Apollo cruelly punished the Phrygian satyr Marsyas because Marsyas dared to compete with him in music. Cyfared Apollo could not bear such insolence. One day, wandering through the fields of Phrygia, Marsyas found a reed flute. The goddess Athena abandoned her, noticing that playing the flute she had invented was disfiguring her divinely beautiful face. Athena cursed her invention and said:
“Let the one who picks up this flute be severely punished.”
Not knowing anything about what Athena said, Marsyas picked up the flute and soon learned to play it so well that everyone listened to this simple music. Marsyas became proud and challenged the patron of music, Apollo, to a competition.
Apollo came to the call in a long, lush robe, a laurel wreath and a golden cithara in his hands.
How insignificant the forest and field dweller Marsyas with his pathetic reed flute seemed before the majestic, beautiful Apollo! How could he extract from the flute such wondrous sounds as those that flew from the golden strings of the cithara of the leader of the muses, Apollo! Apollo won. Angered by the challenge, he ordered the unfortunate Marsyas to be hanged by the hands and flayed alive. This is how Marsyas paid for his courage. And the skin of Marsyas was hung in a grotto near Kelen in Phrygia and they later said that it always began to move, as if dancing, when the sounds of the Phrygian reed flute reached the grotto, and remained motionless when the majestic sounds of the cithara were heard.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru