Marsyas

Marsyas was a satyr, or silenus, of Phrygia who found the double flute that Athena had thrown away, learned to play it, and challenged Apollo to a musical contest. He lost, and Apollo hung him on a tree and flayed him. The river Marsyas in Phrygia was said to have come from his tears or his blood.

Family and Home

Apollodorus calls Marsyas the son of Olympus (Library 1.4.2), while Hyginus makes him the son of Oeagrus and says that he was a shepherd among the satyrs (Fabulae 165). Herodotus calls him “Marsyas the Silenus” (Histories 7.26.3), and Pausanias speaks of him in the same way (Description of Greece 1.24.1; 2.7.9). His story belongs to Phrygia. Herodotus says that at Celaenae, where the river Marsyas rises in the market-place, the skin of Marsyas hangs, and the Phrygian story told how Apollo flayed him and hung it up (Histories 7.26.3). Strabo, describing Apameia in Phrygia, says that the myth of Olympus and Marsyas and the contest between Marsyas and Apollo is set there, above a lake that produces reeds suited to the mouthpieces of pipes and from which the Marsyas and the Maeander spring (Geography 12.8.15).

Marsyas and Athena

In the myth of the flute, Athena first made the double pipes and then threw them away because they disfigured her face (Apollodorus, Library 1.4.2). Plutarch says that she threw the flute away because she saw her cheeks puffed and swollen as they were reflected in the water of a spring (Plutarch, Alcibiades 2.5). Marsyas found the pipes. In Hyginus, Athena made the first pipes from a deer’s bone and played them at a banquet of the gods, where Hera and Aphrodite laughed at her puffed cheeks. On Mount Ida she looked at herself in a spring while playing and saw that the mockery was deserved, so she threw the pipes away and cursed them, so that anyone who picked them up would suffer a heavy punishment. Marsyas found them and practised until his playing was sweeter every day (Hyginus, Fabulae 165). Pausanias describes a statue on the Acropolis of Athens that showed Athena striking Marsyas the Silenus for taking up the flutes that she wished to be thrown away for good (Pausanias 1.24.1).

The Contest with Apollo

Apollodorus says that Marsyas, having found the pipes, contended with Apollo in music, with the agreement that the winner would do what he liked with the loser. Apollo turned his lyre upside down and told Marsyas to do the same, which Marsyas, playing the flute, could not do. Apollo was judged the victor, hung Marsyas on a tall pine tree, and stripped off his skin (Library 1.4.2). Hyginus gives the same trick and names the judges as the Muses: when Marsyas was already about to leave as the winner, Apollo turned the lyre over and the sound was the same, which Marsyas could not do with pipes. Apollo tied him to a tree and gave him to a Scythian, who stripped off his skin limb by limb. The disciple Olympus buried the rest of the body, and a river called Marsyas came from his blood (Fabulae 165).

In another version, the contest was judged by Tmolus, and King Midas gave his vote to Marsyas; Hyginus says that the rivals were Apollo and “Marsyas or Pan”, and that Apollo gave Midas the ears of a donkey (Hyginus, Fabulae 191). Ovid dwells on the flaying: Marsyas cries “Why do you tear me from myself?”, his skin is stripped from his whole body, and the country gods, the fauns, his brother satyrs, Olympus, the nymphs and the shepherds of those mountains wept for him. The earth drank their tears and sent them out as a stream, which was named Marsyas, “the clearest river in Phrygia” (Metamorphoses 6.382–400). According to Diodorus, Apollo took an excessive revenge on his beaten rival and afterwards repented (Diodorus 5.75.3).

After His Death

Pausanias tells that the flutes of Marsyas, carried by the river Marsyas to the Maeander and later cast ashore at Sicyon, were found by a shepherd and given to Apollo (Pausanias 2.7.9). The Phrygians of Celaenae held that the river of their city was Marsyas himself, and that the “Song of the Mother”, an air for the flute, was composed by him (Pausanias 10.30.9).

Marsyas Sources

Apollodorus, Library 1.4.2; Herodotus 7.26.3; Strabo 12.8.15; Pausanias 1.24.1, 2.7.9, 10.30.9; Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.382–400; Hyginus, Fabulae 165, 191; Diodorus Siculus 5.75.3; Plutarch, Alcibiades 2.5.

See Also: Athena, Apollo, Midas, Olympus, Pan, Satyrs, Muses, Silenus