Echo and Narcissus

Echo was a mountain nymph with a gift for conversation. She loved to talk, to tell stories, to keep anyone engaged for hours. This gift became her curse when Hera, queen of the gods, discovered that Echo had been distracting her with chatter while Zeus pursued other nymphs.

"Since you have used your voice to deceive me," Hera declared, "you shall have little use of it. You shall only be able to repeat the last words others speak."

From that moment, Echo could initiate no conversation. She could only echo.

Narcissus was the most beautiful youth in all of Greece, born of the river god Cephisus and the nymph Liriope. The seer Tiresias, asked if the boy would live to old age, gave a cryptic answer: "Only if he never knows himself."

As Narcissus grew, countless admirers pursued him—nymphs, maidens, and youths alike—but he rejected them all with contempt. He was proud of his beauty and disdained anyone who dared approach him.

Echo saw him hunting in the forest and was immediately consumed by love.

Echo followed Narcissus through the woods, waiting for him to speak so she could answer. At last he became separated from his companions and called out, "Is anyone here?"

"Here!" Echo replied.

"Come!" he shouted.

"Come!" she answered, emerging from the trees with arms outstretched.

Narcissus recoiled. "Hands off! I would rather die than let you have me!"

"Have me!" Echo pleaded, but he had already fled, leaving her alone.

Heartbroken and shamed, Echo withdrew to lonely caves and mountains. She wasted away until nothing remained but her voice, still repeating the last words of anyone who passed by.

One of Narcissus's rejected lovers prayed to Nemesis, goddess of retribution: "May he who loves none love himself, and may he never possess what he loves!"

Nemesis heard. She led Narcissus to a clear pool he had never seen before. Exhausted from hunting, he knelt to drink. In the water, he saw a face of extraordinary beauty.

Narcissus reached for this beautiful stranger, but whenever he touched the water, the image dissolved. He spoke to it, but it only moved its lips without sound. He tried to embrace it, but his arms closed on nothing.

At last he realized the terrible truth: "He is I! I have fallen in love with myself, and I can never have what I love."

Narcissus lay by the pool, unable to leave, unable to reach his beloved reflection. He wept, and his tears disturbed the image. He tore at his chest in frustration. He wasted away as Echo had wasted away, consumed by impossible desire.

When at last he died, calling a final farewell to his reflection, the nymphs came to prepare his body for burial. But where he had lain, they found only a flower with white petals surrounding a yellow center, bending toward the water. They called it narcissus, and it grows by pools and rivers to this day, forever gazing at its own reflection.

Somewhere in the mountains, Echo's voice still calls. And the flower still blooms in spring, beautiful and unreachable, loving only itself.