In Greek mythology, Thamyris, son of Philammon and the nymph Argiope, was a Thracian singer who was so proud of his skill that he boasted he could outsing the Muses. He competed against them and lost. As punishment for his presumption they paralysed him, and took away his ability to make poetry and to play the lyre. This outline of the story is told in the Iliad. Iliad 2.594-600.

This allusion is taken up in Euripides' Rhesus, in the Library attributed to Apollodorus, and in the Scholia on the Iliad. These later sources add the details that Thamyris had claimed as his prize, if he should win the contest, the privilege of having sex with all the Muses (according to one version) or of marrying one of them (according to another); and that after his death he was further punished in Hades. The story demonstrates that poetic inspiration, a gift of the gods, can be taken away by the gods.Apollodorus, Library 1.3.3; Scholia on the Iliad 2.595. See , p. 96.

According to Diodorus the mythical singer Linus took three pupils, Heracles, Thamyris and Orpheus, which neatly settles Thamyris's legendary chronology.Diodorus Siculus 3.67. When Pliny the Elder briefly sketches the origins of music he credits Thamyris with inventing the Dorian mode and with being the first to play the cithara as a solo instrument with no voice accompaniment.Pliny, Natural History 7.207.

Thamyris is said to have been a lover of Hyacinthus and thus to have been the first man to have loved another male.Apollodorus, Library 1.3.3.

Thamyris was also the name of a Theban who was killed by Actor.

Notes

External link

• Donatella Restani, "Music and myth in ancient Greece" with literary references to Thamyris

Greek mythological people | Thracian people | Oral poets | Pederastic heroes and deities

Thamyris | Tamiri | Фамирид