Answer:
The greatest strength of Orpheus? What was his weakness?
Orpheus's greatest strength is his persistence which comes from his love for his wife Eurydice. Strangely enough, this love is also the source of his weakness. The intense longing for his wife diminished his patience which ruined his mission.
Explanation:
Being the greatest of all musicians, Orpheus might conduct himself as you would expect a musical genius to behave, quiet and reserved. But people like him do have this ability to hide a tenacious nature which shows up when the need arises. We can clearly see this after Eurydice died from the bite of a viper. His great love for her took him to a place everyone feared, the underworld.
As a testament to his tenacity, he faced the following beings:
- Kharon
- Cerberus
- King Hades and Queen Persephone
Kharon is the unsightly being that takes souls and travelers across the Styx River. The rides given are paid with a coin that the soul’s body received during the burial procedure.
Cerberus is the three-headed dog that watches the gates of the underworld. Its purpose is to keep all the souls that have entered this realm to remain there forever.
Hades is the god of the underworld and is the brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, Hera. He is also a half brother to Cheiron a centaur. He held the underworld after they defeated Cronus in the war between the two generations of gods. With him is his wife and Queen of the underworld Persephone who is by the way the daughter of Zeus and Demeter (both his siblings) which makes her his niece in a strange way.
After being told of the condition for her release, which is to not look back at Eurydice until they are completely outside of the underworld. Orpheus, because of his impatience, decided to steal a glance of his wife a few steps away from the mouth of the underworld. The foolish but somewhat understandable act caused his wife’s soul to be taken back down into the underworld. This, in turn, destroyed both the mission and his life.
Later on in the story, their two souls were finally united forever after Orpheus was violently killed by the three Maenads. After his death, Orpheus's soul went to the underworld where he and Eurydice spent eternity walking along the banks of the River Styx, happily I presume.
So again, his love causes him to:
- Go to the underworld (this shows persistence which is his strength)
- Persuade the rulers of the underworld to return his wife (which showed tenacity, also a strength)
- look back at Eurydice when all he had to do was to wait a few minutes until they were outside ( impatience is a weakness on his part)
The mistake of being impatient is something we are all guilty of at one time or another. Even after using so much patience and persistence to reach the point of almost completing the whole thing, we can ruin it all. I’m sure we can all remember situations wherein we said: “if only I waited a few more minutes”.
Click on the links for more information:
Why did Orpheus rescue his wife from the underworld https://brainly.ph/question/168932
The exposition of the short story Orpheus https://brainly.ph/question/167485
Picture of Hades
https://brainly.ph/question/411464
