Midas
Everything he touched turned to gold
The stories of King Midas warn against folly and greed. Involving transformation, they are recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
The Golden Touch
In the best-known story, Midas was granted one wish but he used it unwisely.
Midas captured Silenus, a satyr and a companion of Dionysus. The king treated the satyr kindly and Dionysus granted him one wish as a reward for his hospitality. Midas asked that everything he touched would turn to gold.
His initial delight at the accumulating riches faltered when he realised that his food and drink also turned to metal. The full horror of the situation was revealed when he touched his daughter and she turned into a gold statue.
Starving, and unable to touch anyone, Midas asked Dionysus to revoke the wish. The god instructed him to bathe in the Pactolus river (near Sardis in modern Turkey). The story thus serves to explain the presence of alluvial gold downstream.
Ass's Ears
In another story, Midas was asked to judge a music competition between Apollo and the satyr Marsyas. Midas foolishly judged against the god and grew donkey's ears as a punishment.
Midas thought that he could hide his ears under a turban: only his barber would see them and he was sworn to secrecy. Bursting with hilarity, the barber whispered the secret into a hole in the ground. But rushes grew on that spot and they rustled in the wind so that everyone could hear the king’s secret ‘Midas has ass’s ears’!