According to Greek Myth, Who/what Nursed the Infant Zeus?

Foster-female parent of Zeus in Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, Amalthea or Amaltheia (Ancient Greek: Ἀμάλθεια) is the most-oft mentioned foster-female parent of Zeus.

Etymology [edit]

The name Amalthea, in Greek "tender goddess", is clearly an epithet, signifying the presence of an earlier nurturing goddess^[ane] or maiden-goddess^[two] whom the Hellenes, whose myths we know, knew to be located in Crete, where Minoans may have chosen her a version of "Dikte".^[3]

Mythology [edit]

At that place were different traditions regarding Amalthea.^[4] Amalthea is sometimes represented as the goat who suckled the infant-god in a cave in Cretan Mountain Aigaion ("Goat Mountain"),^[5] sometimes as a goat-disposed nymph^[6] of uncertain parentage (the daughter of Oceanus,^[7] Helios,^[8] Haemonius,^[9] or—according to Lactantius—Melisseus^[10]), who brought him up on the milk of her goat.^[11] The possession of multiple and uncertain mythological parents indicates wide worship of a deity in many cultures having varying local traditions. Other names, like Adrasteia, Ide, the nymph of Mount Ida, or Adamanthea, which announced in mythology handbooks,^[12] are just duplicates of Amalthea.

In the tradition represented past Hesiod's Theogony, Cronus swallowed all of his children immediately after birth. The female parent goddess Rhea, Zeus' female parent, deceived her brother-consort Cronus by giving him a rock wrapped to wait like a baby instead of Zeus. Since she instead gave the infant Zeus to Adamanthea to nurse in a cave on a mountain in Crete, it is clear that Adamanthea is a doublet of Amalthea. In many literary references, the Greek tradition relates that in order that Cronus should not hear the wailing of the infant, Amalthea gathered about the cavern the Kuretes or the Korybantes to trip the light fantastic toe, shout, and clash their spears against their shields.^[13]

The aegis [edit]

Amalthea's peel, or that of her goat, taken by Zeus in honor of her when she died, became the protective custodianship in some traditions.^[14]

Amidst the stars [edit]

"Amaltheia was placed amongst the stars equally the constellation Capra—the group of stars surrounding Capella on the arm (ôlenê) of Auriga the Charioteer."^[15] Capra merely means "she-goat" and the star-name Capella is the "piddling goat", but some modern readers confuse her with the male sea-caprine animal of the Zodiac, Capricorn, who bears no relation to Amalthea, no connection in a Greek or Latin literary source nor any ritual or inscription to bring together the two. Hyginus describes this catasterism in the Poetic Astronomy, in speaking of Auriga, the Charioteer:

Parmeniscus says that a sure Melisseus was male monarch in Crete, and to his daughters Jove was brought to nurse. Since they did not have milk, they furnished him a she-goat, Amalthea by name, who is said to have reared him. She ofttimes diameter twin kids, and at the very time that Jove was brought to her to nurse, had borne a pair. And so because of the kindness of the mother, the kids, too were placed amongst the constellations. Cleostratus of Tenedos is said to have beginning pointed out these kids amongst the stars. But Musaeus says Jove was nursed by Themis and the nymph Amalthea, to whom he was given by Ops, his mother. At present Amalthea had as a pet a certain goat which is said to have nursed Jove.^[16]

Encounter also [edit]

• Auðumbla, primeval moo-cow in Norse mythology who nourished the primordial entities Ymir and Búri
• Romulus and Remus, suckled by a she-wolf

Notes [edit]

1. ^ "...the business of Amaltheia, caves and the nurturing of Zeus lands us squarely in Minoan times", John Bennet remarked in passing (Bennet, "The Structure of the Linear B Administration at Knossos" American Journal of Archaeology 89.2 [April 1985:231–249] p. 107 notation 39); cf. Thou.P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Organized religion and its Survival in Greek Religion (1950:537ff).
2. ^ Graves, p. 42.
3. ^ An Egyptian inscription of Amenhotep Iii (1406–1369 BCE) discussed by Michael C. Astour, "Aegean Place-Names in an Egyptian Inscription" American Journal of Archaeology 70.4 (October 1966:313–317), "shows that the Egyptian scribe conceived the Minoan grade of Diktê every bit the Northwest Semitic discussion dqt... Aigaion oros=Diktê may well be a Graeco-Semitic doublet, for in Ugaritic ritual texts dqt (literally 'small one') was the term for 'female person head of small cattle for sacrifice' and a caprine animal rather than a sheep. Dqt is also found as a divine name in a Ugaritic list of gods, which reminds us of the goat that nourished Zeus in the Dictaean cave." (p. 314).
4. ^ Run across Smith, "Amaltheia".
5. ^ Hesiod, Theogony 484.
6. ^ For the primitive Amalthea as the goat rather than the caprine animal-herding nymph, see R. W. Hutchinson, Prehistoric Crete (1962:202).
7. ^ Hyginus, Fabulae 182 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 158. An outdated Latin text of Hyginus' Fabulae has Althaea, see Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 191 endnote to 182; Westward, p. 133); Smith, "Amaltheia", which cites Schol. advertisement Hom. II. 21.194.
8. ^ Gee, pp. 131–132, which cites the epitome of Eratosthenes Catasterismoi 13.
9. ^ Apollodorus, 2.7.5.
10. ^ The early fourth-century Christian apologist Lactantius (Institutiones I.22) makes the father of Amalthea and her dear-providing sister Melissa, a Melisseus, "king of Crete"; this example of the mutual Christian Euhemerist interpretation of Greek myth as fables of humans superstitiously credited with supernatural powers during the passage of time does non represent the actual cultural history of Amalthea, save in its synthesised reflection of an alternative mythic tradition, that infant Zeus was fed with dearest: run into Bee (mythology).
11. ^ According to Aratus of Sicyon, the Achaeans believed that his happened in their capital Aegium (Strabo, Geography, Viii 7,v). Legendary infancy episodes of some historical figures—and poetical figures, such as Longus' Daphnis—were suckled by goats, and the actual do lingered in Italy into the nineteenth century: see William K. Calder, III, "Longus 1. 2: The She-Caprine animal Nurse" Classical Philology 78.one (January 1983:50–51).
12. ^ Bernard Evslin, Gods, Demigods and Demons: A Handbook of Greek Mythology: s.v. "Adamanthea", "Amalthea"; Patricia Monaghan, Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines, 2009, s.v. Adamanthea".
13. ^ Kerenyi, p. 94.
14. ^ Hyginus. De Astronomica, 2.13.7-viii.
15. ^ "Theoi Projection: "Amaltheia"".
16. ^ Hyginus, De Astronomica 2.13.5–half-dozen.

References [edit]

• Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation past Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Gee, Emma, Ovid, Aratus and Augustus: Astronomy in Ovid'southward Fasti, Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN 9780521651875.
• Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths: The Consummate and Definitive Edition. Penguin Books Express. 2017. ISBN 978-0-241-98338-half dozen, 024198338X
• Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English language Translation past Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Printing; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Hyginus, Gaius Julius, De Astronomica, in The Myths of Hyginus, edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960. Online version at ToposText.
• Hyginus, Gaius Julius, Fabulae in Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, Translated, with Introductions past R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Hackett Publishing Company, 2007. ISBN 978-0-87220-821-vi.
• Kerenyi, Karl. The Gods of the Greeks. London: Thames & Hudson, 1951.
• Smith, William; "Amaltheia", Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873).
• West, One thousand. Fifty. (1983), The Orphic Poems, Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-nineteen-814854-8.

External links [edit]

• Media related to Amalthea (mythology) at Wikimedia Commons

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalthea_(mythology)

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