The Golden Touch

In the cool of the evening, King Midas went down to his treasure room, locked the door behind him, and lit a single lamp.

Gold glowed back at him from every side. There were gold coins in heaps, gold cups on shelves, gold chains spilling out of open chests. Midas ran his fingers through the coins and listened to them clink. It was his favourite sound in the world.

He was already one of the richest kings in Phrygia. But whenever he stood in this room, he thought the same thing.

If only I had more.

A guest in the garden

One morning, the king's gardeners found an old man asleep among the roses, tangled in vines and smelling strongly of wine.

They brought him to the palace, and Midas knew him at once. It was Silenus, the old teacher and companion of Dionysus, the god of wine and growing things. He had wandered away from the god's merry procession and lost his way.

Midas was a foolish man in many ways, but he knew how to be a host. He gave Silenus a soft bed and a great feast, and for ten days and nights the palace was full of music. Then the king himself led the old man back to Dionysus.

The god was overjoyed to see his friend again.

"You have been kind to someone I love," Dionysus told the king. "Ask me for anything you wish, and it will be yours."

Midas did not need to think for long.

"Grant that whatever I touch turns to gold," he said.

The god's face grew still. He looked at the king for a long moment, as if he were sorry for him. But a promise is a promise.

"It is done," said Dionysus.

Everything shines

Midas hurried home, hardly daring to believe it. On the road, he reached up and broke a twig from an oak tree.

It turned to gold in his hand.

He picked up a stone from the path. Gold. He pulled an ear of wheat from a field at the roadside, and it became a little golden sculpture, every grain shining. He laughed out loud.

At the palace, he touched the great doors, and they blazed. He ran his hands along the pillars, the walls, the chairs. He walked through his garden touching roses, and they froze into gold on their stems, perfect and bright and with no scent at all.

By evening he was hungry, and tired from so much happiness. He sat down at his table and called for dinner. The servants brought bread, roast meat, fruit and a jug of wine.

Midas picked up the bread.

It went hard and heavy in his fingers, cold and gleaming. He stared at it. He reached for a bunch of grapes. They turned to gold beads. He lifted the cup of wine to his lips, and as it touched his mouth it became a trickle of melted gold, hot and metallic, that he could not swallow.

Midas put down the cup very slowly.

He sat at a table piled with treasure and understood that he could not eat a single crumb of it.

The daughter

In some tellings of this story, the worst is still to come.

The king had a small daughter whom he loved more than all his gold, though he had never quite said so, even to himself. That evening she came running into the hall, upset because the roses in the garden had all gone stiff and strange.

Seeing her father's face, she forgot the roses. She ran to him and threw her arms around him to comfort him.

And the moment he held her, she was still. Her bright face, her curls, her small hands, all turned to cold, gleaming gold.

The king cried out and fell to his knees. All around him, the hall shone with riches. And he would have given every bit of it, every coin and cup and golden rose, to feel his daughter's warm hand in his again.

The river

That night, Midas went back to the god, weeping. He was hungry and thirsty and heartbroken, and he hated the very gold he had begged for.

"Take it away," he pleaded. "I was a fool. I see it now. Please, take it back."

Dionysus was merciful.

"Go to the river Pactolus," the god said, "near the city of Sardis. Follow it up to its source. Plunge your head and body into the spring, and wash your wish away."

Midas went. He found the spring among the rocks and stepped into the cold, clear water. As he washed, the golden touch streamed out of him into the river, and the sand of the riverbed began to glitter.

He scooped up some water in his hands, and it stayed water. He drank, and it was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.

In the tellings where his daughter was changed, Midas carried river water home and poured it over her, and the gold melted away, and she woke laughing and puzzled in his arms. And from then on, it is said, he did not care for gold at all, but loved the plain, living things: bread, water, roses, sunlight, and the people he held close.

About this story

The myth of King Midas comes from ancient Greece and is best known from the Roman poet Ovid, who told it in his Metamorphoses, finished around 8 CE. Ovid explains that the golden sand of the river Pactolus came from Midas washing away his wish. The king's daughter does not appear in the ancient versions. She was added by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne in "The Golden Touch" (1852), and many people now think of her as part of the story. This version is a shortened, simplified retelling.