Midas appears in Herodotus, not only as a king of Phrygia, but as a progenitor of the Phrygians. In the Tusculans of Cicero, the drunken satyr Silenos (originally another form of the same Midas, the satyrs having ass's ears), the master of Dionysos, loses himself in the rose-garden belonging to Midas, before whom he is conducted, and by whom he is benevolently received and entertained, and then sent back with honour to the god, who, in gratitude, concedes to Midas the gift of turning to gold everything that he touches, to such an extent as to affect the food that he wishes to eat and the water in which he bathes. This myth is probably of a complex nature. Midas ought, like the ass, to turn to gold what he has eaten, that is, to turn his food and drink into excrements of gold, to fructify the golden ears of corn, i.e., in heaven, the solar rays. Cicero himself leads us to suppose that the myth of Midas is in relation with the ears of corn, when, in his first book De Divinatione, he says that the ants carried grains of wheat into the mouth of Midas when a child; these being symbols of abundance and of fecundity which are quite applicable to the mythical ass. For although the common ass is not a privileged fœcundator, the mythical ass, in its capacity of a rain-giving cloud or ćiramehin, is the best fertiliser of the fields. The sun, or gold, or treasure, comes out of the ass-darkness or ass-cloud. The ass Lucius, after having eaten the roses of morning or the east, again becomes Lucius the luminous one (the sun). On this account the ass Midas, too, who also delights in roses, turns to gold whatever he eats, as well as the dew or ambrosial fountain in which he bathes; the rosy becomes the golden; the sun comes out of the contact of the ass of night with the aurora.
Servius, in his commentary on the sixth book of the Æneid, also tells us the centauri "in floribus stabulant," as the Hindoo gandharvas in the perfumes. These perfumes are rain and dew. The ass crowned with loaves of bread[722] and flowers, in the Latin worship of Vesta, who remembered the service rendered to her one day by the braying of the ass, which aroused her from her sleep when some one was attempting to violate her, is another variety of the myth of the aurora who awakes out of the night, golden, that is, rich in golden oats and in golden wheat. The ass itself is sacrificed, because, perhaps, it was the ass itself that had made an attempt to deprive Vesta of her chastity; but having betrayed itself, as it often happens in fables, by its braying, it arouses Vesta, who punishes it by offering it in sacrifice. In a variation of the same story in the first book of Ovid's Fasti, where instead of Vesta we have the nymph Lothis asleep, the red Priapos, who wishes to violate her, also loses his opportunity, because the ass of Silenos—
"Intempestivos edidit ore sonos,"
on which account it is killed by Priapos:
"Morte dedit pœnas auctor clamoris, et hæc est
Hellespontiaco victima sacra Deo."
The apologue is well known of the long-eared ass, who, when called upon to judge between the nightingale and the cuckoo as to who has the sweetest voice, decides in favour of the cuckoo. The nightingale then appeals to man with the sweet song that we are all acquainted with.[723] In the myth of Midas, the Phrygian hero is given ass's ears as a chastisement by Apollo, because, having been called upon to judge between the cithern or lyre of Apollo (whence the proverb "Asinus ad lyram") and the pastoral pipe (calamus agrestis) of Pan (who is represented as a horned and bearded satyr, with a tail and long ears), he pronounced that the pan-pipes were the most harmonious instrument. Midas hides his ears in a red cap, but his comber lets out the secret, as in the Mongol story, and in a manner almost identical—
"Ille quidem celat, turpique onerata pudore
Tempora purpureis tentat velare tiaris:
Sed, solitus longos ferro resecare capillos,
Viderat hoc famulus: qui, cum nec prodere visum
Dedecus auderet, cupiens efferre sub auras,
Nec posset reticere tamen, secedit; humumque
Effodit, et domini quales aspexerit aures,
Voce refert parva: terræque immurmurat haustæ.
Indiciumque suæ vocis tellure regesta
Obruit, et scrobibus tacitus discedit opertis.
Creber arundinibus tremulis ibi surgere lucus
Cœpit; et, ut primum pleno maturuit anno,
Prodidit agricolam: leni jam motus ab Austro
Obruta verba refert; dominique coarguit aures."[724]
The same Greeks who held the ass up to derision, made the Phrygian king Midas, of the ass's ears, the object of their satire. This is a particular form of the mythico-heroic struggle between Greeks and Phrygians or Trojans. Apollo is the enemy of the Trojans, as he is the enemy of the Phrygian king Midas. The Trojans and Troy are represented by the ass, and the Greeks, who vanquish and take by assault the Trojan fortress, by the horse; the sun disperses the night; the hero kills the centaur; the horse defeats the ass, the Greek the Trojan; and every one can see how the fact that the Greeks personified in the ass their enemies in Asia Minor, must have damaged the reputation of the poor long-eared animal. The most bitter and cutting satire is always that which is directed towards one's own enemies; and the ass, unfortunately, had at one time the honour of representing the Phrygian, the traditional enemy of the Greek. The ass bore the load of this heroic war, in the same way as in the Middle Ages he was publicly impaled by the Paduans for having had the misfortune of being the sacred animal on the arms of the city of Vicenza, with which the Paduans lived in rivalry.[725]
In the same eleventh book of Ovid where the transformation of the human ears of Midas into ass's ears is described, it is very remarkable that the new ears are called whitish, as in the Mongol story they are said to be golden. This confirms still more the interpretation of the myth, to the effect that the ass is the solar steed during the night. The head and the tail of the night, conceived as an animal, are now the two whitish or grey twilights, and now the two golden auroras of morning and evening.
"Nec Delius aures
Humanam stolidas patitur retinere figuram,
Sed trahit in spatium villisque albentibus implet
Instabilesque illas facit et dat posse moveri."