Cupbearer of the gods.
Mythological motifs. · Gods. · The gods in general. · Mutual relations of the gods. · view the constellation · filed as A165.3
- GreekThe Library (Bibliotheca), BOOK III, ch. XIIThompson cites: Frazer Apollodorus II 37 n. 4.
Mythological motifs. · Gods. · The gods in general. · Mutual relations of the gods. · view the constellation · filed as A165.3
Two served texts carry Ganymede, and they disagree about the vehicle. In Homer, Aeneas’ pedigree reaches “godlike Ganymedes, who became the most beautiful of mortal men”: “Him the gods caught up to be cupbearer to Zeus”, “that he might dwell among immortals” [The Iliad, Book XX]. No bird — the gods themselves do the taking, and the cup is poured for Zeus. In Apollodorus the scene has hardened into the familiar picture: “This Ganymede, for the sake of his beauty, Zeus caught up on an eagle” and “appointed him cupbearer of the gods in heaven” [The Library (Bibliotheca), BOOK III, ch. XII]. Frazer’s note on that page draws the line between the two: the early versions “do not mention the eagle as the agent”; “The bird figures conspicuously in later versions” of the myth and in art [ibid., editor’s note]. The office is stable — beauty the qualification, heaven the workplace — while the abduction machinery is negotiable. Thompson’s single row for this address is Frazer’s Ganymede note; the Iliad page arrived through the candidate lane and survived reading.
Witnesses: The Library (Bibliotheca), BOOK III, ch. XII · The Iliad, Book XX
The index’s own references — the collections where scholars sighted this story-shape, tradition by tradition. Titles on our shelf are live links; the rest is the frontier, not yet shelved.
Filed under Attendants and servants of the gods.