In Greek mythology, Thamyris, son of Philammon and the nymph Argiope, was a Thracian 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 paralysed him, and took away his ability to make poetry and to play the lyre. This outline of the story is told in the Iliad.^[1] The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican) Greek mythology is the body of stories 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. ... In Greek mythology, Philammon was the son of Chione and Apollo. ... In Greek mythology, Telephassa, also known as Argiope, was Queen of Tyre. ... Thraciae veteris typvs. ... For other uses see Muse (disambiguation). ... title page of the Rihel edition of ca. ...

This allusion is taken up in Euripides' Rhesus, in the Library 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. The story demonstrates that poetic inspiration, a gift of the gods, can be taken away by the gods.^[2] A statue of Euripides Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (c. ... The Bibliotheca (in English Library), in three books, provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. ... Scholium (tr~bXtoe), the name given to a grammatical, critical and explanatory note, extracted from existing commentaries and inserted on the margin of the manuscript of an ancient author. ... Hades, Greek god of the underworld, enthroned, with his bird-headed staff, on a red-figure Apulian vase made in the 4th century BC. For other uses, see Hades (disambiguation). ...

According to Diodorus the mythical singer Linus took three pupils, Heracles, Thamyris and Orpheus, which neatly settles Thamyris's legendary chronology.^[3] When Pliny the Elder briefly sketches the origins of music he credits Thamyris with inventing the Dorian mode and with being the first to play the cithara as a solo instrument with no voice accompaniment.^[4] Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian, born at Agyrium in Sicily (now called Agira, in the province of Enna). ... Linus is a common name for people or things. ... Hercules, a Roman bronze (Louvre Museum) For other uses, see Heracles (disambiguation). ... The head of Orpheus, from an 1865 painting by Gustave Moreau. ... Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th Century portrait. ... Due to historical confusion, Dorian mode can refer to two very different musical modes or diatonic scales. ... The kithara, also spelled cithara, was an ancient Greek musical instrument. ...

A lost epic, Titanomachy, attributed to the blind Thracian bard Thamyris, himself a legendary figure, was mentioned in passing in an essay On Music that was once attributed to Plutarch. The Titanomachy is an epic poem, which is a part of Ancient Greek Mythology. ... The Thracians were an Indo-European people, inhabitants of Thrace and adjacent lands (present-day Bulgaria, Romania, northeastern Greece, European Turkey and northwestern asiatic Turkey, eastern Serbia and parts of Republic of Macedonia). ... Mestrius Plutarchus (Greek: Πλούταρχος; 46 - 127), better known in English as Plutarch, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist. ...

Thamyris is said to have been a lover of Hyacinthus and thus to have been the first man to have loved another male.^[5] The Death of Hyacinthos by Jean Broc. ... Pederastic courtship scene Athenian black-figure amphora, 5th c. ...

Thamyris is another name for the ancient Greek painter Timarete and also the name of a Theban who was killed by Actor. Timarete or Thamyris was an ancient Greek painter. ... For the ancient capital of Upper Egypt, see Thebes, Egypt. ... In Greek mythology, Actor was a son of King Deion, of Phocis and Diomede, the daughter of Xuthus. ...

Notes

1. ^ Iliad 2.594-600.
2. ^ Apollodorus, Library 1.3.3; Scholia on the Iliad 2.595. See Dalby, Andrew (2006), Rediscovering Homer, New York, London: Norton, ISBN 0393057887, p. 96.
3. ^ Diodorus Siculus 3.67.
4. ^ Pliny, Natural History 7.207.
5. ^ Apollodorus, Library 1.3.3.

The Bibliotheca (in English Library), in three books, provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. ... Andrew Dalby (born Liverpool, 1947) is an English linguist, translator and historian who most often writes about food history. ... Rediscovering Homer is a 2006 book by Andrew Dalby. ... Diodorus Siculus (c. ...

External link

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