King Midas

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The most famous King Midas is popularly revered in Greek mythology for his extraordinary ability to transform everything he touched into gold. This remarkable gift came to be known as the golden touch, or simply the Midas touch. The ancient city of Midaeum was likely named after this legendary king, and it's probably also the same Midas who founded Ancyra according to the accounts of Pausanias. According to Aristotle, legend has it that Midas died a tragic death from starvation as a direct result of his selfish prayer for the gold touch. The stories told about King Midas and his father Gordias, credited with founding the Phrygian capital city of Gordium and tying the famous Gordian Knot, suggest that they lived sometime in the 2nd millennium BC, long before the Trojan War. However, Homer makes no mention of King Midas or Gordias, instead highlighting two other Phrygian kings, Mygdon and Otreus. Another King Midas ruled over Phrygia in the late 8th century BC, right up until the sacking of Gordium by the Cimmerians, when he is said to have taken his own life. Most historians believe that this Midas was the same person as the Mita, a king called ruler of the Mushki in Assyrian texts, who fought against Assyria and its Anatolian provinces during the same period. A third King Midas is described by Herodotus as a member of the royal house of Phrygia and the grandfather of an Adrastus who fled Phrygia after accidentally killing his brother and sought asylum in Lydia during the reign of Croesus. By that time, Phrygia was under Lydian rule. Herodotus says that Croesus regarded the Phrygian royal house as friends but does not mention whether the Phrygian royal house still ruled as vassal kings of Phrygia.