AMPHION. Amphion was the son of Jupiter and Antiope, queen of Thebes. With his twin brother Zethus he was exposed at birth on Mount Cithaeron, where they grew up among the shepherds, not knowing their parentage. Mercury gave Amphion a lyre and taught him to play upon it, and his brother occupied himself in hunting and tending the flocks. Meanwhile Antiope, their mother, who had been treated with great cruelty by Lycus, the usurping king of Thebes, and by Dirce, his wife, found means to inform her children of their rights and to summon them to her assistance. With a band of their fellow-herdsmen they attacked and slew Lycus, and tying Dirce by the hair of her head to a bull, let him drag her till she was dead.* Amphion having become king of Thebes fortified the city with a wall It is said that when he played on his lyre the stones moved of their own accord and took their places in the wall, in other words, that his attractive personality and eloquence were so great that he persuaded the rude Boeotians to eagerly assist him in building his walls, so that they rose as if by magic. Thus Horace (C. III., ii. i.) says: "Mercuri-nam te docitis magistro And again (A. P. 394 sqq.): "Dictus et Amphion, Thebanae conditor arcis, See Tennyson's poem of Amphion, for an amusing use made of this story. LINUS. Linus, the son of Apollo and a muse, was the instructor of Hercules in music, but having one day reproved his pupil rather harshly, he roused the anger of Hercules, who struck him with his lyre and killed him. *The punishment of Dirce is the subject of a celebrated group of statuary now in the Museum at Naples. THAMYRIS. An ancient Thracian bard, who in his presumption challenged the muses to a trial of skill, and being overcome in the contest was deprived by them of his sight. Milton alludes to him, with other blind bards, when speaking of his own blindness, Paradise Lost, Book III., 35. MARSYAS. Minerva invented the flute, and played upon it to the delight of all the celestial auditors; but the mischievous urchin Cupid having dared to laugh at the queer face which the goddess made while playing, Minerva threw the instrument indignantly away, and it fell down to the earth, and was found by Marsyas. He blew upon it, and drew from it such ravishing sounds that he was tempted to challenge Apollo himself to a musical contest. The god, of course, triumphed, and punished Marsyas by flaying him alive. Marsyas. Herodotus and Xenophon both mention this story, and the former says he saw Marsyas' skin in Celaene. Suidas says that Marsyas threw himself into the river from mortification at his defeat, and that the river thus was named. MELAMPUS. Melampus was the first mortal endowed with prophetic powers. Before his house there stood an oak tree containing a serpent's nest. The old serpents were killed by the servants, but Melampus took care of the young ones and fed them carefully. One day, when he was asleep under the oak, the serpents licked his ears with their tongues. On awaking he was astonished to find that he now understood the language of birds and creeping things. This knowledge enabled him to foretell future events, and he became a renowned soothsayer. At one time his enemies took him captive and kept him strictly imprisoned. Melampus in the silence of the night heard the wood-worms in the timbers talking together, and found out by what they said that the timbers were nearly eaten through and the roof would soon fall in. He told his captors and demanded to be let out, warning them also. They took his warning, and thus escaped destruction, and rewarded Melampus and held him in high honor. Melampus was able to benefit his captors in another way; the son of his captor, Iphicus, had no children and asked Melampus the reason; the latter offered a sacrifice, and when he had cut it into pieces invited the birds to a feast. He then learned from a certain vulture that Iphicus had been frightened when a child by the sight of a bloody knife in his father's hands; that the father had left the knife stuck in a tree which had grown around it; that if he found this knife, scraped off some of the rust, and took it for ten days, his wish would be granted. All of which turned out true. This legend forcibly suggests the similar story so beautifully elaborated by Wagner in Siegfried. Siegfried, having killed the dragon, is lying beneath a tree on which the birds are singing lustily; he accidentally puts to his mouth his hand which is wet with the dragon's blood, when to his surprise he immediately understands the language of the birds, and through them finds Brunhilde. MUSAEUS. A semi-mythological personage who was represented by one tradition to be the son of Orpheus and Selene. He is said to have written sacred poems and oracles and hymns, which were collected in the time of the Peisistratidae. Pausanias says that his tomb was on the Museum Hill, southwest of the Acropolis. Milton couples his name with that of Orpheus in his Il Penseroso: "But O, sad virgin, that thy power Might raise Musaeus from his bower, |