King Midas was a greedy king, best known for his ability to turn anything he touched into gold. The story of how this came to be goes as follows: King Midas once happened upon the wandering companion of Dionysus, the satyr Silenus. He was kind to the satyr, and as a reward for this good treatment of his friend, Dionysus offered to grant the king one wish. The king's wish was that all he would touch might turn to gold. It wasn't long, though, before he realized this was more a curse than a blessing, as his food turned to gold when he tried to eat it and he came close to starving to death, and when his daughter had become uspet the beautiful flowers now as gold had lost their fragrance, and he, in an attempt to comfort her, turned her to gold as well. Dionysus helped him by teling him how he could free himself of the curse, which was by having Midas bathe in the Pactolus River. This action was often used to explain the pressence of alluvial gold in the river. After this, he returned home and found his daughter had been returned to her normal form; flesh and blood rather than gold. Another interesting myth surounding the king Midas starts with him being judge of a musical contest between Apollo and Pan. When Midas said that Pan had won, Apollo was outraged, and turned Midas's ears into those of a donkey. From this point on, Midas was forced to wear a turban to hide his ears, and swore his barber to secrecy, making him promise never to tell a living soul. His barber, however, was bursting with the secret, and decided to whisper it into a hole in the ground. He filled in the hole, but unfortunatly for the barber, he had dug into a piece of Echo. Later, reeds grew from the filled in hole in the ground, and when the wind blew, the reeds, or rather Echo, told the secret for all to hear: "Midas has donkey's ears".
See also Who were the Gods, Echo and Narcissus