Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Artemis and Apollo went straight to Thebes, where they hunted down every one of Amphion’s and Niobe’s fourteen children. Artemis shot the seven daughters dead with her silver arrows; Apollo shot the seven sons dead with his golden ones. When Amphion was brought news of the slaughter he took his own life by falling on his sword. Niobe’s grief was also insupportable. She fled to her childhood home and found refuge on the slopes of Mount Sipylus. No matter how snobbish, reckless, proud and absurd she had been, such wretched and inconsolable unhappiness was terrible to behold. The gods themselves could not bear to hear her unceasing lamentations, and so turned her to stone. But not even solid rock had the power to hold back such tears as these. Niobe’s weeping pushed her tears through the stone and sent them cascading in waterfalls down the mountainside.

Even today, visitors to Sipylus, now called Mount Spil, can see the rock formation in which the outlines of a female face can still be discerned. In Turkish this is known as Ağlayan Kaya or ‘Weeping Rock’.fn3 It looks down on the city of Manisa, the modern name for Tantalis. The waters that gush from this rock will flow for ever in their grief.

Apollo and Marsyas: Puffed Cheeks

Mortal humans were not the only beings capable of exhibiting excessive pride. The goddess Athena’s injured self-regard led, indirectly, to the downfall of a conceited creature called MARSYAS.

It all began when Athena proudly invented a new musical instrument which she named the aulos. It was a double-reeded pipe of what we would call the woodwind family, not unlike the modern oboe or cor anglais.fn4 There was one problem with this splendid instrument: whenever Athena played it – gorgeous as the music that emerged undoubtedly was – it elicited from her fellow Olympians nothing but roars of laughter. There was no way for Athena to get a good sound from it without blowing so hard that her cheeks bulged. To see this goddess, the very personification of dignity, going all pink and swelling up like a bullfrog was more than her disrespectful family could take without howling out loud. Wise as Athena was, and free (for the most part) of affectation and conceit, she was not entirely without vanity and could not bear to be mocked. After three attempts to win the gods over with the mellifluous sounds of her new instrument, she cursed it and cast it down from Olympus.

The aulos fell to earth in Asia Minor, in the kingdom of Phrygia, near the source of the Maeander river (whose winding course lends its name to all mazy, wandering streams), where it was picked up by a satyr called Marsyas. As a follower of Dionysus, Marsyas was gifted with curiosity as well as many more disreputable traits. He dusted the aulos off and blew into it. A small peep was the only result. He laughed and scratched at the tickling buzz in his lips. He puffed and blew hard again until a long, loud musical note was produced. This was fun. He went on his way, blowing and blowing until he could, after a surprisingly short time, play a real tune.

Within a month or two his fame had spread around all of Asia Minor and Greece. He became celebrated as ‘Marsyas the Musical’, whose skill on the aulos could make trees dance and stones sing.

He revelled in the fame and adulation that his musicianship brought. Like all satyrs he required little more than wine, women and song to make him happy, and his mastery of the third ensured a ready supply of the other two.

One evening, the fire crackling, Maenads at his feet gazing up adoringly at him, he called drunkenly to the heavens.

‘Hey there, Apollo! You, god of the lyre! You think you’re so musical, but I bet if there was a compishon … a compention … a condition … What’s the word?’

‘Competition?’ suggested a drowsy Maenad.

‘One of them, yes. If there was … what she said … I’d win. Easy. Hands down. Anyone can strum a lyre. Boring. But my pipes. My pipes beat your strings any day. So there.’

The Maenads laughed, Marsyas laughed too, belched and fell into a contented sleep.

The Competition

The next day Marsyas set off with his many followers to Lake Aulocrene. They had arranged to meet other satyrs there for a great feast at which Marsyas would play wild, corybantic dances of his own composition. He would pluck some reeds from the shores of the lake (whose very name testified to their abundance – aulos means ‘reed’ and krene is ‘fountain’ or ‘spring’) and cut himself a new mouthpiece for his aulos. Piping and dancing he led his followers in a merry trail of music until he turned a corner to find his way blocked by a dazzling and disturbing spectacle.

In the meadow a stage had been erected on which sat the nine Muses in a broad semicircle. At the centre of the stage, lyre in hand, stood Apollo, a grim smile playing on his beautiful lips.