Le parole di Euridice: echi antichi e moderni di un motivo del mito orfico

This contribution is dedicated to the character of Eurydice in the context of the myth of Orpheus, with special attention to the words that the heroine, once dead, addresses to her husband during their attempt to leave Hades.The authors considered are Virgil and Ovid, then Boethius, who determined the medieval reception of the myth, and then Politian for the Renaissance and Jean Anouilh for the contemporary era. During these rewritings of the myth, the status of the words that Eurydice addresses – or does not address – to Orpheus, at the fatal moment when he turns to look at her, has been the object of interpretations and re-elaborations. The importance of the text of Ovid (Metamorphoses, X, 60-62) was to present Eurydice as a wife who accepts without rancour Orpheus’s non-compliance with the divine precept