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Marsyas, a MythSource painting
Greek

Marsyas

01Identity

Marsyas in Greek tradition

Marsyas is a satyr whose music brings him into a contest with Apollo. He plays a reed pipe, but Apollo defeats him. After the contest, Marsyas recognizes the cost of his challenge and regrets that he cared so much for the instrument. Apollo’s punishment is physical and terrible: he flays the defeated musician. The scene shifts from performance to grief as the beings who live on the mountain gather around him.

Fauns, woodland gods, satyrs, nymphs and shepherds mourn Marsyas. Their tears fall onto the earth and form a stream that runs down through Phrygia. In the landscape below, the stream becomes a clear river that keeps the satyr’s name. This ending links a musical contest and its punishment to a feature of the natural world. Marsyas is remembered not only as Apollo’s defeated opponent, but through the river that the mourners’ grief creates in the story.

SourceThe Metamorphoses of Ovid; Henry T. Riley translation, London: George Bell & Sons, 1889; Book VI, printed pp. 207-208

Top questions

The quick answers

  • Who is Marsyas?

    Marsyas is a satyr whose music brings him into a contest with Apollo.
02The myths

The myths of Marsyas

1 myth, with sources recorded for each.

Marsyas Is Flayed After His Contest with Apollo

Marsyas met Apollo in a contest of music. The satyr played a reed pipe, but Apollo overcame him. The defeated Marsyas cried that he regretted the contest and wished the pipe had never mattered so much to him. Apollo punished him by stripping away his skin. The account described the wounds left by the flaying, while the beings who lived on the mountain gathered to mourn him.

Fauns, woodland gods, satyrs, nymphs and shepherds grieved for Marsyas. The tears from those who mourned him fell on the earth and soaked it. The ground received the water, and it ran downhill through the region. In Phrygia the stream became a clear river that flowed between steep banks towards the sea. It carried Marsyas’s name. The tale joined the musical challenge and the god’s punishment to the origin of that river, ending with the satyr remembered in the landscape of the place where his mourners wept.

Marsyas Is Flayed After His Contest with Apollo, a MythSource painting of the scene

Also mentioned in

Stories elsewhere on MythSource that mention Marsyas, each on that figure’s page.