The Story of Orpheus -- Virgil vs. Ovid (Hadestown 2/8, episode 31)
Description
The Romans stand at a key moment in human civilization. Starting with roots in Greece, they are looking back at the Trojan war, they are thinking about their gods. They have founded the first university in the western tradition. And they are modifying and inheriting a series of explanations for the world.
Where does the wind come from? What controls the oceans, or causes lightning, or earthquakes? Why do the seasons pass?
What is nature like?
Their answers, at least in part, involve the gods. And they have been engaging those gods. They have prayed to them, made sacrifices to them, asked them for favors. And the gods, looking down, have picked their favorite champions, and intercede arbitrarily and for self-serving reasons in the affairs of humans.
But now, just before the birth of Jesus, there is a Roman poet who comes up with a totally different take. In his story, there is a mortal, who will try an entirely different way to earning the favor of the gods.
He will sing to them. And this will open an entirely new way to look at the ancient Greek and Roman myths…and start a new way of thinking that will trace through history, to the earliest operas, and the fable of Robert Johnson playing for the devil at a crossroads, to Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown.
We’ll look back at that story today, on this episode of THM.
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