• 09 Dec, 2025 *

the tale of midas is a really silly one.

you have probably heard of ‘the midas touch’. it’s often used either literally or metaphorically in media, since we all got obsessed with greek mythology again this century.

in case you haven’t, this is the (not so) abridged version;

midas, a generally cool guy and king of some very rich kingdom in ancient greece, takes care of a sick satyr for a bit out of the kindness of his heart. the satyr then takes king midas to his deity, Dionysus, who is perpetually drunk off his face. Dionysus offers king midas one wish, anything he wants.

midas is a fucking dumbass and monkey paws himself by asking ‘that anything he touches shall turn to gold’.

you see where this is going, of course.

he turns a twig to gold. he turns a pebble to gold. cool.

he turns all the roses in the garden to gold, so they’re pretty and will last forever. cool.

his daughter is sad that the roses dont smell nice anymore. he reaches out to comfort her. oops. she’s gold now.

at some point he tries to have a lil snack, and his food turns to gold as he touches it. oops. not ideal.

upset and having realised his mistake, he prays to Dionysus that this ‘curse’ might be taken away. Dionysus is sympathetic of course, cause he’s like the one greek deity who isnt obsessed with the suffering of mortals, and so he tells king midas to go bathe in some particular river to lift the curse, after which anything he places in the river will also be restored.

at this point, i’m not sure if Dionysus was just really fuckin high, or maybe he is a dick after all. midas goes to the river, and as he touches the waters it ceases to flow and turns to gold. curse beats river, go figure. so now he’s stuck like this and also so are his daughter and his roses and his snacks.

eventually I think he starves to death, or in particularly dramatic versions of the story, he places his hands upon his own face and wills the curse to act upon him, which it does because the greeks have a sense of tragic timing if nothing else.

i think the moral of the story is meant to be something about the pitfalls of short-sighted greed, with a lil ‘careful what you wish for’ mixed in.

i’ve always felt that it’s more a tale of silly, whimsical good intentions and the way they love to go horribly wrong.

bro just wanted his flowers to be cool, cause he loved them.

he didn’t mean to ruin them for everyone else in the process.

he tried to undo the damage. he didn’t mean to keep making everything worse.

midas had good intentions, i think. it’s a shame he didnt think them through. it’s a shame he couldn’t escape his nature.

eventually u gotta learn to just stop touching things.