Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Athena invented the aulos (double pipe). Seeing her reflection and the distortion of her face while playing, she cast the instrument away. Marsyas, a satyr (or silenus) of Phrygia, found the pipes and mastered them. Proud of his skill, he challenged Apollo to a musical contest: aulos against lyre. The Muses (or, in some tellings, the local audience) judged. When Apollo added his voice to the lyre, or played the instrument upside-down and demanded Marsyas do the same with the pipes—feats impossible for the aulos—Apollo was declared the winner. As penalty for the challenge, Apollo flayed Marsyas alive. The satyr’s skin was hung, and his blood (or tears of the countryside’s nymphs and satyrs) became the river Marsyas in Phrygia. Herodotus already knows a Phrygian tradition of Marsyas’s skin by the river of that name. The myth contrasts Apolline string music and measured order with the wild pipe, and serves as a warning against hubris toward the gods’ arts.