Linus was said to have lived during the reign of
Cadmus in
Thebes and became important in the art of music along with
Amphion and Zethus (1420 BC). In the
Suda, Linus was said to have been the first to bring the alphabet from
Phoenicia to the GreeksThe same author recounted that
Marsyas was flayed by Apollo who broke the strings of the lyre as well as the harmony he had discovered. The harmony of the strings, however, was rediscovered, when the Muses added later the middle string, Linus struck the string with the forefinger, and Orpheus and
Thamyras the lowest string and the one next to it. According to
Hyginus, Linus won the contest of singing during the games for the Argives conducted by
Acastus, son of
Pelias.
Versions of Death by Apollo According to Boeotian tradition, Apollo slew Linus with his arrows for being his rival in a musical contest (Linus's parentage here was described as the son of Urania and Amphimarus) and near
Mount Helicon his image stood in a hollow rock, formed in the shape of a grotto. Every year before sacrifices were offered to the Muses, a funeral sacrifice was offered to him, and dirges (linoi) were sung in his honour. His tomb was claimed both by the city of Argos and by Thebes. Chalcis in Euboea likewise boasted of possessing the tomb of Linus, the inscription of which is preserved by Diogenes Laertius. Here Linus, whom Urania bore,
The fair-crowned Muse, sleeps on a foreign shore.
by Heracles by the Tyszkiewicz Painter, c. 480 BC (
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) Linus also, who was admired because of his poetry and singing, had many pupils, and four of greatest renown, Heracles,
Thamyris, Orpheus, and
Musaeus. After he went to
Thebes and became a Theban, he taught music as well as letters to the young
Heracles. The boy, learning to play the lyre, was unable to appreciate what was taught him because of his sluggishness of soul. While Heracles was touching the instrument unmusically, Linus reprimanded him for making errors and punished him with rods. The pupil flew into a rage and violently struck his teacher with his own lyre. When he was tried for murder, Heracles quoted a law of
Rhadamanthys, who laid it down that whoever defends himself against a wrongful aggressor shall go free, and so he was acquitted. He was then sent by his mortal father,
Amphitryon to tend his cowherds.According to
Pausanias, Linus's death was very prominent that mourning to him spread widely even to all foreign land that even Egyptians made a Linus song, in the language called Maneros. He also added that of the Greek poets,
Homer shows that he knew of the sufferings of Linus were the theme of a Greek song when he says, that
Hephaestus, among the other scenes he worked upon the shield of
Achilles, represented a boy harpist singing the Linus song:
"In the midst of them a boy on a clear-toned lyre Played with great charm, and to his playing sang of beautiful Linus." It is probably owing to the difficulty of reconciling the different myths about Linus, that the Thebans thought it necessary to distinguish between an earlier and later Linus; the earlier Linus who was killed by Apollo and the later who was said to have instructed Heracles in music, but to have been killed by the hero. Hercules, being the Roman equivalent of the Greek figure Heracles, is also said to have killed Linus. == Interpretation ==