Emma Keith

With this next obituary in my series, I want to strike a bit more of a bittersweet note with the story of Eurydice.  Orpheus and Eurydice  by Frederic Leighton. Source: Wikipedia Commons . Some background I've gathered on Eurydice: she was one of Apollo's (god of the sun) daughters, and an oak nymph ( nymphs are divine spirits but not gods, and therefore, not immortal). Eurydice was married to the poet, musician and prophet Orpheus , a child of one of the muses, and the two were deeply in love (though their marriage was predicted to be extremely short by Hymen , the god of marriage ceremonies).  Eurydice's story is an interesting one for this storybook since it mostly begins after her death. One day, as she's being chased by the shepherd  Aristaeus (who was swept away by her beauty) , she's bitten by a viper and quickly dies of its poison. Orpheus is so wrecked by her death that he journeys to the underworld to retrieve her.  Orpheus' g...

This week, I worked on my planning post to get ready for the first post in my storybook, which will tell the story of Ixion. My retelling, an obituary penned by Hermes, would include some of Ixion’s backstory — that he’s one of the Lapiths; that he was a king.  "Ixion," by Jose Ribera. Source: Wikimedia Commons. I really want to dwell on his two major crimes in this story, his greatest offense being the murder of his father-in-law. Though his second crime is the one that gets him sent to Tartarus, I would have Hermes be most offended and horrified by this first crime, a terrible betrayal of family (apparently, Ixion is the first man to murder his kin).  When Ixion marries Dia, his father-in-law Eioneus steals Ixion's mares as payment. Ixion then has Eioneus for dinner and burns him alive. For this crime, Ixion is an outcast, rejected and un-forgiven by much of society. He’s finally purified and forgiven by Zeus, who takes mercy on him and hosts him at Olympu...