Marsyas

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In Greek mythology, the satyr Marsyas (gr. Μαρσύας) appeared in two vignettes: in one, he picked up the double flute (aulos) that had been abandoned by Athena and played it; in the other, he challenged Apollo to a contest of music and lost his hide and life. In Antiquity, most accounts emphasise the hubris of Marsyas and the justice of his punishment. Marsyas was a devoté of the ancient Mother Goddess Rhea/Cybele.^[1]In modern comparative mythography Marsyas is seen as one of numerous figures emblemmatic of an earlier "Pelasgian" religion of chthonic heroic ancestors and nature spirits supplanted by the Olympian pantheon, personified in this case by Apollo.^[2]

Marsyas' episodes are sited by the mythographers in Celaenae (or Kelainai) in Phrygia (today, the town of Dinar in Turkey), at the main source of the Meander (the river Menderes).^[3] When a genealogy was applied to him, Marsyas was the son of Olympus (son of Heracles and Euboea, daughter of Thespius), or of Oeagrus, or of Hyagnis. Olympus was, alternatively, said to be Marsyas' son or pupil.

Contents 1 The finding of the aulos 2 Marsyas and Apollo 3 The wise Marsyas 4 In art 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

[edit] The finding of the aulos

Marsyas was an expert player on the double-piped reed instrument pipe known as the aulos. in the anecdotal account, he found the instrument on the ground where it had been tossed aside with a curse by its inventor Athena, after the other gods made sport of how her cheeks bulged when she played. The fifth-century poet Telestes doubted that virginal Athena could have been motivated by such vanity,^[4] but in the second century CE, on the Acropolis of Athens itself, the voyager Pausanias saw "a statue of Athena striking Marsyas the Silenos for taking up the flutes that the goddess wished to be cast away for good."".^[5]

[edit] Marsyas and Apollo

In the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, the terms stated that the winner could treat the defeated party any way he wanted. Since the contest was judged by the Muses,^[6] Marsyas naturally lost and was flayed alive in a cave near Celaenae for his hubris to challenge a god. Apollo then nailed Marsyas' skin to a pine tree,^[7] near Lake Aulocrene (the Turkish Karakuyu Gölü), which Strabo noted was full of the reeds from which the pipes were fashioned.^[8] Diodorus Siculus felt that Apollo must have repented this "excessive" deed, and said that he had laid aside his lyre for a while,^[9] but Karl Kerenyi observes of the flaying of Marsyas' "shaggy hide: a penalty which will not seem especially cruel if one assumes that Marsyas' animal guise was merely a masquerade."^[10] Classical Greeks were unaware of such shamanistic overtones, and the Flaying of Marsyas became a theme for painting and sculpture. His brothers, nymphs, gods and goddesses mourned his death, and their tears, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses, were the source of the river Marsyas in Phrygia, which joins the Meander near Celaenae, where Herodotus reported that the flayed skin of Marsyas was still to be seen,^[11] and Ptolemy Hephaestion recorded a "festival of Apollo, where the skins of all those victims one has flayed are offered to the god."^[12] Plato was of the opinion that it had been made into a wineskin.^[13]

There are alternative sources^{[citation needed]} of this story which state that it wasn't actually Marsyas who challenged Apollo but Apollo who challenged Marsyas because of his jealousy of the satyr's ability to play the flute. Therefore meaning hubris would not necessarily be a theme in this tale but more the capricious weakness of the Gods and there equally weak nature in comparison to humans.^{[citation needed]}

There are several versions of the contest; according to Hyginus, Marsyas was departing as victor after the first round, when Apollo, turning his lyre upside down, played the same tune. This was something that Marsyas could not do with his flute. According to another version Marsyas was defeated when Apollo added his voice to the sound of the lyre. Marsyas protested, arguing that the skill with the instrument was to be compared, not the voice. However, Apollo replied that when Marsyas blew into the pipes, he was doing almost the same thing himself. The Muses^[14] supported Apollo's claim, leading to his victory.^[15]

Ovid touches upon the theme of Marsyas twice, very briefly telling the tale in Metamorphoses vi.383-400, where he concentrates on the tears shed into the river Marsyas, and making an allusion in Fasti, vi.649-710, where Ovid's primary focus is on the aulos and the roles of flute-players rather than Marsyas, whose name is not actually mentioned.

[edit] The wise Marsyas

The hubristic Marsyas in surviving literary sources eclipses the figure of the wise Marsyas suggested in a few words by the Hellenistic historian Diodorus Siculus,^[16] who refers to Marsyas as admired for his intelligence (sunesis) and self-control (sophrosune), not qualities found by Greeks in ordinary satyrs. In Plato's Symposium,^[17] when Alcibiades likens Socrates to Marsyas, it is this aspect of the wise satyr that is intended. Jocelyn Small^[18] identifies in Marsyas an artist great enough to challenge a god, who can only be defeated through a ruse. A prominent statue of Marsyas as a wise old silenus stood near the Roman Forum.^[19]

This is the Marsyas of the journal Marsyas: Studies in the History of Art, published since 1941 by students of the Institute of Art, New York University.

[edit] In art

The flaying of Marsyas' shaggy hide, when represented naturalistically in sculpture brings a shock; it is, however, "a penalty which will not seem especially cruel," Karl Kerenyi observed,^[20] "if one assumes that Marsyas' animal guise was merely a masquerade."

In Antiquity Zeuxis' painting of Marsyas religatus was displayed in the temple of Concordia in Rome, as a warning to those who might disturb the concord of the state, according to Pliny's Natural History (35.66), a connection that requires a little explanation. In a Pythagorean paradigm, the lyre was an embodiment of harmony, that could be broken by the shrill tones of the flute. "The cosmological assumptions of the Pythagorean school could also easily be translated into political terms as a call for social harmony, state order and political harmony."^[21]

In the art of later periods, allegory is applied to gloss the somewhat ambivalent morality of the flaying of Marsyas. Marsyas is often seen with a flute, pan pipes or even bagpipes. Apollo is shown with his lyre, or sometimes a harp, viol or other stringed instrument. The contest of Apollo and Marsyas is seen as symbolizing the eternal struggle between the Apollonian and Dionysian aspects of human nature.

Paintings taking Marsyas as a subject include "Apollo and Marsyas" by Michelangelo Anselmi (c. 1492 - c.1554), "The Flaying of Marsyas" by Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) and "The Flaying of Marsyas" by Titian (c. 1570-1576).

James Merrill based a poem, "Marsyas," on this myth; it appears in The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace.

Zbigniew Herbert and Nadine Sabra Meyer each wrote poems entitled "Apollo and Marsyas" based on this myth as well.

In 2002, British artist Anish Kapoor created and installed an enormous sculpture in London's Tate Modern called "Marsyas". The work, consisting of three huge steel rings and a single red PVC membrane, was impossible to view as a whole because of its size, but had obvious anatomical connotations.

There is a bridge built towards the end of the Roman period on the river Marsyas that is still called under the satyr's name (Marsiyas).^[22]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Ruck, Carl A.P. and Danny Staples, The World of Classical Myth (Carolina Academic Press) 1994.

[edit] External links

• The Ancient Library.
• Theoi Project: Marsyas. English translations of Classical texts.