Ganymede
See Ganymede (moon) for the moon of Jupiter, or 1036 Ganymed for the asteroid. |
The Rape of Ganymede, by Rubens |
In
Greek mythology,
Ganymede, or closer to the Greek
Ganymedes (Greek: Î"ανυμήδης,
Ganumêdês) was a divine hero whose homeland was the
Troad. He was a
Trojan prince, son of
eponymous king
Tros of Dardania himself, and of Callirrhoe. Ganymede was the most beautiful of mortals, and was carried off by the gods (in the later story by
Zeus himself, or by Zeus in the form of an eagle) to Olympus as Zeus'
beloved and to serve as cupbearer to the gods. For the etymology of his name
Robert Graves'
The Greek Myths offers
ganyesthai +
medea, "rejoicing in virility."
Ganymede was kidnapped by Zeus from
Mount Ida in
Phrygia, the setting for more than one myth-element bearing on the early mythic history of Troy. Ganymede was there, passing the time of exile many heros undergo in their youth, by tending a flock of sheep or, alternatively, during the
chthonic or rustic aspect of his education, while gathering among his friends and tutors. Zeus saw him and fell in love with him instantly, either sending an
eagle or assuming his own eagle nature to transport Ganymede to
Mount Olympus.
As a Trojan, Ganymede is identified as part of the earliest, pre-Hellenic level of Aegean myth. Plato's
Timaeus was of the opinion that the Ganymede myth had been invented by the Cretans—
Minoan Crete being a power center of pre-Greek culture—to account for their "
pederastic lusts," imported thence into Greece, as Plato's charcters righteously declare. Homer doesn't dwell on the erotic aspect of Ganymede's abduction, but it is certainly in an erotic context that the goddess refers to Ganymede's blond Trojan beauty in the Homeric
Hymn to Aphrodite, mentioning Zeus' love for Trojan Ganymede as part of her enticement of Trojan
Anchises.
The Roman poet
Ovid adds vivid detail - and veiled irony directed against critics of homosexual love: aged tutors reaching out to grab him back, and Ganymede's hounds barking uselessly at the sky (
Carmina, x).
Statius'
Thebaid I:549 describes a cup worked with Ganymede's iconic
mythos:
"Here the Phrygian hunter is borne aloft on tawny wings, Gargara's range sinks downwards as he rises, and Troy grows dim beneath him; sadly stand his comrades; vainly the hounds weary their throats with barking, pursue his shadow or bay at the clouds."  |
Ganymede rolling a hoop and bearing aloft a cockerel - a love gift from Zeus (in pursuit, on obverse of vase).
Attic red-figure crater, 500-490 BCE; Painter of Berlin; Louvre, Paris) |
In Olympus, Zeus made Ganymede his lover and cupbearer, supplanting
Hebe. E. Veckenstedt (Ganymedes, Libau, 1881) endeavours to prove that Ganymede is the genius of intoxicating drink mead, whose original home was Phrygia.
All the gods were filled with joy to see the youth, save
Hera, Zeus' consort, who despised Ganymede. Her hate of him was applied by mythographers to account for her abandoning the Trojans, an otherwise inaccountable shift in the alliances of the
Trojan War, for the Troad was part of the homeland of the Great Goddess, of whom Hera was the main Olympian representative.
In a possible alternate version, the
Titan Eos, dawn-goddess and connoisseur of male beauty, kidnapped Ganymede as well as her better-remembered consort, his brother
Tithonus, whose immortality was granted, but not eternal youth. Tithonus indeed lived forever but grew more and more ancient, eventually turning into a cricket, a classic example of the myth-element of the Boon with a Catch. Tithonus is placed in the
Dardanian lineage through
Tros, an
eponym for Troy, as Ganymede. Robert Graves (
The Greek Myths) interpreted the substitution of Ganymede for Tithonus in a few references to the myth as a misreading of an archaic icon that would have shown the consort of the winged Goddess bearing a libation cup in his hand. (Compare the scholiast on
Apollonius of Rhodes, iii:115; Virgil,
Aeneid i:32;
Hyginus,
Fabula 224.)
Ganymede's father grieved for his son. Sympathetic, Zeus sent
Hermes to Tros with a team of two immortal horses, so swift they could run over water (or with a golden vine). Hermes also assured Ganymede's father that the boy was now immortal and would be the cupbearer for the gods, a position of much distinction. The theme of the father recurs in many of the Greek coming-of-age myths of male love, suggesting that the pederastic relationships symbolized by these stories took place with the consent of the father.
Zeus later put Ganymede in the sky as the
constellation Aquarius, which is still associated with that of the Eagle (Aquila). However his name would also be given by modern astronomy to an unrelated moon.Ganymede was afterwards also regarded as the genius of the fountains of the Nile, the life-giving and fertilizing river. Thus the divinity that distributed drink to the gods in heaven became the genius who presided over the due supply of water on earth.
In poetry, Ganymede was a symbol for the ideally beautiful youth and also for pederastic love, sometimes contrasted with
Helen of Troy in the role of symbol for the love of women.
When pederasty became common in Greece, it was consecrated by being integrated into the myths, with many of the major deities becoming
eromenoi and taking
erastes. One of these myths was the story of the abduction of the beautiful boy by Zeus; in Crete, where, Greek writers asserted, the love of boys was first systematized and legislated, king
Minos, the primitive law-giver, was called the ravisher of Ganymede. Thus the name which once denoted the good genius who bestowed the precious gift of water upon man was adopted to this use in vulgar Latin under the form
catamitus: in Rome the passive object of homosexual desire was a
catamite. The Latin word is a corruption of Greek
ganymedes but retains no strong mythological connotation in Latin: when Ovid sketches the myth briefly (
Metamorphoses x:152-161), "Ganymedes" retains his familiar Greek name.
Audio file of the myth
| Ganymede myth as told by story tellers |
|---|
| 1. Zeus and Ganymede, read by Timothy Carter, music by Steve Gorn, compiled by Andrew Calimach |
| Bibliography of reconstruction: Homer, Iliad 5.265ff; 20.215-235 (700 BCE); Anonymous, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 202ff. (7th c. BCE); Sophocles, The Colchian Women (after Athenaeus, 602) (b. 495 - d. 406 BCE); Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis (410 BCE); Apollodorus, Library and Epitome iii.12.2 (140 BCE); Diodorus Siculus, Histories 4.75.3 (1st c. BCE); Virgil, Aeneid 5. 252 - 260 (19 BCE); Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.155ff. (1CE - 8 CE); Hyginus, Poetica Astronomica II.16 Eagle; II.29 Aquarius (2nd c. CE); Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods (170 CE); First Vatican Mythographer, 184 Ganymede; Second Vatican Mythographer 198 Ganymede |
|
Ancient art
In Athens, vase-painters often depicted the mythological story, which was so suited to the all-male
symposium or formal banquet. The Ganymede myth was treated in recognizable contemporary terms, illustrated with common behavior of homoerotic courtship rituals. On an Attic red-figure vase (
ca 450 BCE) in the
Louvre, Zeus pursues Ganymede on one side, while on the other side the youth runs away, rolling along a hoop while holding aloft a crowing cock (presumably a courtship gift from Zeus) [
1]. On a vase by the "Achilles Painter" Ganymede also flees with a cock. Ganymede is usually depicted as a well-developed, muscular youth, albeit one engaged in incongruously infantile activities (such as rolling a hoop).
Leochares (about B.C. 350), a Greek sculptor of Athens who was engaged with Scopas on the
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus cast a (lost) bronze group of Ganymede and the Eagle, a work that was held remarkable for its ingenious composition, which boldly ventured to the verge of what is allowed by the laws of sculpture, and also for its charming treatment of the youthful form as it soars into the air. It is apparently imitated in a well-known marble group in the Vatican, half life-size. Such
Hellenistic gravity-defying feats were influential in the sculpture of the
Baroque.
Ganymedes is named by various ancient Greek and Roman authors:
*
Homer - Iliad 5.265; Iliad 20.232;
*Homerica - The Little Iliad, Frag 7;
*
Hesiod - Catalogue of Women, Frag 40A (from Oxyr Papyri Frag 3);
*
Homeric Hymns - Hymn V, To Aphrodite, 203-217;
*
Theognis - Fragments 1.1345;
*
Pindar -
Olympian Odes 1; 11;
*
Euripides -
Iphigenia at Aulis 1051;
*
Plato -
Phaedrus 255;
*
Apollonios Rhodios -
Argonautica 3.112f;
*
Apollodorus - The Library 2.104; 3.141;
*
Strabo - Geography 13.1.11;
*
Pausanias - Guide to Greece V.24.5; V.26.2-3;
*
Diodorus Siculus - The Library of History 4.75.3;
*
Hyginus**Fabulae 89; 224; 271;
**Astronomica 2.16; 2.29;
*
Ovid -
Metamorphoses 10.152;
*
Virgil -
Aeneid 1.28; 5.252;
*
Cicero - De Natura Deorum 1.40;
*
Valerius Flaccus - Argonautica 2.414; 5.690;
*
Statius**Thebaid 1.549;
**Silvae 3.4.13;
*
Apuleius -
The Golden Ass 6.15; 6.24;
*
Quintus Smyrnaeus - Fall of Troy 8.427; 14.324;
*
Nonnus - Dionysiaca 8.93; 10.258; 10.308; 12.39; 14.430; 15.279; 17.76; 19.158; 25.430; 27.241; 31.252; 33.74; 39.67; 47.98;
*
Suidas - Ilion; Minos;
Renaissance and Baroque Ganymede
In Shakespeare's
As You like It (
1599), a comedy of mistaken identity in the magical setting of the Forest of Arden, Celia, dressed as a shepherdess, becomes "Aliena" (Latin "stranger", Ganymede's sister) and Rosalind, because she is "more than common tall", dresses up as a boy, Ganymede, a well-known image to the audience. She plays on her ambiguous charm to seduce Orlando, but also (involuntarily) the shepherdess Phebe. Thus behind the conventions of Elizabethan theater in its original setting, the young boy playing the girl Rosalind dresses up as a boy and is then courted by another boy playing Phebe.
When painter-architect
Baldassare Peruzzi includes a panel of
The Rape of Ganymede in a ceiling at the Villa Farnesina, Rome, (
ca 1509-
1514), Ganymede's long blond hair and girlish pose make him unidentifiable at first glance, though he grasps the eagle's wing without resistance. In the version by Antonio Allegri "
Correggio" (
1439/
1534),(
Vienna), Ganymede's grasp is more intimate.
Rubens' version portrays a young man. But when
Rembrandt painted the
Rape of Ganymede (
see illustration above) for a Calvinist Dutch patron in
1635, the Classical erotic overtones were missing: a dark eagle carries aloft a plump cherubic baby (Paintings Gallery, Dresden, at right), one who is crying in fright.
Modern art
Vollmer's
Wörterbuch der Mythologie aller Völker (Stuttgart, 1874) illustrates "Ganymede" by an engraving of a "Roman relief," showing a seated bearded Zeus who holds the cup aside in order to draw a naked Ganymede into his embrace. That engraving however was nothing but a copy of
Raphael Mengs's counterfeit Roman fresco, painted as a practical joke on the eighteenth-century art critic
Johann Winckelmann who was growing desperate in his search for homoerotic Greek and Roman antiquities. This story is very briefly told by
Goethe in his
Italienische Reise [
2].
At
Chatsworth in the nineteenth century the bachelor
Duke of Devonshire added to his sculpture gallery
Adamo Tadolini's
Neoclassic "Ganymede and the Eagle" in which a luxuriously reclining Ganymede, embraced by one wing, prepares to exchange a peck with the eagle. The delicate cup in his hand is made of gilt-bronze, lending an unsettling immediacy and realism to the white marble group.
 |
"'Modern Version of Ganymede' Introduction of Budweiser to the Gods": ad in Theatre Magazine, February 1906 |
In the early years of the twentieth century, the topos of Ganymede's abduction by Zeus was drafted into the service of commercial enterprise. Adapting an
1892 lithograph by F. Kirchbach, the brewery of
Anheuser-Busch launched in
1904 an ad campaign publicizing the successes of
Budweiser beer. Collectibles featuring the graphics of the poster continued to be produced into the early
1990's.
The poem "Ganymed" by
Goethe was set to music by
Franz Schubert in
1817; published in his Opus 19, no. 3 (D. 544).
*Ganymede is a reluctant music fan in
Kurtis Blow's
1980 song
Way Out West. After hours of rap by "The Stranger" (Kurtis), he eventually gets up to dance.
In stories by
P. G. Wodehouse, the
Junior Ganymede is a sevants' club, analogous to the
Drones, to which
Jeeves belongs. Wodehouse named it after Ganymede presumably in reference to his role of cup-bearer.
*Ganymede from the real
Greek mythology makes an appearance in
K.A. Applegate's
fantasy series
Everworld (more precisely in
Everworld VI: Fear the Fantastic), together with the god
Dionysus. Ganymede is described as attracting both males and females.
My first thought, my first flash was that it was a beautiful woman.... The angel was beautiful, with a face dominated by immense, lustrous green eyes and framed by golden ringlets, and with a bow mouth and full lips and brilliant white teeth.And only then, only after I had felt that first rush of improbable carnal lust, did it occur to me that this angel was a man.(
Everworld VI: Fear the Fantastic, page 50, by
K.A. Applegate)
In 1959
Robert Rauschenberg referenced the myth in one of his most well known works,
Canyon and in another work,
Pail for Ganymede. In "Canyon", a photo of Rauschenberg's son Christopher beautifully reiterates the infant portrayed by Rembrandt in the 17th century. A stuffed eagle emerges from the flat picture plane with a pillow tied to a piece of string very near his claw. The pillow also reflects upon the young boy's body and Rembrandt's painting.
Named Ganymedes after the mythological Ganymed were:
Historical figure
*Ganymedes (1st century BC) Highly capable adviser & general of Cleopatra VII's sister & rival, Princess Arsinoe. Defeated & almost killed Julius Caesar in battle at Alexandria, capturing his cloak in the process. Could have changed the history of Rome and of the eastern Mediterranean if he had not been displaced through Egyptian court intrigue.
Moon
Jupiter's largest
moon is named after Ganymede; see
Ganymede (moon).
Other
*A Dutch ship [
3]
*In
The Memoirs of Cleopatra, a Novel, by Margaret George, which is historical fiction, Arsinoe's general Ganymedes tries to drive Cleopatra, Caesar, and his men out of the palace by thirst. Alexandria's water supply comes from underground tunnels that channel Nile water through the city, and Ganymedes had divided the water supply, protecting his own, and constructing giant waterwheels to draw seawater up to higher ground so as to pump it into the palace's water supply. Caesar responds by having his men dig for a few hours in the beaches so as to tap into the veins of fresh water there, thus thwarting Ganymedes tactic. [
4]
*
Pederasty in ancient GreeceFor historical authors and depictions, see above under Arts
*
The Androphile Project, the myth of Zeus and Ganymede.
*Images: [
5], [
6], [
7], [
8]
*
Peter R. Griffith on the homoerotic symbology of Ganymede*
Goethe, "Ganymed" (text, in German)
| - | NOTE: Categorising a story as a myth does not necessarily imply that it is untrue. Religion and mythology differ, but have overlapping aspects. Many English speakers understand the terms "myth" and "mythology" to mean fictitious or imaginary. However, according to many dictionary definitions, these terms can also mean a traditional story or narrative that embodies the belief or beliefs of a group of people, and this Wikipedia category should be understood in this sense only. The use of these terms in this category does not imply that any story so categorized is historically true or false or that any belief so embodied is itself either true or false. |
