(Metropolitan Museum of Art)]]In Greek mythology, the satyr Marsyas appeared in two vignettes: in one, he picked up the double flute (aulos) that had been abandoned by Athena and played it; in the other, he challenged Apollo to a contest of music and lost his hide and life. In Antiquity, most accounts emphasise the hubris of Marsyas and the justice of his punishment. In modern comparative mythography Marsyas is seen as one of numerous figures emblemmatic of an earlier "Pelasgian" religion of chthonic heroic ancestors and nature spirits supplanted by the Olympian pantheon, personified in this case by Apollo.Compare the antagonists in the Labours of Heracles; see Ruck and Staples 1994 passim. Marsyas' episodes are sited by the mythographers in Celaenae (or Kelainai) in Phrygia (today, the town of Dinar in Turkey) at the main source of the Meander (the river Menderes).The river is linked to the figure of Marsyas by H

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