Weekend Art: The Myth of Marsyas and Midas: A Tale of Ancient Turkey |
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| By: normanb Sunday September 26, 2010 11:16 am | |
Weekend Art: The Myth of Marsyas and Midas: A Tale of Ancient Turkey — by NormanB ("Deviations form the Norm")
This storytelling performance was recorded at the Stone Circle Calendar at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
A very early Battle of the Bands recounts the roots of Rock’n'Roll.
The Emperor’s Hat is Stupid.
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14 Comments
Apollo and the Dionysus
I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian
I wonder if Pales a trickster God with the head of an Ass was based on the real king Midas?
Show this to Knowbudhau I hope the name spelling is right he does diaries on myths all the time.
The Videographer and Director of this project was Rachel Neulander.
I don’t know KnowBuddhaU, but google tells me he’s got a blog at HuffPost, but that I can’t message him, because we’re not friends. But you can send it to him if you want: It’s on YouTube’s medicinesocks channel as Marsyas – Norman B – Deviations from the Norm
If you copy and paste the embed code, you can send him the video.
He’s on u tube
http://www.youtube.com/user/knowbuddhau
I left a comment and link to this post over there he does like mythology probably more than anybody at the Lake.
Norm, that was very entertaining.
I greatly appreciate the gift of oratory the presenter in the vid uses to tell the story.
Two flutes with fingers in contrary motion, lips puffed like Dizzy . . . .
And then, at the end, a demonstration of said technique.
I give this diary 10 snaps of my finger poppin appreciation as I gaze disinterestedly kewl like beyond the visage of my beret and dark plastic sunglasses.
With my black turtleneck, perfectly rolled.
Snap. Snap.
Thanks, I’m glad you appreciated it. I love the stories of Greek mythology. I tried this rap on Rachel about 500 times, then we recorded 3 takes and she pieced them together to look like a two-camera shoot.
You need to rename this, and other posts, “Greek Shit NormanB Makes Up for Fun.”
Because it’s fun, but it’s nowhere near scholarly. Athena threw away the αὐλός that Μαρσύας found. And that’s a whole story by itself.
And Marsyas was himself a satyr, a cthonic heroic figure.
These are fun, but totally made up out of your head. Bravo, but don’t expect kudos from the Greek speakers/students here, especially me.
reccd after enjoying whole thing
http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/SatyrosMarsyas.html
Kelly, I mean no disrespect to your scholarship but I rankle (this is Rachel, Norman’s pal and the producer of this video) at your disparraging tone regarding ours.
The details of many Marsyas stories as recounted in Norm’s narrative version are found in so many ancient sources… and we love these myths… you can’t make stuff like this up! Sources including Ovid, Heroditus, Apollodorus and many more. The link above lists those sources so you can see for yourself.This is a strange and convoluted tale, hard to fathom the ancient mindset, but harder to imagine why one scholar would risk showing his own ignorance in a attempt to discredit another.
Tmolus, or according to others (Hygin. Fab. 191, who speaks of the contest between Apollo and Marsyas), Midas, was chosen to decide between them. Tmolus decided in favour of Apollo, and all agreed in it except Midas. To punish him for this, Apollo changed his ears into those of an ass. Midas contrived to conceal them under his Phrygian cap, but the servant who used to cut his hair discovered them. The secret so much harassed this man, that as he could not betray it to a human being, he dug a hole in the earth, and whispered into it, “King Midas has ass’s ears.” He then filled the hole up again, and his heart was released. But on the same spot a reed grew up, which in its whispers betrayed the secret to the world (Ov. Met. xi. 146, &c.; Pers. Sat. i. 121 ; Aristoph. Plut. 287). Midas is said to have killed himself by drinking the blood of an ox. (Strab. i. p. 61; Plut. De Superst. 7.)
Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
typical bully. Elevating herself as one the exclusive “Students” on FDL. All the while requiring the victim to debase himself by calling his own work “shit”.
“Snipe Hunt” is a typical bully tactic. Asking NormanB to rename all his posts, when no one else is having to rename their posts is an example of “snipe hunt”
If you’re a Greek scholar, just look in your volume of Apollodorus’ Biblioteca. Also told by Strabo and Hyginus and details given by so many others. Most children’s Greek myth books tell the story of Marsyas too. The details here are all from the ancients. The comparisons are mine, like the comparison of the double flute’s capacity to use contrary motion being analogous to Mozart or the Beatles using that same device, and the comparison of Athena’s cheeks being puffed up look like Dizzy Gillespie’s.
In The Greek Myths, Robert Graves says that this story of Phrygian Marsyas, and the similar myth related by Ovid in Metamorphoses of the Arcadian Pan and his panpipes in contest with Apollo, depict propagandistically the Dorian Greeks’ conquest of the Phrygians and Arcadians. The propaganda purports to demonstrate that the native dark-skinned Mediterranean pipe-playing shepherds were unsophistocated compared to the wealthy Indo-European string section.
You might want to bone up a little … “cthonic” is actually spelled “chthonic,” unless you were reaching for “catatonic.”
The previous 2 retold Greek myth videos we posted, one on Melampus and one on dolphins in the Homeric Hymns & Herodotus, listed their respective ancient sources too.
As I sit here in my library, I am surrounded by more than one thousand volumes on Classical ancient Greek and Roman literature, many are myths told in their original form by their original authors.
I’ve been studying it for 46 years. As Rachel pointed out above, you can’t make this stuff up.
Here is a partial list of ancient authors supplying details used (or weeded out) in preparing this video: Ovid, Herodotus, Apollodorus, Persius, Aristophanes, Plutarch, Pausanius, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Xenophon, Athenaeus, Hyginus, Servius, Pliny the Elder, Plato, and Horace. We know from ancient scholiasts that lost works by Telestes and Lucius Pomponius probably somewhat informed the listed writers whose works are still extant.