In Greek mythology, Ganymede ( ) or Ganymedes ( ; ) is a divine hero whose homeland was Troy. Homer describes Ganymede as the most handsome of mortals and tells the story of how he was abducted by the gods to serve as Zeus's cup-bearer in Olympus. While classical traditions follow this narrative, a different account by Dictys Cretensis instead states that Ganymede was abducted by the Cretans. The Latin form of his name was (and also "Ganymedes"), from which the English word catamite is derived.According to AMHER (2000), catamite, p. 291.
While the earliest forms of the myth have no erotic content, by the 5th century BCE it was believed that Zeus had a sexual passion for him. Socrates says that Zeus was in love with Ganymede, called "desire" in Plato's Phaedrus; but in Xenophon's Symposium, Socrates argues Zeus loved him for his mind and their relationship was not sexual.
Family In Greek mythology, Ganymede is the son of Tros of Dardania,Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 4.75.3–5Homer, Iliad 20.230–240Suda v.s. Minos from whose name "Troy" is supposedly derived, either by his wife Callirrhoe, daughter of the river god Scamander,Scholiast on Homer's Iliad 20.231 who refers to Hellanicus as his authorityApollodorus, 3.12.2 or Acallaris, daughter of Eumedes.Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 1.62.2 Depending on the author, he is the brother of either Ilus, Assaracus, Cleopatra, or Cleomestra.Dictys Cretensis, Trojan War Chronicle 4.22
Other details about Ganymede differ as well. Some authors called him a son of LaomedonCicero, Tusculanae Disputationes 1.65Euripides, Troad 822 while others called him a son of Ilus.Tzetzes ad Lycophron, 34 He is also known in stories as Dardanus,Clement of Alexandria, Recognitions 22 Erichthonius,Hyginus, Fabulae 271 or Assaracus.Hyginus, Fabulae 224
According to Edmund Veckenstedt, Ganymede was an ethnic Semite, along with his brothers Ilus and Assarakos. +Comparative table of Ganymede's family Relation Names SourcesHomerHomeric HymnsEuripidesDiodorusCiceroDionysiusApollodorusHyginusDictysClementSudaTzetzesParentage Tros Acallaris Callirhoe Laomedon Erichthonius Assaracus Dardanus Ilus SiblingsIlus Assaracus Cleopatra Cleomestra
Mythology
Ganymede's abduction is referenced in the Iliad (750–700 BC),For this dating of the Iliad, see Latacz, "C. Time", para. 1. which describes his beauty as exceeding that of all other mortals. Because of his beauty, he was kidnapped by the gods, becoming Zeus's wine-pourer.Hard 2004, p. 522; Iliad 20.232–235 (Lattimore, p. 410). The Iliad contains no explicit suggestion of an erotic relationship between Ganymede and Zeus, nor does the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, in which Zeus alone performs the abduction.Gantz, p. 558; Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (5), 202–217 (West, pp. 174–177). The earliest writer to unambiguously describe the relationship as erotic is Theognis (c. 6th century BC).Gantz, p. 559; Theognis, 1345–1348 (Gerber, pp. 378–379). In some later sources, Ganymede was abducted by Zeus from Mount Ida near Troy in Phrygia.Some variants of the myth have Ganymede abducted from Harpagion instead. See Ganymede had been tending sheep, a rustic or humble pursuit characteristic of a hero's boyhood before his privileged status is revealed, when an eagle transported the youth to Mount Olympus. The bird is sometimes described as being under the command of Zeus and sometimes as being Zeus himself.Virgil, Aeneid, 5.252 In Homer's account of the abduction in the Iliad, the poet writes:
On Olympus, Zeus granted Ganymede eternal youth and immortality as the official cup bearer to the gods, in place of Hebe, who was relieved of cup-bearing duties upon her marriage to Herakles. Alternatively, the Iliad presented Hebe (and at one instance, Hephaestus) as the cup bearer of the Olympians in general, with Ganymede acting as Zeus's personal cup bearer.Homer, Iliad 20.230 Edmund Veckenstedt associated Ganymede with the creation of mead, which had a traditional origin in Phrygia.Edmund Veckenstedt, Ganymedes, Libau, 1881. In various literature such as the Aeneid, Hera, Zeus's wife, regards Ganymede as a rival for her husband's affection.Virgil, Aeneid, 1.28 In various stories, Zeus later put Ganymede in the sky as the constellation Aquarius (the "water-carrier" or "cup-carrier"), which is adjacent to Aquila (the Eagle). The identification of Aquarius with Ganymede was the most common interpretation of the constellation in Greek literature, appearing in the Catasterismi, De astronomia, and the Fabulae.Hard 2015, pp. 82–83; Erastosthenes, Catasterismi 26 (Hard 2015, p. 81); Hyginus, De astronomia 2.29, 3.28 (Hard 2015, p. 82); Hyginus, Fabulae 224 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 168). In recognition of this myth, the largest moon of the planet Jupiter (named after Zeus's Roman counterpart) was named Ganymede by the German astronomer Simon Marius.Marius/Schlör, Mundus Iovialis, p. 78 f. (with misprint In for Io)
In the Iliad and other sources, Zeus is said to have compensated Ganymede's father Tros with the gift of a pair of fine horses,The Achaean Diomedes is keen to capture the horses of Aeneas because "...they are of that stock wherefrom Zeus, whose voice is borne afar, gave to Tros recompense for his son Ganymedes, for that they were the best of all horses that are beneath the dawn and the sun.": Homer, Iliad 5.265ff. "the same that carry the immortals"Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite 203 ff and so swift they could run "over water and standing airs of grain",Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 89 delivered by the messenger god Hermes. Tros was consoled that his son was now immortal and would be the cupbearer for the gods, a position of much distinction.
Plato accounts for the pederastic aspect of the myth by attributing its origin to Crete, where the social custom of paiderastía was supposed to have originated (see "Cretan pederasty").Plato, Laws 636D, as cited by Thomas Hubbard, Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, p252 Athenaeus recorded a version of the myth where Ganymede was lusted and abducted not by Zeus but instead by the legendary King Minos to serve as his cup-bearer.Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 13.77; Suda s.v. Minos Some authors have equated this version of the myth to Cretan pederasty practices, as recorded by Strabo and Ephoros, which involved abduction of a youth by an older lover for a period of two months before the youth was able to re-enter society as a man. Still, Xenophon portrays Socrates denying that Ganymede was the catamite of Zeus, instead asserting that the god loved him for his psychē, "mind" or "soul", giving the etymology of his name as γάνυται gắnŭtai, “he is glad”, third person conjugation of γᾰ́νῠμαι, gắnŭmai, "to be glad", and μήδεᾰ, mḗdeă, “plans, thought, counsel”. Xenophon's Socrates also points out that Zeus did not grant any of his lovers immortality, but that he did grant immortality to Ganymede.Xenophon, Symposium 8.29–30; Craig Williams, Roman Homosexuality (Oxford University Press, 1999, 2010), p. 153. However, as μήδεᾰ, mḗdeă also stands for "male genitals", author Christine Downing notes an alternative reading of the name as "happy genitals" alluding to the homoerotic aspect of the myth and Ganymede's relationship with Zeus.
In poetry, Ganymede became a symbol for the beautiful young male who attracted homosexual desire and love. He is not always portrayed as acquiescent. However, in the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, Ganymede is furious at the god Eros for having cheated him at the game of chance played with knucklebones, and Aphrodite scolds her son for "cheating a beginner".Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 3.112 The Augustan poet Virgil portrays the abduction with pathos: the boy's aged tutors try in vain to draw him back to Earth, and his hounds bay uselessly at the sky.Virgil, Aeneid 5.256–7. The loyal hounds left calling after their abducted master is a frequent motif in visual depictions and is referenced by Statius:
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.Statius, Thebaid 1.549.
In the arts
Ancient visual arts
In 5th-century Athens, the story of Ganymede became popular among vase-painters, which was suited to the all-male symposium. Ganymede was usually depicted as a muscular young man, although Greek and Roman sculpture typically depicted his physique as less developed than athletes'.
One of the earliest depictions of Ganymede is a red-figure krater by the Berlin Painter in the Musée du Louvre. Zeus pursues Ganymede on one side, while the youth runs away on the other side, rolling along a hoop while holding aloft a crowing cock. The Ganymede myth was depicted in recognizable contemporary terms, illustrated with common behavior of homoerotic courtship rituals, as on a vase by the "Achilles Painter" where Ganymede also flees with a cock. Cocks were common gifts from older male suitors to younger men they were interested in romantically in 5th-century Athens. Leochares (c. 350 BCE), 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. It is apparently copied in a well-known marble group in the Vatican. Such Hellenistic gravity-defying feats were influential in the sculpture of the Baroque.
Ganymede and Zeus in the guise of an eagle were a popular subject on Roman funerary monuments with at least 16 sarcophagi depicting this scene.
The Carthage Paleo-Christian Museum has a fifth-century Roman statue of Ganymede.
Renaissance and Baroque Ganymede was a major symbol of homosexual love in the visual and literary arts from the Renaissance until the Late Victorian era, when Antinous, the lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, became a more popular subject.
In Shakespeare's As You Like It (1599), a comedy about misunderstandings in the magical setting of the Forest of Arden, Celia, dressed as a shepherdess, becomes "Aliena" (Latin for "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 (inadvertently) the shepherdess Phoebe. Thus behind the conventions of Elizabethan theater in its original setting, the young boy played the girl Rosalind who dresses up as a boy and is then courted by another boy playing Phoebe. Ganymede also appears in the opening of Christopher Marlowe's play Dido, Queen of Carthage, where his and Zeus's affectionate banter is interrupted by an angry Aphrodite (Venus). In the later Jacobean tragedy Women Beware Women by Thomas Middleton, Ganymede, Hebe, and Hymen briefly appear to serve as cup bearers to the court, one of which has been poisoned in an assassination attempt, although the plan goes awry.