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"What you seek is
nowhere; but turn yourself away, and the
object of your love will be no more. That
which you behold is but the shadow of a
reflected form and has no substance of its
own. With you it comes, with you it
gostays, and it will go with you
..." [Ovid,
Metamorphoses
3.433]
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Narcissus is remembered for having fallen in
love with his own reflection.
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Great beauty
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Narcissus, who was loved by
Apollo and is counted
among the most handsome young men, was the son of
the river god Cephisus and the nymph Liriope
[Hyg.Fab.271; Ov.Met.3.342], or of
Endymion and
Selene (Moon)
[Nonn.48.581].
His beauty has been compared to that of
Adonis, whom
Aphrodite loved, or to
that of Endymion, whom
Selene loved, or to that
of Ganymedes, whom
Zeus loved, or to that of
Hyacinthus 1, whom
Apollo loved, or to that
of Hylas, whom
Heracles 1 loved, or
to that of
Hermaphroditus,
whom Salmacis loved, or to that of Chrysippus 2,
whom Laius 1 loved. It is
also said that his looks were worthy of
Dionysus 2 or
Apollo.
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Tiresias' prophecy
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When Narcissus was born,
Tiresias was asked
whether the child would live a long life, and the
seer, aware of the difficulties of the enigmatic
maxim "Know thyself",
replied:
"If he never
knows himself."
[Tiresias. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
3.350]
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Loved by many
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When Narcissus was a sixteen years old
deer-hunter, the nymph Echo
(another reflection) fell in love with him. But her
love was not returned, and she disappeared from
woods and mountains, fading away. It is told that
not even her bones remained, having been turned
into stone, but that her voice—made utterly
brief by the anger of Hera
—still lives in her. Besides
Echo, many other
NYMPHS and youths sought
Narcissus' love, but were ignored by him. Finally
one of them prayed to heaven:
"So may he
himself love, and not gain the thing he loves!"
[Ovid,
Metamorphoses
3.405]
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Impossible love
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That prayer was heard by
Nemesis. And so
Narcissus, having come to a pool to quench his
thirst, saw his reflection in its smooth surface,
and fell in love with it. And since he could not
obtain the object of his love, he died of sorrow by
the same pool. The NYMPHS
grieved him, including
Echo. But when they
prepared his funeral pyre, they could not find his
body. Instead they found the flower that today
bears his name.
It is told that Narcissus still keeps gazing on
his image in the waters of the river Styx, in the
Underworld.
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Narcissus discovers his
image in a pool
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The story and the flower
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The spring where Narcissus saw himself is said
to be in the territory of the Thespians, in a place
called Donacon. Some reject the story of Narcissus
looking into the water, failing to understand that
he saw his own reflection, falling in love with
himself, and dying of love at the spring. They find
it stupid to imagine that a man old enough to fall
in love was unable to distinguish a man from a
man's reflection. Instead they assert that
Narcissus had a twin sister, and that both were
exactly alike in appearance. He (they explain) fell
in love with his sister, and when she died he used
to visit the spring, knowing well that he saw his
reflection, but finding some relief for his love
because it reminded him of his sister
[Pau.9.31.7-9].
It is also believed [Pau.9.31.9] that the flower
already existed before Narcisuss, at the time when
Hades abducted
Persephone. For it
was while she gathered flowers over a meadow,
attracted by the sweet scent of the narcissus
("and not violets"),
that the earth opened and
Hades sprang out upon her
with his immortal horses, taking her with him to be
the queen of the
Underworld. Others
[Hom.Dem.9] affirm, however, that the "snare for the bloom-like
girl" consisted of roses, crocuses, irises,
hyacinths, the narcissus, and violets as well.
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