Ganymede was a Trojan prince in Greek mythology, known for his beauty. He was the son of King Tros of Dardania, from whom Troy took its name, and Callirrhoe. According to myth, Zeus turned himself into an eagle and kidnapped Ganymede, taking him to Mount Olympus. To compensate his father, Zeus offered him the best horses possible and told him that his son would now be immortal and serve as cupbearer to the gods, as well as a lover to him.
Tros was relieved that his son had such an honorable position. Almost all the gods were pleased with Ganymede, except Hera, who was jealous. Zeus eventually turned Ganymede into the constellation Aquarius (the water bearer) in the sky.
In Greek mythology, Ganymede is a divine hero whose homeland was Troy. Homer describes Ganymede as the most beautiful of mortals, and in one version of the myth Zeus falls in love with his beauty and kidnaps him in the form of an eagle to serve as a standard-bearer on Olympus. He was the most beautiful of the mortal race, and therefore the gods captured him for themselves, to be Zeus’s cupbearer, for the sake of his beauty, so that he might be among the immortals.
1. Family
Ganymede was the son of Tros of Dardania, from whose name “Troy” supposedly derives, either by his wife Callirrhoe, daughter of the river god Scamander, or Acallaris, daughter of Eumedes. He was the brother of Ilus, Assaracus, Cleopatra, and Cleomestra.
Traditions about Ganymede, however, differ greatly in their details, as some call him the son of Laomedon, others the son of Ilus, in some versions of Dardanus, and others, again, of Erichthonius or Assaracus.
2. Mythology
Zeus kidnapped Ganymede and took him to Mount Ida, which was near the city of Troy, in the region of Phrygia, where the hero Ganymede was tending and herding sheep. Zeus transformed himself into an eagle to carry the chosen ones to Mount Olympus, the home of the gods.
In the Iliad, it is said that Zeus compensated Ganymede’s father, named “Tros,” with gifts, giving him fine horses for himself, “which carry the immortal beings,” lent by Hermes, the messenger god. Tros was comforted by the feat of his firstborn son becoming an immortal being and the cupbearer assigned to the gods, which was a great honor.
The myth that Zeus on Olympus granted him immortality and eternal youth, as well as giving him the task of being the cupbearer assigned to the gods, instead of his daughter Hebe, who was removed from her duties as cupbearer because of her marriage to the hero Heracles.
All the gods were filled with joy at the sight of the young men, except Hera, Zeus’s consort, who considered Ganymede a rival for her husband’s affection. Zeus later placed Ganymede in the sky as the constellation Aquarius (the “water bearer” or “cup bearer”), which is associated with the Eagle (Aquila).
Plato explains the pederastic aspect of the myth by attributing its origin to Crete, where the social custom of pederasty was supposed to have originated (see “Cretan pederasty”). Athenaeus recorded a version of the myth in which Ganymede was kidnapped by the legendary King Minos to serve as his cupbearer in place of Zeus.
Some authors have equated this version of the myth with the practices of Cretan pederasty, as recorded by Strabo and Ephorus, which involved the abduction of a young man by an older lover for a period of two months before the young man could be reintegrated into society as a man.
Xenophon portrays Socrates as denying that Ganymede was Zeus’ catamite, and instead claiming that the god loved him for his psyche, “mind” or “soul,” giving the etymology of his name as ganu, “mind.” Xenophon’s Socrates points out that Zeus did not grant immortality to any of his lovers, but did grant immortality to Ganymede.
The Augustinian poet Virgil portrays the abduction with pathos: the boy’s old tutors try in vain to lure him back to Earth, and their hounds crowd uselessly in the sky. The loyal hounds left behind calling for their abducted master are a frequent motif in visual representations.
The Phrygian hunter is carried aloft on lion’s wings, the Gargara mountain range sinks downward as he rises, and Troy darkens beneath him; his comrades are sad; in vain the hounds tire their throats with barking, chasing his shadow or his bay to the clouds.
3. In the arts
The representation of Ganymede being kidnapped by the eagle of the Greek god Zeus has been symbolized in many artistic expressions.
Ancient
Ganymede rolling a hoop and carrying a rooster aloft, a gift of love from Zeus, who is depicted chasing him on the front of a vase by the Berlin painter (Attic, 500-490 BC).
One of the earliest depictions of Ganymede is a red figure by the Berlin painter in the Louvre: Zeus pursues Ganymede on one side, while on the other the young man flees, rolling along a hoop while holding a singing rooster aloft.
In 5th-century Athens, vase painters often depicted the mythological story, which was so appropriate for the male symposium or formal banquet. The myth of Ganymede was treated in recognizable contemporary terms, illustrated with the common behavior of homoerotic courtship rituals, as in a vase by the “Painter of Achilles” where Ganymede also flees with a rooster. Ganymede is usually depicted as a young, muscular, well-developed man.
Leochares (c. 350 BC), a Greek sculptor from Athens who was engaged with Scopas on the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, cast bronze and made Ganímedes and the Eagle into a statue, a work that remained notable for its ingenious composition, which boldly ventured to the edge of what the laws of sculpture allow, and also for its charming treatment of the youthful form as it rises into the air. It is apparently imitated in a well-known marble group in the Vatican, of half life size.
Renaissance and Baroque
In Shakespeare’s comedy of mistaken identity set in the magical setting of the Forest of Arden, Celia, dressed as a shepherdess, becomes “Aliena” (Latin for “strange,” sister of Ganymede) and Rosalind, because she is “more than common height,” dresses as a boy, Ganymede, an image familiar to the audience. She plays on her ambiguous charm to seduce Orlando, but also (unintentionally) the shepherdess Phoebe.
Thus, behind the conventions of Elizabethan theater in its original setting, the young man playing the girl, Rosalind, dresses as a boy and is courted by another boy playing Phoebe. When the painter and architect Baldassare Peruzzi included a panel of The Rape of Ganymede on the ceiling of the Villa Farnesina in Rome (ca. 1509-1514), Ganymede’s long blond hair and girlish pose make him identifiable at first glance, even though he grasps the eagle’s wing without resistance.
In Antonio Allegri Correggio’s Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle (Vienna), Ganymede’s grip is more intimate. Rubens’ version depicts a young man. But when Rembrandt painted The Rape of Ganymede for a Dutch Calvinist patron in 1635, a dark eagle carries aloft a chubby cherub baby (Painting Gallery, Dresden) who is bawling and urinating in fear. A statue of Ganymede and Zeus from 1685 entitled Ganymede and Zeus, titled Ganymède Médicis by Pierre Laviron, is located in the gardens of Versailles.
Examples of Ganymede in 18th-century France have been studied by Michael Preston Worley. The image of Ganymede was invariably that of a naive adolescent accompanied by an eagle, and the homoerotic aspects of the legend were rarely addressed.
In fact, the story was often “heterosexualized.” Furthermore, the Neoplatonic interpretation of the myth, so common in the Italian Renaissance, in which the rape of Ganymede represented the ascent to spiritual perfection, did not seem to interest the philosophers and mythographers of the Enlightenment. Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Guillaume II Coustou, Pierre Julien, Jean-Baptiste Regnault, and others contributed images of Ganymede to French art during this period.
