Midas stared in disbelief.
He touched another rose and then another. The moment his fingers touched them they turned to gold. He ran up and down around the garden in a whooping frenzy, brushing his hands along the bushes until every one had been frozen into hard shining precious, priceless, glorious, golden gold.
Skipping and shouting with joy Midas beheld what had once been a garden of rare roses and was now the most valuable treasure in all the world. He was rich! He was insanely, monumentally rich! No man on earth had ever been richer.
The sound of his exultant shouts attracted his wife, who came out of the palace doors and stood looking down, their infant daughter in her arms.
‘Darling, why are you shouting?’
Midas ran up to her and encircled mother and child in a tight hug of excited joy. ‘You won’t believe it!’ he said. ‘Everything I touch turns to gold! Look! All I have to do is – oh!’
He stepped back to see that his wife and infant girl were now one fused golden statue, glittering in the morning sun, a frozen mother and child group that any sculptor would have been proud of.
‘I’ll attend to that later,’ Midas said to himself. ‘There must be a way to recover them … Dionysus wouldn’t be so … meanwhile – Zim! Zam! Zoo!’
A guard on sentry, the great side-door to the palace and his favourite throne were now entirely gold.
‘Vim! Vam! Voo!’
The side-table, his goblet, his cutlery – solid gold!
But what was this? Crack! His teeth almost broke on a hard golden peach. Tunk! His lips met metallic wine. Thwop! A heavy gold nugget that had once been a linen napkin crushed and bruised his lips.
The unbounded delight began to fade as Midas realized the full import of his gift.
You may imagine the rest. All at once the thrill and pleasure of his ownership of gold were changed to dread and fear. All Midas touched turned to gold, but his heart turned to lead. No words of his, no shrieks of imprecation to the heavens could return his cold solidified wife and daughter to quick warm life. The sight of his beloved roses dropping their heavy heads caused his own to bow in misery. Everything around him glinted and glittered, gleamed and glimmered with a gorgeous gaudy golden glow but his heart was as grim and grey as granite.
And the hunger and thirst! After three days of food and drink turning to inedible gold the moment it touched him, Midas felt ready for death.
Atop his golden bed, whose hard heavy sheets offered no warmth or comfort, he fell into a fevered sleep. He dreamed of his flowers blooming back into soft, delicate life – his roses, yes, but most of all the flowers that he now understood mattered most, his wife and child. In the wild, contorted dream he saw the soft colours returning to their cheeks and the light shining once more in their eyes. As these beguiling images danced and flickered in his mind the voice of Dionysus boomed inside him.
‘Foolish man! It is fortunate for you that Silenus is so fond of you. Only for his sake do I show you mercy. When you awaken in the morning, betake yourself to the River Pactolus. Plunge your hands in its waters and your enchantment will be dissolved. Whatever you wash in the fast-flowing stream will be restored to you.’
The next morning Midas did what the voice in his dream had instructed. As promised, contact with the waters of the river relieved him of his golden touch. Mad with joy, he spent a good week shuttling back and forth immersing his wife, his daughter, his guards, servants, roses and all of his possessions in the river and clapping his hands in delight as they returned to their valueless – but priceless – original state.
After this, the waters of the Pactolus, which wind around the foothills of Mount Tmolus, became the single greatest source of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver, in all the Aegean.
King Midas’s Ears
You would think that Midas had learned his lesson by now. The lesson that repeats and repeats throughout the story of man. Don’t mess with the gods. Don’t trust the gods. Don’t anger the gods. Don’t barter with the gods. Don’t compete with the gods. Leave the gods well alone. Treat all blessings as a curse and all promises as a trap. Above all, never insult a god. Ever.
In one respect Midas had certainly changed. He now spurned not just gold, but all riches and possessions. Shortly after Dionysus lifted the curse, Midas became a devoted follower of Pan, the goat-footed god of nature, fauns, meadows and all the wild things of the world.
With flowers in his hair, sandals on his feet and the merest suggestion of clothing covering his modesty, Midas left his wife and daughter in charge of Phrygia and devoted himself to a hippy-happy life of simple bucolic virtue.
All might have been well had not his master Pan taken it into his head to challenge Apollo to a competition to determine which was the superior, the lyre or the pipes.
One afternoon, in a meadow lying on the slopes of Mount Tmolus, Pan put the syrinx to his lips before an audience of fauns, satyrs, dryads, nymphs, assorted demigods and other lesser immortals. A coarse but likeable air in the Lydian mode emerged. It seemed to summon barking deer, rushing waters, gambolling rabbits, rutting stags and galloping horses. The rough, rustic tune delighted the audience, especially Midas, who really did worship Pan and all the frolicking mirth and madness that the goat-footed one represented.
When Apollo stood and sounded the first notes of his lyre, a hush fell. From his strings arose visions of universal love, harmony and happiness, a deep abiding joy in life and a sense of heaven itself.
When he had finished the audience rose as one to applaud. Tmolus, the deity of the mountain, called out, ‘The lyre of the great lord Apollo wins. All agreed?’
‘Aye, aye!’ roared the satyrs and fauns.
‘Apollo, Apollo!’ cried the nymphs and dryads.
One lone voice demurred.
‘No!’
‘No?’ Dozens of heads turned to see who could have dared dissent.
Midas rose to his feet. ‘I disagree. I say the pipes of Pan produce the better sound.’
Even Pan was astonished. Apollo quietly put down his lyre and walked towards Midas.
‘Say that again.’
It could at least be said of Midas that he had the courage of his convictions. He swallowed twice before repeating, ‘I – I say the pipes make a better sound. Their music is more … exciting. More artistic.’
Apollo must have been in a soft mood that day, for he did not slaughter Midas on the spot. He did not peel the skin from him layer by layer as he had done to Marsyas when that unfortunate had had the temerity to challenge him. He did not cause Midas even the slightest amount of pain but just said softly, ‘You honestly think Pan played better than me?’
‘I do.’
‘Well, in that case,’ said Apollo, with a laugh, ‘you must have the ears of an ass.’
No sooner were these words out of the god’s mouth than Midas felt something strange and warm and rough going on in his scalp. As he put an enquiring hand to his head, howls and hoots and screams and screeches of mocking laughter started to come from the assembled throng. They could see what Midas could not. Two large grey donkey ears had pushed their way through his hair and were twitching and flicking back and forth for all the world to see.
‘It seems I was right,’ said Apollo. ‘You do indeed have the ears of an ass.’
Crimsoning with shame and mortification, Midas turned and fled the meadow, the taunts and jeers of the crowd sounding all the more clearly in his great furry ears.
His life as a camp-follower of Pan was over. Tying his head in a kind of turban, he returned to his wife and family in the palace of Gordium and – his carefree experiment in country living decidedly done with – settled back down into the life of a king.