Apollo was passionately fond of a youth named Hyacinthus. He accompanied him in his sports, carried the nets when he went fishing, led the dogs when he went to hunt, followed him in his excursions in the mountains, and neglected for him his lyre and his arrows. One day they played a game of quoits together, and Apollo, heaving aloft the discus, with strength mingled with skill, sent it high and far. Hyacinthus watched it as it flew, and excited with the sport ran forward to seize it, eager to make his throw, when the quoit bounded from the earth and struck him in the forehead. He fainted and fell. The god, as pale as himself, raised him and tried all his art to staunch the wound and retain the flitting life, but all in vain; the hurt was past the power of medicine. As when one has broken the stem of a lily in the garden and it hangs its head and turns its flowers to the earth, so the head of the dying boy, as if too heavy for his neck, fell over on his shoulder. ‘Thou diest, Hyacinth, ‘ so spoke Apollo, ‘robbed of thy youth by me. Thine is the suffering, mine the crime. Would that I could die for thee! But since that may not be, thou shalt live with me in memory and in song. My lyre shall celebrate thee, my song shall tell thy fate, and thou shalt become a flower inscribed with my regrets.’ While Apollo spoke, behold the blood which had flowed on the ground and stained the herbage ceased to be blood; but a flower of hue more beautiful than the Tyrian sprang up, resembling the lily, if it were not that this is purple and that silvery white. And this was not enough for Apollo; but to confer still greater honor, he marked the petals with his sorrow and inscribed ‘Ah! Ah!’ upon them, as we see to this day. The flower bears the name of Hyacinthus, and with every returning spring revives the memory of his fate.
It was said that Zephyrus (the West wind), who was also fond of Hyacinthus and jealous of his preference for Apollo, blew the quoit out of its course to make it strike Hyacinthus.
Images: © Predrag Pajdic, Apollo, British Museum, 2009
Text: From Bulfinch’s Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch (1796 – 1867), renamed after him and published after his death. It is a classic work of mythology and is still being printed, even 150 years after the first work, Age of Fable, was published in 1855.
Engraving: Jacopo Caraglio (16th century), Apollo and Hyacinthus (after 1527). In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo is one of the most significant deities who has been variously recognised as a god of music, poetry, and the arts, light and the sun, medicine and healing, archery, truth and prophecy and more. As the eternal kouros himself, he had the most prominent male relationships of all the Greek Gods. Hyacinth (or Hyacinthus) was one of his male lovers who was an extremely beautiful and vigorous Spartan prince.
Video: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791), Apollo and Hyacinthus, Act III: Oebalus/Melia Duet ‘Natus cadit, Maximilian Kiener and Christiane Karg at the Salzburg Summer Festival 2006. The opera K. 38, was written by Mozart, when he was only 11 years old. It is Mozart’s first true opera in three acts based upon Greek mythology as told in Ovid’s masterpiece Metamorphoses. Interpreting this work, Rufinus Widl wrote the libretto in Latin.
