In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, Thamyris , son of Philammon

Philammon

In Greek mythology, Philammon was the son of Chione and Apollo. Some say his mother was Leuconoe, daughter of Eosphoros, or Philonis, daughter of either Deion or of Eosphoros and Cleoboea. He was an excellent musician, a talent he received from his father...

 and the nymph Argiope

Telephassa

In Greek mythology, Telephassa is a lunar epithet like Telephae that is sometimes substituted for Argiope, the wife of Agenor, according to his name a "leader of men" in Phoenicia, and mother of Cadmus. In some versions she is the daughter of Nilus, god of the Nile and Nephele, a soft cloud oceanid...

, was a Thracian

Thrace

Thrace is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe. As a geographical concept, Thrace designates a region bounded by the Balkan Mountains on the north, Rhodope Mountains and the Aegean Sea on the south, and by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara on the east...

 singer who was so proud of his skill that he boasted he could outsing the Muses. He competed against them and lost. As punishment for his presumption they blinded him, and took away his ability to make poetry and to play the lyre. This outline of the story is told in the Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

.

This allusion is taken up in Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

' Rhesus, in the Library

Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)

The Bibliotheca , in three books, provides a comprehensive summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends, "the most valuable mythographical work that has come down from ancient times," Aubrey Diller observed, whose "stultifying purpose" was neatly expressed in the epigram noted by...

attributed to Apollodorus, and in the Scholia on the Iliad. These later sources add the details that Thamyris had claimed as his prize, if he should win the contest, the privilege of having sex with all the Muses (according to one version) or of marrying one of them (according to another); and that after his death he was further punished in Hades

Hades

Hades , Hadēs, originally , Haidēs or , Aidēs , meaning "the unseen") was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. The genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative came to designate the abode of the dead.In Greek mythology, Hades...

. The story demonstrates that poetic inspiration, a gift of the gods, can be taken away by the gods.

According to Diodorus the mythical singer Linus

Linus (mythology)

In Greek mythology Linus refers to the musical son of Oeagrus, nominally Apollo, and the Muse Calliope. As the son of Apollo and a Muse, either Calliope or Terpsichore, he is considered the inventor of melody and rhythm. Linus taught music to his brother Orpheus and then to Heracles. Linus went...

 took three pupils: Heracles

Heracles

Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...

, Thamyris, and Orpheus

Orpheus

Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...

, which neatly settles Thamyris's legendary chronology. When Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...

 briefly sketches the origins of music he credits Thamyris with inventing the Dorian mode

Dorian mode

Due to historical confusion, Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different musical modes or diatonic scales, the Greek, the medieval, and the modern.- Greek Dorian mode :...

 and with being the first to play the cithara as a solo instrument with no voice accompaniment.

A lost epic attributed to Thamyris, Titanomachy

Titanomachy (epic poem)

The Titanomachy is a lost epic poem, which is a part of Greek mythology. It deals with the struggle that Zeus and his siblings, the Olympian Gods, had in overthrowing their father Cronus and his divine generation, the Titans....

, was mentioned in passing in the essay "On Music" that was once believed to be authored by Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

.

Thamyris is said to have been a lover of Hyacinthus and thus to have been the first man to have loved another male.

Thamyris is another name for the ancient Greek painter Timarete

Timarete

Timarete , was an ancient Greek painter. She is the daughter of the painter Micon the Younger of Athens. According to Pliny the Elder, she "scorned the duties of women and practised her father's art." At the time of Archelaus I of Macedon she was best known for a panel painting of the goddess of...

 and also the name of a Theban who was killed by Actor

Actor (mythology)

Actor is a very common name in Greek mythology. Here is a selection of characters that share this name :...

.

Thamyris Glacier

Thamyris Glacier

Thamyris Glacier is a 3 km long and 2.8 km wide glacier draining the east slopes of the Trojan Range on Anvers Island in the Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica. Situated east of Iliad Glacier, south of Rhesus Glacier and northwest of Kleptuza Glacier...

 on Anvers Island

Anvers Island

Anvers Island or Antwerp Island or Antwerpen Island or Isla Amberes is a high, mountainous island long, which is the largest feature in the Palmer Archipelago, lying southwest of Brabant Island at the southwestern end of the group. Anvers Island is located at...

 in Antarctica is named after Thamyris.

External links

• Donatella Restani, "Music and myth in ancient Greece" with literary references to Thamyris