[3] When Philammon refused to take Argiope into his house as his wife, the girl left Peloponnese and went to the country of the Odrysians in Thrace where she gave birth to a son, Thamyris.
[5] When Pliny the Elder briefly sketches the origins of music, he credits Thamyris with inventing the Dorian mode and with being the first to play the cithara as a solo instrument with no vocal accompaniment.
[1] While returning from Oechalia, Thamyris paused at the ford of the river Alpheus and boasted that he could surpass the Muses – the daughters of Zeus – in singing.
But they were angry and stilled his singing forever, robbing him of the divine powers of song and playing the lyre anymore.
These later sources add the details that Thamyris had demanded as his prize for winning the contest either the privilege of having sex with all the Muses or of marrying one of them;[9] and that after his death he was further punished in Hades.