Pygmalion (mythology) Pygmalion (mythology) Pygmalion (; Ancient Greek: Πυγμαλίων "Pugmalíōn", "gen".: Πυγμαλίωνος) is a legendary figure of Cyprus. Though "Pygmalion" is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name "Pumayyaton", he is most familiar from Ovid's narrative poem "Metamorphoses", in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved. In Ovid's narrative, Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory. According to Ovid, after seeing the Propoetides he was "not interested in women", but his statue was so beautiful and realistic that he fell in love with it. In time, Aphrodite's festival
Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed he seems never tired of gazing upon his own loveliness, and of breaking forth into ecstatic song with, "Just look at that and look at this." Pygmalion is a classical masher. He "mashes" not only Galatea who made him, but Myrine and Daphne, who, bewitched by his manly beauty, give the "cold shoulder" to their respective and respectable husbands, Cyniscos, Leucippe and Chrysos, who, being thereby enraged, resolve not to mash, but to smash Pygmalion and to begin by chipping him. This treatment of course soon inclines Pygmalion to return to his old position, and then peace and happiness are