KING Midas short story

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The most famous |King Midas| is popularly remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold. This came to be called the golden touch, or the |Midas touch|. The Phrygian city Midaeum was presumably named after this |Midas|, and this is probably also the |Midas| that according to Pausanias founded Ancyra. According to Aristotle, legend held that Midas died of starvation as a result of his "vain prayer" for the gold touch. The legends told about this Midas and his father Gordias, credited with founding the Phrygian capital city Gordium and tying the Gordian Knot, indicate that they were believed to have lived sometime in the 2nd millennium BC, well before the Trojan War. However, Homer does not mention Midas or Gordias, while instead mentioning two other Phrygian kings, Mygdon and Otreus. Another |King Midas| ruled Phrygia in the late 8th century BC, up until the sacking of Gordium by the Cimmerians, when he is said to have committed suicide. Most historians believe this Midas is the same person as the Mita, called king of the Mushki in Assyrian texts, who warred with Assyria and its Anatolian provinces during the same period.[4] A third Midas is said by Herodotus to have been a member of the royal house of Phrygia and the grandfather of an Adrastus who fled Phrygia after accidentally killing his brother and took asylum in Lydia during the reign of Croesus. Phrygia was by that time a Lydian subject. Herodotus says that Croesus regarded the Phrygian royal house as "friends" but does not mention whether the Phrygian royal house still ruled as (vassal) kings of Phrygia. This is a story of King Midas....Legends. There are many, and often contradictory, legends about the most ancient |King Midas|. In one, Midas was king of Pessinus, a city of Phrygia, who as a child was adopted by |King Gordias| and Cybele, the goddess whose consort he was, and who (by some accounts) was the goddess-mother of Midas himself. Some accounts place the youth of Midas in Macedonian Bermion (See Bryges). In Thracian Mygdonia, Herodotus referred to a wild rose garden at the foot of Mount Bermion as "the garden of Midas son of Gordias, where roses grow of themselves, each bearing sixty blossoms and of surpassing fragrance". Herodotus says elsewhere that Phrygians anciently lived in Europe where they were known as Bryges, and the existence of the garden implies that Herodotus believed that Midas lived prior to a Phrygian migration to Anatolia. According to some accounts, Midas had a son, Lityerses, the demonic reaper of men, but in some variations of the myth he instead had a daughter, Zoë or "life". According to other accounts, he had a son Anchurus. Arrian gives an alternative story of the descent and life of Midas. According to him, Midas was the son of Gordios, a poor peasant, and a Telmissian maiden of the prophetic race. When Midas grew up to be a handsome and valiant man, the Phrygians were harassed by civil discord and consulting the oracle, they were told that a wagon would bring them a king, who would put an end to their discord. While they were still deliberating, Midas arrived with his father and mother and stopped near the assembly, wagon and all.

They, comparing the oracular response with this occurrence, decided that this was the person whom the god told them the wagon would bring. They, therefore, appointed Midas king and he, putting an end to their discord, dedicated his father’s wagon in the citadel as a thank-offering to Zeus the king. In addition to this, the following saying was current concerning the wagon, that whosoever could loosen the cord of the yoke of this wagon, was destined to gain the rule of Asia. This, someone, was to be Alexander the Great. In other versions of the legend, it was Midas' father Gordias who arrived humbly in the cart and made the Gordian Knot.