In Gallery 17 of the Louvre Museum in Paris, there is a carved marble sculpture of a naked elderly man sprawled against a tree, his hands tied at the wrists, his feet barely reaching the ground. His deeply wrinkled face slumps between two stretched, sinewy arms, while his mouth forms a defeated grimace, as though the situation in which he finds himself – bound to a pine trunk – is inevitable. With his eyes downcast, he might already be dead. The Torment of Marsyas, a Roman masterpiece from the second century CE, depicts the mythological satyr who challenged the god Apollo to a musical contest to see who could play their instrument more masterfully and, when he inevitably lost, was flayed alive in a cave for his hubris.