Name: The myth of King Midas and his golden touch - Iseult Gillespie
Uploaded: 2020-02-12T02:30:25.000Z
Duration: 5 min 5 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

With his harebrained schemes  and asinine dealings with the gods,

King Midas ruled the ancient kingdom  of Phrygia with an uneven hand.

He was known in Greek mythology  as a rogue ruler

whose antics bemused his people  and distracted the gods.

Midas spent his days  in a stupor of splendor,

spoiling himself and his beloved daughter and gorging himself on feasts and wine.

Unsurprisingly, he felt  an affinity with Dionysus,

dozing in his rose garden and drunk  on more than the scent of flowers.

Midas recognized the satyr  as one of Dionysus's followers

and let him nurse  his hangover at the palace.

Pleased with the king's hospitality, Dionysus offered to grant him one wish.

Midas cast a greedy eye  over his surroundings.

no amount of precious jewels, finest silk  or splendid decor felt like enough.

His life, he thought, was lacking luster; what he needed was more gold.

The god sent the power to turn anything the king touched to gold

At his lightest touch,  the palace walls transformed,

He galloped through his home in a frenzy,

handling each item until  it took on a lustrous sheen.

and Midas's delirious laughter echoed off the walls.

Midas picked up a bunch of grapes from  his newly gilded fruit bowl.

for the fruit had turned  to metal in his mouth.

When he picked up a loaf of bread,  the crumbs hardened in his hand.

Flinging himself onto  his bed in frustration,

Midas discovered his plush pillows  had morphed into solid gold.

Hearing his cries of frustration,  his daughter entered the room.

he saw with horror that he had frozen her  into a golden statue.

Midas begged the gods  to rid him of his power.

Dionysus told Midas to wash  his hands in the River Pactolus.

When Midas reached into the river,  the gold drained from his fingertips.

Midas returned home  to find his daughter alive

and his palace back to normal,  and he rejoiced.

You'd think he would've learned  his lesson,

but just a few weeks later, Midas blundered again,

insulting the music and sun god Apollo  when he declared Pan a greater musician.

Apollo scornfully declared that the king  must have the ears of an ass

to make such a misjudgment, and transformed Midas accordingly.

Midas kept his hairy ears  hidden in public.

who was sworn to secrecy during  a very awkward grooming session.

The barber stifled his laughter  and fought the desire to tell someone,

One day, he walked outside the city  and dug a hole in the ground.

the desperate barber whispered, “Midas has ass's ears.”

in the spot where the barber  had buried his words.

When the wind blew, they carried the  echoes of his whisper through the breeze:

At the sound, donkeys in the fields raised their heads in recognition

and people chuckled to themselves  at the follies of their king.

With his golden touch and ass's ears,  Midas was not the most respected ruler.

And where other leaders were honored  through statues and temples,

his people remembered him  a little differently:

in the depths of the glittering river  and the rustle of the Phrygian wind.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

The myth of King Midas and his golden touch - Iseult Gillespie

desperate

surge

precious

consume