Orpheus is a figure so layered with myths that if he actually was a real person, no verifiable facts about him remain.
Sappho is undeniably historical and many centuries after when Orpheus is supposed to have lived. The cave in which Orpheus’s head was supposedly buried and from which the spirit of Orpheus is supposed to have prophesized is on Lesbos, so Sappho could theoretically have visited it. However, there is no record that she actually did so. And what few ancient works mention them both assume that Orpheus was historical and praise their poetry.
Nonetheless, I am far from being the first modern writer who desired to connect them in some way. A number of essayists have connected them for one reason or another. They are the focus of some books, for example, Jill Dudley’s Lesbos (Mytilene): Sappho and Orpheus. They also occasionally appear in the visual arts and are even the subject of the two-act operatorio, Orpheus on Sappho’s Shore, composed by Luna Pearl Woolf.
The story below is the prologue for my book, Harmony and Disharmony: A Story of Orpheus and Jason, about which you can find more information below.
Sappho muttered to herself as she climbed the slope toward the cave where the oracle of Orpheus had once been. The idea of visiting this place had seemed inspired when she was resting, shaded by trees, contemplating the beauty of the first wildflowers of spring. But now, on an unseasonably hot day, with no ocean breeze to speak of, the idea felt more like a fool’s errand.
Her brother, Larichus, had been the one who talked her into making the westward trip from Mytilene to Antissa. He had rambled on for what seemed like hours about how inspiring such a pilgrimage would be to any poet. She hadn’t been fooled, though. Larichus knew their parents would insist that she have a male chaperone if she wanted to travel.
Her brother had just completed his service as a wine pourer at the city hall—an honor reserved for the most well-regarded boys of the best families. However, he had viewed the job as a tedious chore and was eager to get out of town for a while before continuing his studies. Chaperoning Sappho would be the perfect excuse to do precisely what he wanted.
It irked her that a boy with scarcely more of a beard than a peach had fuzz could be the chaperone for his much older sister. But Larichus hadn’t invented the social customs that made women subordinate to men, though he was shameless about exploiting them. Try as she might, she could not bring herself to be angry with him.
Anyway, she did enjoy his company, and perhaps she could make the trip work to her advantage. Recently, she’d had a hard time composing verse. A change of scenery might do her even more good than it did him.
And so here she was, hot, sweaty, and nearing the gaping cave mouth, which made her nervous even though it promised coolness.
Rather than joining her, her “chaperone” was sitting at the base of the slope, relaxing in the shade of a large oak tree. Looking down in Larichus’s direction, she had a hard time telling whether he was keeping watch or sleeping.
She waved, and he waved back, so at least he was awake. She gestured for him to join her, and he didn’t respond.
And where was the “family friend”—more like a guard—that her father had insisted on sending along for protection? Supposedly, he was circling the base of the hill she was climbing to check for bandits—as if bandits would bother with such a forgotten place.
She turned back toward the cave mouth. These days, few people walked this path. Hardly any traces of footprints remained. For all she knew, some savage animal, a wolf or maybe even a bear, had made a home of the place where once the oracle of Orpheus had given prophecies. She could step into the cave and be devoured by a beast before Larichus could reach her.
That was assuming he heard her screams. He seemed so far away that he might not even know anything had happened until he ambled up later to see what was taking so long. Would he find her bones, gnawed upon by the beast, and unknowingly bury them near where Orpheus’s head had long rested? Or would the beast kill him? Would their bones lie together, unburied, for weeks, maybe even months, until their parents finally tracked them down?
Sappho shuddered and did her best to banish those dark thoughts. The last thing she wanted was to pollute her poetry with such morbid imaginings.
She made herself move, step by step, up to the cave mouth. The stone around it was uneven, but the bottom part was level enough that she could easily step in.
Sappho could still feel the sun on her back, but the light didn’t reach very far inside the cave. There must have been lamps or torches when the oracle had prophesized from here, but so many centuries later, there was no trace of them. She cursed herself for not thinking to bring one.
She took an unsteady step forward, staring into the blackness in front of her. Moving further in could be dangerous. She heard no animals rustling around in the darkness, but it would be easy to trip on the uneven floor. She would take another step or two, pay her respects to the spirit of Orpheus, and then leave.
“Sappho.”
She froze. Had someone spoken her name? If so, it had been the barest whisper. Perhaps it was a trick of her imagination.
“Sappho.”
The voice was slightly louder, and this time, she could not pretend it was just her imagination—unless that imagination had slipped into madness.
“Sappho!”
The voice was more insistent now. It demanded that she walk toward it, though it did not make that command explicit. Her name, spoken in such a compelling tone, was enough.
Had this cave been near her home, she would have suspected Larichus of getting one of his friends to play a prank on her. But neither he nor she had friends in Antissa. Even the family with which they stayed, connected to her father by business, she hardly knew at all. Certainly, Larichus didn’t know them well enough to get one of them to come all this way just for a joke.
“Sappho!”
This time, her name was followed by a faint but unmistakable note played on a lyre.
Trying to push her fear aside, Sappho prayed to Aphrodite for protection and took a step forward, then another. With every step, she heard another lyre note, each one more haunting than the one before.
She should have turned back, hiked down the slope to where Larichus was, and brought him back with her. But now, she was too enthralled by the music that grew faster and more frenetic with each step she took.
Guided by the sound, she walked further and further into the darkness, her fear of beasts forgotten. How deep was this cave? Indeed, she should have reached the end of it by now. Or, if it did not end, she should have come out on the other side of the hill, blinded momentarily by the sunlight. When her eyes recovered, she would have seen her guard staring up at her, puzzled by her sudden appearance.
Instead, she saw nothing but darkness. She had heard the cave was relatively shallow. She was sure of that. Yet on she walked, afraid she might collide with the cave’s back wall, even more afraid that she wouldn’t. Had the lyre so bewitched her that she would keep walking forever? Her mind could ask the question, but she kept going as if the answer didn’t matter one way or the other.
Was the path sloping downward? She felt as if she were descending, but the hill she climbed hadn’t been that high. Was the cave taking her underground? Would she keep walking until she reached the Underworld itself? Surely, a living person could never reach the realm of the dead.
If the stories are true, Orpheus did, she reminded herself. But even if they were true, Orpheus didn’t descend through this cave. And unlike some places which proudly proclaimed a nearby cave to be an Underworld entrance, Antissa made no such claim. If it had, there might have been more travelers around.
Sappho knew she ought to turn back, that no good could come of following a tunnel that couldn’t possibly exist. There were rumors of creatures that dwelled in the dark and lured victims to their lair in inventive ways. Was some underground siren using music to tempt her to her doom?
All these thoughts ran through her mind, but her feet marched on as if her mind no longer had any control over them.
Was that light up ahead? Or were her eyes just playing tricks on her? No, she could definitely see the rough stone walls of the surrounding cave. She quickened her steps, and the light brightened as she did so.
So far, her path had been more or less straight. But now, there was a turn, and when she took it, she had to close her eyes against the suddenly intense light. The lyre music was as loud now as if she were standing right next to the musician.
“It took you longer than I expected,” said a deep, resonant voice—the voice of a singer, if ever she had heard one. Carefully, she opened her eyes.
Somehow, the light was bright enough to obscure the details of what must have been a cavern around her, but she could see the man standing in front of her much more easily.
Though Sappho found the beauty of women much more appealing than that of men, she could still recognize a handsome man when she saw one. At first, she thought he might be Helios, the sun god, but his hair was dark rather than golden, and his olive skin was that of a mortal man, though the sun-like radiance gave it a different sheen.
Then she realized that the light wasn’t coming from him. It was radiating from the golden lyre upon which he strummed.
The Lyre of Orpheus! Surely, it could be no other. But if it was that lyre—
“Orpheus?” she asked with the slightest tremor in her voice. He had been dead for centuries. He couldn’t be here. Yet he was.
He nodded and smiled at her. Even his smile was beautiful.
“You came here seeking me, did you not?” he asked. “Otherwise, you could never have found me.”
His nimble fingers stopped plucking the strings, and Sappho’s heart immediately longed for him to start playing again. However, he looked at her as if he expected her to say something.
“But…but you are dead,” she replied, unable to take her eyes off him. Dead he surely must be—but he didn’t look even slightly dead.
“If you truly believed death was the end, why did you come here? To see the head torn so long ago from my body? There is not much left of it now, even if you could find it. And one man’s skull is much like another. You could have found skulls back in Mytilene if your goal was to contemplate death.
“Or perhaps you came for this,” he said, holding up the lyre. “It is with me in the Elysian Fields. You could have spent decades searching the cave and its surroundings and never found it.”
“No, I didn’t come for the lyre,” she said. “If it still existed, I knew it would not be mine to possess.”
“Words of wisdom,” he said, looking at her more closely. “You are young to have achieved such insight. But you have still not told me why you came.”
Since he thought her wise, she wanted to say something profound but couldn’t think of anything. “I don’t…I don’t know why I came.”
Orpheus—if that was really who he was—smiled again, but this time in a way that reminded her of Larichus. “You summoned me up from the Elysian Fields for nothing? In that case, I’ll go back—”
“No!” said Sappho, somewhat more forcefully than she intended. It was mad to think this man was Orpheus. Yet he must be Orpheus. Who else could play like that? Who else’s lyre would glow like the sun?
There must be something inspiring that such a great poet could share with her. She would never forgive herself if she wasted an opportunity like this.
Orpheus raised an eyebrow. “You have no idea why you are here, yet you want me to stay.”
“I aspire to be a poet, though I will never be as great a one as you. Lately, I have had a hard time finding inspiration.”
“Inspiring poets is more the job of my mother and her sisters, the Muses,” said Orpheus. His smile now looked like Larichus’s when he was teasing her. “Perhaps you would have been better off going to Mount Helicon to consult with them.”
Orpheus was much closer to the gods than Sappho, but his manner was more gentle than mocking. That gave her the courage to push for what she wanted.
“Do not tease me. I have just traveled down a nonexistent tunnel to find a man who should be in the Underworld but is somehow here instead. I’m entitled to be a little rattled.”
Orpheus laughed, a rich sound that heartened Sappho even more. “When I was still mortal, I would probably have felt much the same way at your age. But now that you know you aren’t crazy or about to be hauled off to the land of the dead, what would you ask of me?”
“Was your inspiration all from your divine mother, or did it come from other places as well?”
“It came not just from my heritage but from my life—as it does for all artists. Even being the son of a goddess could only get me so far.”
“Then tell me of your life, of how you drew inspiration from it.”
Orpheus’s smile faded for the first time since she’d met him.
“I can if you wish, but the tale is long and full of more sorrow than you can imagine. Though your mother is not a goddess, you come from an aristocratic family and have faced little suffering in your life. You may not be prepared to feel the emotions which my story will inspire.”
“I have felt unrequited love,” said Sappho. “Is there any sharper pain than that? Tell me! Tell me everything!”
Orpheus shook his head, making her fear that he would deny her request. “Love never possessed is far less painful than love lost.” He paused and stared into her eyes as if he could see into her soul. “If you demand the tale, you shall have it. But if my words change your life for the worse, the blame will lie with you.”
“Then let it lie with me,” said Sappho, making no effort to conceal her eagerness. “Speak on.”
“So be it,” said Orpheus, his eyes glistening as if tears were welling up in them. “And let the consequences be upon your head.”
Harmony and Disharmony: A Story of Orpheus and Jason is a retelling of the two heroes’ story from Orpheus’s point of view. It is the very tale that Orpheus seems to think Sappho may have to pay a price to hear. If you enjoy modern novelizations of Greek mythology, you can check it out, as well as my book about Theseus, on the page for the Whispers from Olympus series.
You may also enjoy my Substack serial based much more loosely on Greek mythology. You can find the first episode embedded below.
I’m wondering, do you come back to how heating the tale will affect Sappho? Is that in the novel, or yet to be written?