Distraught at seeing her beloved destroyed like this, Echo pined away until, eventually, only her voice remained.
According to Ovid, after she was shunned by Narcissus she witnessed his demise after he saw his own reflection: in Ovid’s version, Narcissus fades away rather than drowns. Echo did this, but when Hera found out that she was protecting Zeus, she punished Echo by robbing her of all speech of her own: from now on, all Echo could do was repeat the words of others, hence her name.Įcho loved Narcissus, but she obviously found it hard to tell Narcissus how she felt about him, because she had already been cursed so that she could only repeat what others said, rather than speak for herself.
Zeus ordered Echo to distract Hera by engaging her with a lengthy conversation (giving Zeus a chance to escape back home to Mount Olympus). Hera, Zeus’ wife, was suspicious of what her husband was up to with all these nymphs, and one day followed him to spy on him. Echo was an Oread or mountain nymph whom Zeus liked to visit for … carnal relations.
