King Midas

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Midas, king of Phrygia, is cited by Dante in the twentieth canto of the Purgatorio (v. 106) as an example of miserably punished avarice. According to the myth that Dante draws from Ovid, Metamorphoses XI, Midas, desirous of riches, received from Bacchus the faculty of transforming into gold everything he touched; but, for the same reason, even foods and drinks were converted into gold, condemning the foolish king to die of hunger and thirst. He was therefore forced to beg the god to free him from that terrible privilege. The note to the verse specifies that Midas "became wretched through his own avarice" and that his condition is such as to provoke laughter rather than compassion, as happens with the misery mentioned in the same canto. The name appears in the Commedia only in this occurrence, within the series of examples of punished misers that concludes with the mention of Achan.