Geração de Orpheu literature with principal function of agitating, subverting and scandalizing the Portuguese bourgeoisie and - by extension - all social conventions. The journal's name, "Orpheu" was not chosen by accident - as in Greek myth, Orpheus ("Orfeu" in Portuguese) was the musician who, to save his wife Eurydice from Hades, had to travel from the world of the living with the stipulation to not looking back. It was this metaphor that was important to the men of the Geração de Orpheu: the not looking back, the forgetting, the relinquishing of the past and the concentration of attention and force to the
Hades death, although Euripides' play ""Alkestis"" states fairly clearly that Thanatos and Hades were one and the same deity, and gives an interesting description of Hades as being dark-cloaked and winged; moreover, Hades was also referred to as "Hesperos Theos" ("god of darkness"). When the Greeks propitiated Hades, they banged their hands on the ground to be sure he would hear them. Black animals, such as sheep, were sacrificed to him, and the very vehemence of the rejection of human sacrifice expressed in myth suggests an unspoken memory of some distant past. The blood from all chthonic sacrifices including those to