Midas

but the poet who made this epigram boasted vainly, which they say was written upon the tomb of Midas:

But, O self-announcing maiden, we hear the poet, but seeking you we found you not, nor the tomb of Midas.

Indeed, men charge even their private passions to Fortune:

So the brothers came to another part of Macedonia and settled near the place called the garden of Midas son of Gordias, where roses grow of themselves, each bearing sixty blossoms and of surpassing fragrance.

For Midas too made an offering:

This Gyges then was the first foreigner whom we know who placed offerings at Delphi after the king of Phrygia, Midas son of Gordias.

that he taught the king that the best thing by far for man is not to be born, and the next best, to die as soon as possible.

May he perish, then, who began this deception among men — whether it was Dardanus, who introduced the mysteries of the Mother of the gods, or Eetion, who founded the orgies and rites of the Samothracians, or that Phrygian Midas, who, having learned them from the Odrysian, then passed on the artful deception to his subjects.

Hellanicus, at any rate, relates that he lived in the time of Midas, while Phanias, setting Lesches the Lesbian before Terpander, makes Terpander younger than Archilochus, and says Lesches contended with Arctinus and conquered.

I tell the passer-by that Midas here lies buried.

I am a maiden of bronze and am set upon the tomb of Midas.

However, he said, you will become responsible for what money they owe:

When this was settled I was visited by the creditors, to whom Midas owed money, and the contributors too, who talked things over with me.

But the others, on the strength of which Midas had acquired everything and which were of recent date, were not entered by him in the agreement but kept secret.

be propitious, and with the goodwill of gods and men, mistress, receive this victory garland from Pytho in honor of renowned Midas, and receive the victor himself, champion of Hellas in that art which once Pallas Athena discovered when she wove into music the dire dirge of the reckless Gorgons which Perseus heard pouring in slow anguish from beneath the horrible snakey hair of the maidens, when he …

and I am placed upon the tomb of Midas.

You will find that it is very like the inscription that some say is inscribed on the tomb of Midas the Phrygian.

but they thought that the life of a man constitutionally sickly and intemperate was of no use to himself or others, and that the art of medicine should not be for such nor should they be given treatment even if they were richer than Midas.

Unless indeed we are to believe also that Silenus, asserting to king Midas concerning another world (on the authority of Theopompus);

such as the Phrygian Silenus, whose huge ears Midas received from him when shepherds brought him in;

let him look to it, if anyone anywhere else holds there are men among the Meropes, as Silenus prattled into the ears of Midas — tales suited, to be sure, to grander fables.

There, alongside the road, was the so-called spring of Midas, the king of the Phrygians, at which Midas, according to the story, caught the satyr by mixing wine with the water of the spring.