“The king [Midas] went to the river as he was commanded. His power of changing things to gold colored the river and passed from his mortal body into the waters of the stream. And even now its sands, which took on the seeds of that metal and were colored by the sodden lumps, are hard with the ancient gold.”

—Ovid, Metamorphoses. Classical Gods and Heroes, translated and edited by Rhoda A. Hendricks, 1974.