King Midas

together with his harebrained schemes and asinine dealings with the idols,

King Midas ruled the historic kingdom of Phrygia with an choppy hand.

He changed into acknowledged in Greek mythology as a rogue ruler

whose antics bemused his human beings and distracted the gods.

Midas spent his days in a stupor of splendor,

spoiling himself and his liked daughter and gorging himself on feasts and wine.

Unsurprisingly, he felt an affinity with Dionysus,

god of wine, carnival, and overall performance.

one day, Midas observed a satyr

dozing in his rose lawn and drunk on extra than the scent of flowers.

Midas diagnosed the satyr as one of Dionysus’s fans

and permit him nurse his hangover at the palace.

thrilled with the king’s hospitality, Dionysus presented to furnish him one wish.

Midas solid a greedy eye over his environment.

in spite of the luxurious wherein he lived,

no quantity of precious jewels, best silk or first rate decor felt like sufficient.

His existence, he concept, changed into missing luster; what he wanted was greater gold.

The god sent the electricity to show some thing the king touched to gold

surging thru Midas.

Ecstatic, he became to his possessions.

At his lightest touch, the palace partitions converted,

stone statues shone,

and goblets glittered.

He galloped via his domestic in a frenzy,

coping with each object until it took on a lustrous sheen.

soon the palace heaved with gold,

and Midas’s delirious laughter echoed off the walls.

Exhausted and hungry from his rampage,

Midas picked up a gaggle of grapes from his newly gilded fruit bowl.

however he nearly shattered his enamel,

for the fruit had turned to steel in his mouth.

whilst he picked up a loaf of bread, the crumbs hardened in his hand.

Flinging himself onto his mattress in frustration,

Midas determined his plush pillows had morphed into stable gold.

listening to his cries of frustration, his daughter entered the room.

however whilst Midas reached out to her,

he noticed with horror that he had frozen her right into a golden statue.

Horrified at what he had carried out,

Midas begged the gods to rid him of his energy.

Taking pity at the foolish king,

Dionysus instructed Midas to clean his palms in the River Pactolus.

whilst Midas reached into the river, the gold drained from his fingertips.

Midas again domestic to discover his daughter alive

and his palace back to regular, and he rejoiced.

You’d think he could’ve found out his lesson,

however just a few weeks later, Midas blundered again,

insulting the track and sun god Apollo while he declared Pan a more musician.

Apollo scornfully declared that the king should have the ears of an ass

to make such a misjudgment, and transformed Midas consequently.

over again regretting his conduct,

Midas saved his hairy ears hidden in public.

They have been seen best by using his barber,

who turned into sworn to secrecy at some stage in a totally awkward grooming consultation.

The barber stifled his laughter and fought the choice to inform a person,

but the secret fed on him.

one day, he walked outside the town and dug a hole within the ground.

Plunging his head into the earth,

the desperate barber whispered, “Midas has ass’s ears.”

soon after, a clump of reeds sprang up

in the spot in which the barber had buried his words.

when the wind blew, they carried the echoes of his whisper through the breeze:

"Midas has ass’s ears."

at the sound, donkeys inside the fields raised their heads in popularity

and those chuckled to themselves on the follies of their king.

together with his golden touch and ass’s ears, Midas was now not the most respected ruler.

And where different leaders were honored through statues and temples,

his humans remembered him a little in a different way:

within the depths of the glittering river and the rustle of the Phrygian wind.