Marsya was a personality featured in ancient Greek myth. He was a Satyr from Phrygia, which was an ancient kingdom that was located in central modern Turkey. He is often accredited as the first to composed tunes for the flute. He obtained his double flute from Athena, who had invented the device but discarded it in her displeasure over the bloating effect on the cheeks.

Later, Marsyas challenged the god Apollo to a music contest. The winner could treat the loser however they liked. The Satyr inevitably lost, when, in the second round, the god demanded they play their instruments upside-down - a feat ill-suited to the flute. The judges of the contest were the Muses. Naturally Apollo won, due to their connection with him. The victorious Apollo chose to have Marsyas tied to a tree and flayed alive. The rustic gods in their pity then transformed him into a mountain stream.

In Antiquity sources depict the contest as an example of the hubris of a mortal challenging a god and the justice of his punishment. This reading is very similar to the standard reading of the myth of Icarus. Some read this contest as a description of the supplanting by the Olympian pantheon of an earlier “Pelasgian” religion of chthonic heroic ancestors and nature spirits. This reading is rather interesting in that it has Apollo as a stand-in of the new gods conquering Marsyas, a stand-in of the old nature spirits.

In some alternative sources it is depicted that it was Apollo who challenged Marsyas to the contest. This version highlights the human quality of jealousy found in the god Apollo. This alternative source challenges the theme of hubris in the myth; rather we see a jealous god that cannot stand to see godly qualities in a mortal. Perhaps this is simply another kind of hubris - a god challenging a mortal who in fact brought them into existence. Seen in this way the story of the flaying of Marsyas depicts the backfiring of the metanarritive of gods.

The musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas is also particularly rich for psychoanalytic investigation because it resonates with the creative conflict on several levels. It may be seen as a metaphor for the Oedipus complex as described by Freud, for pre-oedipal issues of potential space between inside and outside as discussed by Winnicott and Deri, and for the splitimage of self sometimes experienced by creative people.

(image: Jusepe De Ribera, Apollo Flaying Marsyas, 1637)