The Touch of Midas

Myth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas

Once, as Ovid relates in Metamorphoses X[8] Dionysus found his old
schoolmaster and foster father, the satyr Silenus, missing.[9]

The old satyr had been drinking wine, and had wandered away drunk, and was
found by some Phrygian peasants, who carried him to their king, Midas
(alternatively, he passed out in Midas' rose garden). Midas recognized him,
and treated him hospitably, entertaining him for ten days and nights with
politeness, while Silenus entertained Midas and his friends with stories and
songs.[10]

On the eleventh day he brought Silenus back to Dionysus in Lydia. Dionysus
offered Midas his choice of whatever reward he wanted. Midas asked that
whatever he might touch should be changed into gold.

Midas rejoiced in his new power, which he hastened to put to the test. He
touched an oak twig and a stone and both turned to gold. Overjoyed, as soon
as he got home, he ordered the servants to set a feast on the table. "So
Midas, king of Lydia, swelled at first with pride when he found he could
transform everything he touched to gold: but when he beheld his food grow
rigid and his drink harden into golden ice then he understood that this gift
was a bane and in his loathing for gold cursed his prayer" (Claudian, In
Rufinem). In a version told by Nathaniel Hawthorne,[11] he found that when
he touched his daughter, she turned into a statue as well.

Now he hated the gift he had coveted. He prayed to Dionysus, begging to be
delivered from starvation. Dionysus heard and consented; he told Midas to
wash in the river Pactolus.

He did so, and when he touched the waters, the power passed into the river,
and the river sands became changed into gold. This explained why the river
Pactolus was so rich in gold and the wealth of the dynasty claiming Midas as
forefather, no doubt the impetus for this etiological myth. (Graves). Gold
was perhaps not the only metallic source of Midas' riches: "King Midas, a
Phrygian, son of Cybele, first discovered black and white lead."[12]