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Thamyris and the Muses

Author(s): George Devereux


Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 108, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 199-201
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/294812
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THAMYRIS AND THE MUSES
(An Unrecognized Oedipal Myth)

The Thamyris' myth has so many variants that one cannot help
thinking that the latent content of this myth's nucleus is so anxiety-
arousing that each group of its variants seeks to obliterate it in its own
way.
I note, to begin with, a striking difference between the two princi-
pal groups of variants:
1) In the versions in which Thamyris is the son of a Muse, the
stake of the musical contest between Thamyris and the Muses is either
not mentioned or not sexual.
2) In the versions in which Thamyris could, if he won the contest,
cohabit either with one of the Muses or with all nine of them,2 Thamyris
is not the son of a Muse.
3) The specific penalty-the blinding of the loser Thamyris-is
mentioned only in the versions in which, if he won the contest, his re-
ward would be cohabitation with one muse only who, I note, is never
named. In other versions the Muses can deal with the loser Thamyris as
they please. But, in all versions which mention a musical contest, it is
Thamyris himself who determines both the reward of the winner and
the punishment of the loser.
Of course, the pious Homer (II. 2.594) mentions neither the musi-
cal contest nor its stake. In the Iliad, Thamyris is punished simply for
asserting that he is a better musician than the Muses. The bashfulness of
so excellent a Hellenist as Hofer3 is equally great: Thamyris' wish to co-
habit with the Muses shocks him as much as the participation in the
torturing of Thamyris by the Muse who is his mother. In fact, Hofer
even insists that there is no resemblance whatever between the torturing
of Thamyris by his mother, the Muse, and the slaying of Pentheus by his
mother, in Euripides' Bacchae.

'Son of Melpomene: Apollod. ap. sch. E. Rh. 346; son of Erato: sch. Ven. A.
Hom. II. 10.435; Eustath. ad Hom. II. p. 817-31; Hes. Op. 1, p. 25-28 Gaisf.
2With one Muse (who is never named): sch. Ven. Hom. II. p. 298-43; with all the
nine Muses: Asclepiad. ap. sch. E. Rh. 916; Apollod. 1.3.3; Zenob. Cent. 4.27; sch.
Hom. II. 2.595.
3S.v. Thamyris, Roscher, Lex., col. 468.
American Journal of Philology 108 (1987) 199-201 ? 1987 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
200 GEORGEDEVEREUX

Now, paradoxical as this may seem, the fact that Pentheus had
brought charges of sexual misconduct against the Mainades-includ-
ing, it goes without saying, his mother and his maternal aunts (E. Ba.
223-25)-had scandalized another great Hellenist.4
The fact is that neither Hofer nor Grube understood that "all the
Muses" and "all the Mainades" are simply smoke screens that disguise
the son's incestuous desire for his mother only -or his pathological curi-
osity and jealousy as regards the sexual behavior of his mother only.
This interest - too shameful to be put in words - that concerns one
person only, is masked by an avowable interest in the "crowd" to which
that person happens to belong. Hence, even in those versions in which
Thamyris could, if he won, cohabit with one muse only, that Muse is
never named. One encounters this kind of anonymity also in dreams, in
the memory gaps of patients5 and, of course, also in myths and tales that
happen to concern precisely incest.
It is, likewise, interesting that the absence of an umpire in this
contest had worried Hofer (in Roscher, s.v. Thamyris, col. 468), no
doubt because the tradition concerning the contest between the flautist
Marsyas and the kitharode and singer Apollon did name the umpires of
that contest-the Muses.6
In the case of the contest between Thamyris and the Muses it is
precisely the (sexual) nature of the stake which justifies the lack of an
impartial umpire. The situation is fairly simple. The best proof of Tha-
myris' superiority as a musician would have been the capacity of his mu-
sic to seduce, either one Muse or else all nine of them, so completely that
they would have desired his amorous embraces. By contrast, had an um-
pire decided the outcome of the contest, without the Muses themselves
admitting that they had been vanquished (- seduced), the winning
Thamyris' reward would have been only a quasi-rape.
In short, this contest tests not only Thamyris' musical genius but
also -and perhaps even mainly-his (sexual) irresistibility: his capacity
to seduce even his own mother.

4G.M.A. Grube, The Drama of Euripides (London 1941) 403, n. 1.


51 am thinking here of a concrete incident in the analysis of one of my patients,
who unequivocally designated a certain person by a series of allusions of the kind one
encounters in Lykophron. Yet the patient was never "able" to remember that person's
name. I cannot, unfortunately, publish the details of this extraordinary psychoanalytic
session, for that would oblige me to name the person whom my patient was "unable" to
name.
6jessen, s.v. Marsyas ap. Roscher, Lex. col. 2443.
THAMYRIS AND THE MUSES 201

Now, one tradition records that Thamyris' two eyes were not the
same color.7 This, according to Hofer, is a token not only of irresisti-
bility but also of inconstancy.8
From the psychiatric point of view, the presence of incestuous mo-
tives is strongly, though indirectly, confirmed by the tradition that Tha-
myris was a homosexual.9 Strong incestuous fixations on the mother are
common in homosexuals.
Last but not least, I recall here a copiously documented fact.10 In
innumerable cases sexual misconduct is punished by blindness. The
most striking case is that of Aigypios,ll whom his mother--with whom
he had cohabited without knowing the true identity of his bed-fellow-
tried to blind when she discovered that her lover was her own son.12
All things considered, the Thamyris myth does not really need an
"interpretation." It suffices to arrange the data furnished by the vari-
ants in a manner that fits a meaningful psychological scheme. As soon
as this is done, one discerns at once that the diverse variants of this myth
are simply attempts to "bowdlerize" a myth which, in its initial form,
must have been one of the many Greek incest myths. It is therefore dis-
appointing to note that even in the long passage which Carl Robert de-
voted to Thamyris, precisely in his great monograph on Oidipous, one
finds no trace of an awareness of the Thamyris myth's original sense.13
I cannot conclude without mentioning, at least in passing, the
view that the winning Thamyris' right "to marry" (sic ! Hofer) is a reflec-
tion of Thracian polygamy. Though unsophisticated, this sociological
interpretation is not necessarily false. But it can at most reveal the man-
ner in which a tale of incestuous ambitions could, in Thrace, assume the
guise of a tale of polygamous ambitions fitting Thracian customs. A
purely sociological interpretation of the Thamyris' myth cannot yield
more than this inference.
tGEORGE DEVEREUX

7One black eye, one "white" (blind ?) eye: Asclepiad. ap. sch., E. Rh. 916. One
black eye, one pale sea-green eye: sch. Ven. B. Horn. II. 2.595; Pollux 4.141.
8It suffices to recall here his polygamous ambitions.
9Apollod. 1.3.3; sch. Ven. A. Hom. II. 2.595; Zenob. Cent. 4.27, p. 91-10; Eus-
tath. ad Hom. II. p. 298-40; cp. Arnob. adv. nat. 4.26; Suid. s.v. Odpupic p. 1108.1.
'OG. Devereux, "The Self-Blinding of Oidipous," Journal of Hellenic Studies
(Festschrift E. R. Dodds) 93 (1973) 36-49.
" Ant. Lib. 5.
121 note, in passing, that in S. OT., Oedipus pierces his eyes with his mother's
brooches.
13C. Robert, Oidipus (1915) 2.92, n. 179.

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