Ep 12. KIng Midas: The Golden Touch

King Midas was a wealthy Grecian merchant and a popular king with a loving wife and a young daughter, until the day that his beloved wife died while tending to the poor peasants on a winter night. Blaming her death on her foolish charity, Midas looked upon the poor with disdain, and dedicated his life to the one thing he could love that would not perish -- his fortune! But a local outlaw threatens to undo Midas' fortune, and when he steals his golden sword, Midas becomes obsessed with capturing this rogue who gives his gold away to the poor. Wanting more than anything to protect his fortune, Midas wishes for unlimited wealth and is visited in a dream by Dionysus, god of revelry, who answers the King's wish by giving Midas the "golden touch". Overtaken by greed, Midas turns all around him into gold, even the very creatures in the garden that his wife had so lovingly tended to. But his dream of wealth soon becomes his worst nightmare, when he captures the masked outlaw and turns him into a gold statue only to discover it's his daughter. Overwhelmed with grief and desperate to rid himself of the golden touch, Midas pleads to Dionysus to have his daughter back. The god tells Midas that to undo the curse, he must haul his entire fortune in gold up a mountain and offer it Apollo as he rides by on his golden sun chariot. Midas performs this dangerous task and is freed from the curse. He turns his daughter back to normal and swears never again to lose sight of what is really valuable to him -- his daughter and wonderful living things around him.