Son of Philammon and the nymph Argiope — a Thracian singer who vaunted he would defeat the Muses themselves in song and was stripped of sight, minstrelsy, and sweet voice; Homer places his fall at Dorium on the road from Oechalia.1
Homer remembers him in the catalogue of places: at Dorium the Muses met Thamyris the Thracian and made an end of his singing as he journeyed from Oechalia, from the house of Eurytus — for he had boasted that he would conquer even if the Muses themselves sang against him, and they in anger maimed him, took away his divine minstrelsy, and made him forget his lyre-craft.2
Apollodorus makes him son of Philammon and the nymph Argiope, excelling in beauty and minstrelsy — the first man said to have loved males, for Hyacinth son of Clio, before Apollo loved the boy. He engaged in a musical contest with the Muses and, defeated, was deprived of his eyes and his power of song.3
Pausanias says Argiope dwelt on Parnassus until Philammon refused her when pregnant; she settled among the Odrysae, whence Thamyris is called Odrysian. After his blinding he threw his lyre into the river Balyra, which took its name from the cast. At Dorium, Homer states, his boast against the Muses was punished; Prodicus in the Minyad epic placed the penalty in Hades instead.4
At Delphi Pausanias saw the sequence of victors in the god's contest: after Chrysothemis, Philammon won with a song, and after him his son Thamyris — before Orpheus and Musaeus refused to compete. At Orchomenus in Boeotia a statue showed Thamyris already blind, with a broken lyre in his hand.5
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story