Thamyris

Thamyris

Euripides, Rhesus 915-925: Muse: [...]; Sore hast thou wrung mine heart, Philammon's son,; In life, and since to Hades thou hast passed.; Thine overweening, ruinous rivalry; With Muses, made me bear this hapless child.; For, as I waded through the river's flow,; Lo, I was clasped in Strymon's fruitful couch,; What time we came unto Pangaeus' ridge,; Whose dust is gold, with flute and lyre arrayed (organoisin exeskemenai),; We Muses, for great strife of minstrelsy; With Thracia 's cunning bard; and we made blind; Thamyris, who full oft had mocked our skill.

(Arthur S. Way, Euripides: Rhesus, vol. I, Cambridge, Mass.-London: Harvard University Press and Heinemann, 1959: 235)

Plato, Ion 533b-533c: Socrates. Again, it seems to me, in the fields of aulos playing or kithara-playing or kitharodia or rhapsodia, you never met a man who is an expert at discussing Olympus or Thamyris or [533c] Orpheus or Phemius the rhapsodos of Ithaca, but who is at a loss about Ion of Ephesus, and is incapable of working out what is good and bad in his rhapsodic performances.

(Barker 1984: 125)

Diodorus Siculus III 67: Linus also, who was admired because of his poetry and singing, had many pupils and three of greatest renown, Heracles, Thamyras, and Orpheus. Of these three Heracles, who was learning to play the lyre (kitharizein), was unable to appreciate what was taught him because of his sluggishness of soul, and once when he had been punished with rods by Linus he became violently angry and killed his teacher with a blow of the lyre. Thamyras, however, who possessed unusual natural ability, perfected the art of music and claimed that in the excellence of song his voice was more beautiful than the voices of the Muses. Whereupon the goddesses, angered at him, took from him his gift of music and maimed the man, even as Homer also bears witness when he writes:; There met the Muses Thamyris of Thrace; And made an end of his song;; and again:; But him, enraged, they maimed, and from him took; The gift of song divine and made him quite; Forget his harping (kitharistyn).; About Orpheus, the third pupil, we shall give a detailed account when we come to treat of his deeds (IV 25).

(Oldfather 1970: 307)

Plinius, Naturalis Historia 7, 207: [... ]Amphion [invented] music, Pan son of Mercury the pipe and the single flute (fistula et monaulum), Midas in Phrygia tha slanting flute (obliquam tibiam), Marsyas in the same nation the double flute (geminas tibiam), Amphion the Lydian modes, the Thracian Thamyras the Dorian, Marsyas of Phrygia the Phrygian, Amphion, or others say Orpheus and others Linus, the harp (citharam). Terpander first sang with seven strings, adding three to the original four, Simonides added an eighth, Timotheus a ninth. Thamyris first played the harp without using the voice (cithara sine voce cecinit), Amphion, or according to others Linus, accompanied the harp with singing; Terpander composed songs for harp and voice (citharoedica carmina). Ardalus of Troezen instituted singing to the flute (cum tibiis canere).

(H. Rackham, Pliny: Natural History, vol. II, Cambridge, Mass.-London: Harvard University Press and Heinemann 1961: 643-644)

Plutarchian De Musica (On Music) 1132a-b: 'About the same time, Heraclides says, Linus of Euboea was composing dirges, Anthes of Anthedon in Boeotia was composing hymns, and Pieros of Pieria his poems about the Muses, while Philammon of Delphi recounted in songs the wanderings of Leto and the birth of Artemis and Apollo, and was the first to establish choruses at the temple of Delphi. Thamyris , a Thracian by birth, sang more melodiously [1132b] and with a more beautiful voice than anyone else in those days, which led him to compete, so the poets say, in a contest against the Muses. He is also said to have composed a piece on the war of Titans against the gods.[...]'

(Barker 1984: 207)

Apollodorus, Bibliotheca I 3. 3: Clio fell in love with Pierus, son of Magnes, in consequence of the wrath of Aphrodite, whom she had twitted with her love of Adonis; and having met him she bore him a son Hyacinth, for whom Thamyris, the son of Philammon and a nymph Argiope, conceived a passion, he being the first to become enamoured of males.

(James G. Frazer, Apollodorus: The Library, Cambridge, Mass.-London: Harvard University Press and Heinemann, 1921: 17)

Pausanias 10, 30, 8-9: In this part of painting (Lesche in Delphi), [...] Thamyris is sitting near Pelias. He has lost the sight of his eyes; his attitude is one of utter dejection; his hair and beard are long; at his feet lies thrown a lyre with its horns and strings broken. Above him is Marsyas, sitting on a rock, and by his side is Olympus, with the appearance of a boy in the bloom of youth learning to play the flute (aulein). The Phrygians in Celaenae hold that the river passing through the city was once this great flute-player (auletes), and they also hold that the Song of the Mother, an air for the flute (aulema), was composed by Marsyas. They say too they repelled the arms of the Gauls by the aid of Marsyas, who defended them against the barbarians by the water from the river and by the music of his flute (auloi).

(Jones 1954: 545-547.)

Other literary sources:: Homer, Iliad, II 594-600;; Eustathius, ad Iliadem II 594-600;; Pausanias, 4,33,7;; Zenobius, Cent. 4,27;; scholia Homerica in Iliadem 2,595;; Mythographi latini I, 60= Mythographi Vaticani 197= Hyginus, Poetica astronomica 2,6;; Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 10,6 P. 476C;; Scholia in Hesiodi Opera et dies 1,25.