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Narcissus

The first engraved mirror coin

Narcissus, in Greek mythology, was the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope. He was distinguished for his beauty.
According to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book III, Narcissus’s mother was told by the blind seer Tiresias that he would have a long life, provided he never recognized himself. His rejection, however, of the love of the nymph Echo or of the young man Ameinias drew upon him the vengeance of the gods.
He fell in love with his own reflection in the waters of a spring and pined away, the flower that bears his name sprang up where he died from his life’s blood.
The Greek traveler and geographer Pausanias, in Description of Greece, Book IX, said it was more likely that Narcissus, to console himself for the death of his beloved twin sister, his exact counterpart, sat gazing into the spring to recall her features.
The story may have derived from the ancient Greek superstition that it was unlucky or even fatal to see one’s own reflection.
Narcissus was a very popular subject in Roman art. In Freudian psychiatry and psychoanalysis, the term narcissism denotes an excessive degree of self-esteem or self-involvement, a condition that is usually a form of emotional immaturity.

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