Chapter 2: The Olympians
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♠ Propertius, 2.30.16-18
yet this is the place where the skilled pipe should play that which floated in Maeander’s shallows, hurled there unjustly swelling Minerva’s cheeks, to make her ugly. Latin Text
♠ Ovid, Fasti 6.697-710
I was the first, by piercing boxwood with holes wide apart, to produce the music of the long flute. The sound was pleasing; but in the water that reflected my face I saw my virgin cheeks puffed up. ‘I value not the art so high; farewell, my flute!’ said I, and threw it away; it fell on the turf of the river-bank. A satyr found it and at first beheld it with wonder; he knew not its use, but perceived that, when he blew into it, the flute gave forth a note, and with the help of his fingers he alternately let out and kept in his breath. And now he bragged of his skill among the nymphs and challenged Phoebus; but, vanquished by Phoebus, he was hanged and his body flayed of its skin. Yet am I the inventress and foundress of this music; that is why the profession keeps my days holy. Latin Text
♦ Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 00.348: Apulian red-figure bell crater by the Painter of Boston 00.348, Athena playing a double flute and looking at her reflection, as Marsyas approaches from the right
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Artistic sources edited by R. Ross Holloway, Elisha Benjamin Andrews Professor Emeritus, Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown Univ., and Frances Van Keuren, Prof. Emerita, Lamar Dodd School of Art, Univ. of Georgia, June 2019.
Literary sources edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, January 2021
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