Thamyris

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Thámyris ( Greek  Θάμυρις ) or Thámyras is a famous singer, poet and kithara player of Greek mythology .

The singer was, like the even better known Orpheus, a Thracian . He was the son of the also excellent musician Philammon and the nymph Argiope . Philammon was one of the three sons of Apollo . Thámyris's teacher was Linus , another son of Apollo. His pupil gradually achieved a more and more perfect craftsmanship. His fame was so great that he dared to even challenge the muses (Greek agon) to challenge in singing. He is said to have coveted one of them as a wife as the winner's prize. This request angered these ladies so extraordinarily that they blinded the singer for his outrageous behavior and desire ( hubris ) and robbed him of all his skills.

In Homer in the Iliad (II, 594-600) to read to:

... where the muses
found the Thracian Thamyris once robbed of song,
who came from Öchalia from Eurytus. For measuring
himself he boasted loudly that he was victorious in song, and
the muses, the daughters of the Aegis-shaker , sang against him.
But the angry ones punished them with blindness, and took away
the lovely song and the art of the sounding harp.

Even later, the singer's fate remained a popular motif. According to Athenaios , Sophocles wrote a youth drama on this subject, in which he himself appeared in the role of the title hero as a kitharot at the premiere .

According to several authors, Thamyris was considered to be the inventor of love for men:

“But Cleio fell in love with Pieros, the son of Magnes,… came together with him and gave birth to the boy Hyakinthos, to whom Thamyris, the son of Philammon and the nymph Argiope, was the first to start loving men. “ ( Libraries of Apollodorus 1.16f.).

Ancient sources