The Orpheus myth was handed down to the Renaissance culture along with the allegorical interpretations which late antiquity and the Middle Ages superadded to the two main episodes of the Orphic legend: Orpheus' participation in the expedition of the Argonauts to Colchis in order to acquire the Golden Fleece, and Orpheus' descent to Hell in order to obtain the release of his dead wife, Eurydice, from the infernal gods1. The most popular image of Orpheus in Renaissance Italy was that of Orpheus the civilizer, espoused by Boccaccio in his Genealogie deorum gentilium, Book V, Chapter XII2