Midas (/ˈmaɪdəs/; Greek: Μίδας)
is the name of at least three members of the royal house of Phrygia.
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.
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.
Credits: Wikipedia
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| In the Nathaniel Hawthorne version of the Midas myth, Midas's daughter turns to a statue when he touches her. Illustration by Walter Crane for the 1893 edition. |
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