid had both done: Told their own story, in their own way, to make the story ring true for their audiences.
What changes did Mitchell make, and why did she make them? Did she ever ask “Who am I to think that I can hold my head up higher than my fellow humans?” Could this modern bard write something that would improve on Virgil and Ovid. She sure did, and we’ll find out how in this episode of THM.
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