One of the most beautiful stories of Greek Mythology is that of Orpheus and Eurydice, a tale of true love and devotion willing to face fear and death. The greatest mortal musician, Orpheus, fell deeply in love with the maiden Eurydice and married her. Soon after the wedding, Eurydice and her bridesmaids were walking in a field and she was bitten by a viper. So much for “happily ever after.”
Beyond distraught in his mourning, Orpheus took his lyre to the underworld, braving the terrible three-headed dog Cerberus and lulling it and the many terrifying characters in Hades with his beautiful music. He pleaded for the life of his bride with his song, and so moved the goddess Persephone and even Hades himself to give him back his new wife, but with one condition: Orpheus couldn’t look at Eurydice until they both emerged from the underworld.
Grabbing Eurydice’s hand, Orpheus led her joyously back to the realm of the living, but in his excitement as he exited the underworld, he glanced back at her, only to have looked just too soon, seeing her disappear into the mouth of the cave, stolen back to Hades for Orpheus’s eagerness. He rushed to follow her, but was not allowed to enter the underworld a second time. Doomed to life without his true love, he wandered the earth mournfully and alone until a band of Maenads discovered him and tore him limb from limb. We can only hope he was delivered from the living world into the arms of his lover at last.
Depicted in solid bronze on the medallion of the Orpheus and Eurydice necklace is a pair of lovers, one holding a lyre, the other leaning over a column to swoon at the musician. In this piece of handmade jewelry, I imagine the couple in the happy hours of their union, before the viper struck, and how I hope their eternity looked in the underworld together. Find the Orpheus and Eurydice necklace here.