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Amalthea (mythology)

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This article is about the mythological figure. For other uses, see Amalthea (disambiguation).
Infancy of Zeus by Jacob Jordaens, early 1630s, now at the Louvre Museum
Amalthea and Jupiter's goat, by Pierre Julien, 1787 (Louvre Museum). A long line coiled around the goat's horns acts as a tether.

In Greek mythology, Amalthea or Amaltheia (Ancient Greek: Ἀμάλθεια) is a nurse of the infant Zeus, who raises him on Mount Ida in Crete. She is usually described as a nymph who suckles the child on the milk of a goat, though some Hellenistic writers make her the goat itself.

Etymology and origins

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The etymology of Ἀμάλθεια is unknown.[1] Though various derivations were propounded by 19th-century scholars,[2] Alfred Chilton Pearson discounts these, and states that the name is possibly related to ἀμαλός and ἀμάλη.[3] The verb ἀμαλθεύειν, meaning "to nurture",[4] which Otto Gruppe saw as coming from Amalthea's name, has since been found in a fragment of Sophocles, refuting Gruppe's proposal;[5] according to Pearson, the two words should instead be understood as having existed alongside each other, with this notion of "abundance" or "plenty" finding embodiment in certain mythological figures.[6]

Hesiod's Theogony, which provides the earliest known account of Zeus's birth,[7] does not mention Amalthea.[8] Hesiod, does, however, describe the newborn Zeus as being taken to a cave on "the Aegean mountain" in Crete,[9] which some scholars interpret as meaning "Goat's Mountain", a reference to the story of Amalthea;[10] Richard Wyatt Hutchinson views this as possible indication that the tradition in which she is a goat, though only attested from the Hellenistic period, may have existed earlier than that of her as a nymph.[11] Other scholars, however, including M. L. West, see no reason to view Hesiod's name for the mountain as a reference to Amalthea.[12] According to Lewis Richard Farnell, the Cretan goddess Dictynna, whose name is likely related to Mount Dicte (sometimes considered the birthplace of Zeus), may have been associated at an early point with Amalthea, the "sacred goat-mother" who reared Zeus.[13]

Mythology

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There were different traditions regarding Amalthea.[14] Amalthea is sometimes represented as the goat who suckled the infant-god in a cave, sometimes as a goat-tending nymph of uncertain parentage (the daughter of Oceanus,[15] Helios,[16] Haemonius,[17] or—according to Lactantius—Melisseus[18]), who brought him up on the milk of her goat.[19] The possession of multiple and uncertain mythological parents indicates wide worship of a deity in many cultures having varying local traditions. Other similar names, such as Adrasteia, Ide, the nymph of Mount Ida, or Adamanthea, appear in mythology handbooks.[20]

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 cave the Kuretes or the Korybantes to dance, shout, and clash their spears against their shields.[21]

The aegis

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Amalthea's skin, or that of her goat, taken by Zeus in honor of her when she died, became the protective aegis in some traditions.[22]

Among the stars

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In later sources, Amaltheia is placed in the sky as the constellation Capra, which sits near Capella, on the arm (ôlenê) of Auriga the Charioteer.[citation needed] Capra simply means "she-goat" and the star-name Capella is the "little goat", but some modern readers confuse her with the male sea-goat 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 join the two. Hyginus describes this catasterism in the Poetic Astronomy, in speaking of Auriga, the Charioteer:

Parmeniscus says that a certain Melisseus was king 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 often bore 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 among the constellations. Cleostratus of Tenedos is said to have first pointed out these kids among the stars. But Musaeus says Jove was nursed by Themis and the nymph Amalthea, to whom he was given by Ops, his mother. Now Amalthea had as a pet a certain goat which is said to have nursed Jove.[23]

See also

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

Notes

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  1. ^ Pearson, p. 60.
  2. ^ See, for instance, those collected by Gruppe, pp. 824–5 n. 9 to p. 824 and Roscher, p. 265; cf. Keller, pp. 225–6.
  3. ^ Pearson, p. 60.
  4. ^ Montanari, s.v. ἀμαλθεύω, p. 83.
  5. ^ Pearson, p. 60; Sophocles, fr. 95 TrGF (Radt, p. 148) [= Photius, Lexicon s.v. Ἀμαλθεύειν (Reitzenstein, p. 86)].
  6. ^ Pearson, p. 60. He adds that the association of the horn of Amalthea with various deities suggests that Amalthea was "not a distinctively conceived personality".
  7. ^ Hutchinson, p. 201.
  8. ^ West 1968, p. 300 on line 484.
  9. ^ Hard, p. 74; Hesiod, Theogony 484 (pp. 40, 41).
  10. ^ Willetts, p. 120; Astour, p. 340 n. 18; Hutchinson, pp. 201–2.
  11. ^ Astour, p. 340 n. 23.
  12. ^ West, p. 300 on line 484; López-Riuz, p. 45.
  13. ^ Farnell, p. 478.
  14. ^ See Smith, "Amaltheia".
  15. ^ 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; West, p. 133); Smith, "Amaltheia", which cites Schol. ad Hom. II. 21.194.
  16. ^ Gee, pp. 131–132, which cites the epitome of Eratosthenes Catasterismoi 13.
  17. ^ Apollodorus, 2.7.5.
  18. ^ The early fourth-century Christian apologist Lactantius (Institutiones I.22) makes the father of Amalthea and her honey-providing sister Melissa, a Melisseus, "king of Crete"; this example of the common Christian Euhemerist interpretation of Greek myth as fables of humans superstitiously credited with supernatural powers during the passage of time does not represent the actual cultural history of Amalthea, save in its synthesised reflection of an alternative mythic tradition, that infant Zeus was fed with honey: see Bee (mythology).
  19. ^ According to Aratus of Sicyon, the Achaeans believed that his happened in their capital Aegium (Strabo, Geography, VIII 7,5). Legendary infancy episodes of some historical figures—and poetical figures, such as Longus' Daphnis—were suckled by goats, and the actual practice lingered in Italy into the nineteenth century: see William M. Calder, III, "Longus 1. 2: The She-Goat Nurse" Classical Philology 78.1 (January 1983:50–51).
  20. ^ 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".
  21. ^ Kerenyi, p. 94.
  22. ^ Hyginus. De Astronomica, 2.13.7-8.
  23. ^ Hyginus, De Astronomica 2.13.5–6.

References

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