The Boy Who Could Not Come to Know Himself

Long before he became a name for self-love gone monstrous, Narcissus was simply a hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia, a young man whose beauty was noticed by everyone who crossed his path. Born, in the most common telling, to the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope, he carried a strange prophecy from birth. When his mother consulted the seer Tiresias about her son's future, the blind prophet answered with an unsettling riddle: the boy would live a long life only if he never came to know himself.

For sixteen years the prophecy lay dormant. Narcissus grew into his beauty, and with it grew a coldness — he rejected every admirer, man or woman, who dared approach him. Among those who fell for him was Echo, a mountain nymph already carrying her own curse. Echo had once kept the goddess Hera occupied with gossip while Zeus had an affair behind her back; discovering the deception, Hera stripped Echo of her own voice, leaving her able only to repeat the final words spoken to her.

It was in this condition that Echo saw Narcissus wandering, separated from his hunting companions, and fell instantly and hopelessly in love. She followed him in silence, aching for a chance to speak first. When Narcissus called out 'Who's there?', she could only echo his words back. Eventually she revealed herself and tried to embrace him, but he recoiled in horror, telling her to keep her chains — his rejection so total that Echo withered away in the lonely glens until nothing remained of her but her voice, the phenomenon we still call an echo.

Narcissus's cruelty did not end with Echo. In another telling, a young man named Ameinias, likewise spurned, prayed to the gods for justice before taking his own life at Narcissus's door. The goddess Nemesis heard the plea and cursed Narcissus in turn: he would never be loved by the one he himself loved.

The curse found its target soon after. Thirsty from hunting, Narcissus came upon a still pool of water that, according to Ovid, no animal had ever disturbed. Leaning down to drink, he saw his own reflection and, not recognizing it as himself, fell hopelessly in love with the image — as beautiful to him as a marble statue. In that instant, both Tiresias's prophecy and Nemesis's curse were fulfilled together.