King Midas Was Actually a Real Person

We have no evidence whatsoever for the existence of the vast majority of figures that appear in classical mythology. For instance, we have no evidence for the existence of Perseus, Herakles, Theseus, Achilleus, or Odysseus. Nonetheless, there is at least one major figure from classical mythology who was definitely a real person: King Midas.

No, really. I am not kidding. Believe it or not, King Midas—the king who, according to legend, was so greedy and foolish that he wished for everything he touched to turn to gold—was actually a historical king of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia who ruled in the late eighth century BC.

We know Midas was a real king because he is mentioned in contemporary Assyrian records as having attacked King Sargon II of Assyria and there are surviving inscriptions from his reign. Nonetheless, even though King Midas was a real person, the famous story of the golden touch is undoubtedly ahistorical.

Assyrian records

King Midas is extensively referenced in contemporary records dating to the reign of King Sargon II of Assyria (ruled 722 – 705 BC). Some Assyrian texts seem to indicate that Midas was already ruling Phrygia before Sargon II ascended to the throne in 722 BC. According to the Assyrian records, for most of Sargon II’s reign, Midas kept interfering with the satellite kingdoms on the western border.

Eventually, an Assyrian governor invaded Phrygia and Midas began to send tribute to the Assyrians. An Assyrian text probably dating to shortly after Midas began sending tribute commends him for having put down an anti-Assyrian diplomat campaign. These records, which are contemporary, firmly cement King Midas in the realm of history rather than mere legend.

The so-called “Tumulus of Midas”

In 1957, a group of archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania led by Professor Rodney Young excavated a massive tumulus at Gordion, which was the capital city of the Phrygian Empire at the time when King Midas would have been alive. Inside the tumulus, they found a burial chamber filled with lavish grave goods. The burial chamber also contained the remains of a man who originally stood at around 159 centimeters tall and who died naturally at around the age of sixty years.

The archaeologists initially identified the tomb as belonging to none other than King Midas himself. Even today, the tumulus is still conventionally referred to as the “Tumulus of Midas” or, sometimes more informally, “Midas Mound.” Despite the name, however, the tomb identified as the “Tumulus of Midas” does not actually have any writing inside it identifying the man who was buried inside.

The tumulus is widely agreed to have belonged to a major Phrygian king, since it is so large and since so many precious goods were found in it. The wealth of precious goods found in the tomb strongly indicates that the king who was buried there ruled at the height of Phrygian power. Furthermore, the tumulus is agreed to date to around the eighth century BC or thereabouts, which is around the time when King Midas is known to have ruled.

Nonetheless, scholars and archaeologists are not entirely sure if the king buried in the tumulus is actually Midas. Some scholars have argued that the tomb might belong to Midas’s father Gordias, who is famous in Greek legend for having supposedly tied the Gordian Knot, which was later “untied” by King Alexandros III of Makedonia (i.e. “Alexander the Great”). Even if the tomb does not belong to Midas himself, the grave goods found in it do give us an impression of how wealthy and powerful Phrygia was at around the time when King Midas reigned.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the exterior of the so-called “Tumulus of Midas” at Gordion

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the interior passageway of the so-called “Tumulus of Midas”

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a reconstruction of the burial chamber of the “Tumulus of Midas” from the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey

Mention of Midas by Tyrtaios

King Midas is also mentioned in ancient Greek texts dating to not long after his reign. For instance, the earliest Greek author known to have associated Midas with extraordinary wealth was the poet Tyrtaios of Sparta, who lived in the late seventh century BC, only around a century after King Midas’s reign. In fragment twelve, Tyrtaios declares, as translated by M. L. West:

“I would not rate a man worth mention or account
either for speed of foot or wrestling skill,
not even if he had a Cyclops’ size and strength
or could outrun the fierce north wind of Thrace;
I would not care if he surpassed Tithonus’ looks,
or Cinyras’ and Midas’ famous wealth,
or had Adrastus’ smooth persuasive tongue…”

It is readily apparent from this passage that, by the time Tyrtaios was composing this poem in the late seventh century BC, the Greeks already associated Midas with spectacular wealth.

Mentions of Midas by Herodotos

Midas is also briefly mentioned several times by the ancient Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BC) in his book The Histories, which was probably mostly written in around the late 430s and early 420s BC. Although Herodotos was not a contemporary of King Midas by any means, he did have physical evidence of Midas’s existence. Herodotos reports in Book One, chapter fourteen of The Histories that King Midas dedicated a throne at Delphi, which he strongly implies he himself had seen:

“This Gyges then was the first foreigner (of our knowledge) who placed offerings at Delphi after the king of Phrygia, Midas son of Gordias. For Midas too made an offering, to wit, the royal seat whereon he sat to give judgment, and a marvellous seat it is; it is set in the same place as the bowls of Gyges.”

Although we cannot be completely sure, it is highly probable that the King Midas of Phrygia who dedicated the throne at Delphi seen by Herodotos is the same King Midas of Phrygia who is mentioned in the Assyrian records.

It is quite possible that the Midas mentioned in the Assyrian records, the Midas mentioned by Herodotos, and the Phrygian king entombed in the lavish tumulus at Gordion are all the same man. If this is the case, this would certainly mean that King Midas was a real Phrygian king who was both extraordinarily wealthy and extraordinarily influential on Near Eastern politics in the eighth century BC. In any case, there is no doubt that there really was at least one King Midas of Phrygia.

ABOVE: Second-century AD Roman marble copy of a fourth-century BC Greek bust of Herodotos, identified as him by the inscription. Although this bust is definitely intended to represent Herodotos, the portrayal is probably fictional, given that even the Greek original on which this bust is though to have been based dates to the century after Herodotos’s death.

The origins of the “golden touch” myth

As I mentioned earlier, the story that King Midas wished for everything he touched to turn to gold is not historical. We can be sure that this story is not historical not only because turning things to gold by touching them is obviously physically impossible, but also because the story is not mentioned in any of the earliest sources to mention King Midas.

Indeed, although references to Midas himself abound in the earliest sources, the earliest reference to the story of the golden touch actually comes from the Greek philosopher Aristotle of Stageira (lived 384 – 322 BC) in his Politics 1.1257b. Here is what Aristotle says about King Midas, as translated by H. Rackham:

“But at other times, on the contrary, it is thought that money is nonsense, and nothing by nature but entirely a convention, because when those who use it have changed the currency it is worth nothing, and because it is of no use for any of the necessary needs of life and a man well supplied with money may often be destitute of the bare necessities of subsistence, yet it is anomalous that wealth should be of such a kind that a man may be well supplied with it and yet die of hunger, like the famous Midas in the legend, when owing to the insatiable covetousness of his prayer all the viands served up to him turned into gold.”

Frustratingly, Aristotle does not tell us any of the details of the story. Instead, he merely tells us that King Midas was exceptionally greedy, that he foolishly wished for everything he touched to turn to gold, and that he starved to death and died as a result of this wish. Clearly the story of King Midas and the golden touch was already so widely known at the time when Aristotle was writing that Aristotle did not feel the need to elaborate because he could safely assume that his readers already knew the story.

It seems likely that the story of King Midas and the golden touch probably arose from stories about the Phrygians’ legendary wealth. The Phrygians really were quite wealthy, as the grave goods from the Tumulus of Midas demonstrate, but, in the Greek imagination, they were absurdly, outlandishly wealthy. Book One of Herodotos’s Histories is practically bursting with tales of Phrygian and Lydian opulence. It is easy to see how the Greeks, who were already telling stories about the wealth of the Phrygians, could have started telling stories about a Phrygian king whose very touch turned everything to gold.

It is also worth noting that the version of the story of King Midas that Aristotle seems to have been familiar with is drastically different from the version of the story we know today. According to Aristotle’s version of the story, King Midas died a slow, agonizing death by starvation because he could not eat anything because his touch turned everything to gold. This is exactly the sort of ending we would expect from a story in Greek mythology, but it is not the ending that most people today are familiar with.

ABOVE: Roman bust of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. The earliest reference to the story of King Midas and the golden touch comes from Aristotle’s Politics. In Aristotle’s version of the story, Midas starves to death because he is unable to eat.

The birth of the popular version of the Midas story

The version of the story of King Midas that is best known today comes from Book Eleven of the long narrative poem Metamorphoses, which was written in Latin in around 8 AD by the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso (lived 43 BC – c. 17 AD). While Aristotle’s version of the story ends with King Midas starving to death, Ovid’s version has a happy ending.

In Ovid’s retelling, instead of dying a slow, agonizing death by starvation, King Midas repents of his greediness and begs Dionysos to take the golden touch away. Dionysos agrees and tells King Midas to bathe in the waters of the river Paktolos, which is known today in Turkish as Sart Çayı. Midas follows Dionysos’s instructions exactly and the golden touch is washed away.

After bathing in the river, Midas discovers that he is able to touch things again without turning them to gold, but, because the golden touch was washed off in the river, for centuries afterwards the waters of the river Paktolos were filled with gold, thereby making the later rulers of Phrygia and Lydia fabulously wealthy.

ABOVE: Midas Bathing in the River Pactolus, painted in 1627 by the French Baroque painter Nicolas Poussin

In some modern retellings of the story, King Midas accidentally changes his beloved daughter to gold. This part of the story does not come from any ancient Greek or Roman account. Instead, it comes from A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, a children’s picture book written in 1851 by the American writer Nathanael Hawthorne (lived 1804 – 1864), the same man who wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. The addition was most likely added to make the myth more appealing to small children.

Conclusion

King Midas was a historical king of the kingdom of Phrygia in Asia Minor in around the eighth century BC. He could not really turn things to gold, but he did rule a very powerful and wealthy empire. The story about him wishing for the ability to turn everything he touched into gold most likely arose from Greek stories about the alleged fabulous riches of Phrygia.