THAMYRIS, an ancient poet and musician. He is called by Homer Kisagore, "one who sings to the cithara." Plutarch, in his Dialogue on Music, tells us that he was born in Thrace, the country of Orpheus, and had the sweetest and most sonorous voice of any bard of his time. Homer, in his catalogue of ships, where he speaks of the cities under the dominion of Nestor, mentions Dorion as the place where Thamyris contended with the Muse, whom he had the arrogance to challenge to a trial of skill in poetry and music. The conditions and consequences of this contention are fully described by the poet.
And Dorion, fam'd for Thamyris' disgrace,
Superior once of all the tuneful race,
Till, vain of mortals empty praise, he strove
To match the feed of cloud-compelling Jove!
Too daring bard! whose unseemly pride
Th' immortal Muses in their art defy'd;
Th' avenging Muses of the light of day
Depri'd his eyes, and snatch'd his voice away;
No more his heavenly voice was heard to sing,
His hand no more awak'd the silver string.
Paufanias informs us, that the painter Polygnotus, in his celebrated picture of Ulysses's descent into hell, which was preserved in the temple of Delphos, had represented the wretched Thamyris with his eyes put out, his hair and beard long and dishevelled, and his lyre, broken and unstrung, lying at his feet. It is certain too, according to Paufanias, that this bard was not only the subject of painting and poetry, but of sculpture; for he tells us, that among the statues with which mount Helicon was decorated, he saw one of Thamyris, represented blind, and holding a broken lyre in his hand.
According to Diodorus Siculus, he learnt music at the school of Linus; and if we may credit Suidas, he was generally regarded as the eighth among the epic poets who preceded Homer. As to his works, which are wholly lost, antiquity has preserved the names of
several. Tzetzes mentions a cosmogony, or creation of the world, in 500 verses, and Suidas a theogony in 3000: perhaps both these writers speak of one and the same poem. He was said chiefly to have excelled in the composition of hymns: on which account the fanciful philosopher Plato compares him with Orpheus; and as he makes the soul of this bard after death pass into that of a swan, he fixes the residence of that of Thamyris in a nightingale. We only know his poem upon the War of the Titans by what Plutarch tells us of it from Heraclides of Pontus.