Bagpipes theory

[alexxkay]

The other day, I ran across the myth of Marsyas, who foolishly challenged Apollo to a music contest. As generally happens, he lost. Apollo skinned him, and, in some versions of the tale, made a wineskin out of Marsyas's hide. Another version says that Marsyas's skin is hung up in a cave, and moves if you play Phrygian music near it. Marsyas was a Phrygian, and some sources suggest that the myth reflects a cultural struggle between Phrygian and Greek musical styles.

I'm writing this post because of a connection I made while Googling about this myth. Could this bag of skin that responds to music and is associated with pipes be... a bagpipe? Apparently, the ancient Hittites may have had bagpipes, so it's not completely out of the question. Could Greek culture have so trounced the acceptibility of the bagpipe that only this echo of an echo of a myth reflects its existence? It's thin evidence, but I think it's a good story :-)

Comments

[siderea]

Interesting! The version of the story I learned was that Marsyas' skin was used for a drumhead.

That said, your source of the myth is wrong in an important detail that inclines to your hypothesis.

Marsyas didn't play a flute. He played an aulos - the aulos Athena invented from the collarbones of Medusa when Perseus slew her, and then cast away from her in embarrassed rage when she discovered why the other gods of Olympus laughed at her while she played it.

The aulos is a reed instrument, like a little oboe. It is so high-pressure to play, players would strap it to their heads to hold on. Their cheeks would bulge like a trumpeter's. Story has it, it is when Athena saw herself playing it in the reflection of her own shield that she finally found out why the other gods sniggered, and she cast the aulos down off Olympus to where Marsyas found it.

Only, unlike an oboe, it has *two* barrels, to play in harmony with itself.

Also in Latin: tibia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulos

[cvirtue]

Did the other gods snigger because she looked peculiar with her cheeks bulging thus looking ugly, or because that made her look like she was either giving head or her cheeks were testicles?

[siderea]

....the latter possibility hadn't crossed my mind, and certainly wasn't mentioned in the very G-rated source of my information! But it's certainly very... Greek.

[cvirtue]

One thing that often occurs to me when I see phallic graffiti is that it hasn't seemed to change much in thousands of years.

And yet, the male view of their own genitals in real life doesn't look much like most of the graffiti - the testicles don't sit at the side like two eggs bracketing a carrot on a table -- but that's one of the most common types I see scribbled here and there, and the one that comes to mind if one's cheeks are distended playing a straight pipe.