Wet nurses of Zeus

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The feeding of the boy Zeus by a nymph

The wet nurses of Zeus are different characters in Greek mythology .

The Titan Kronos had been prophesied that one of his children would overthrow him. Therefore he devoured all the offspring that his wife (and sister) Rhea bore him. However, Rhea hid her youngest child - and this one, namely Zeus , was secretly raised by wet nurses .

A cave in the Cretan Ida Mountains is usually mentioned as the nursery of the future father of gods . In the course of time, however, the saga moved across the ancient settlement area, which is why many figures and names appear as nurses and protectors of the god. There are (in alphabetical order):

The goats"

Aix ( Greek  αἴξ ) is simply the Greek word for goat. Aiga has the same root (αἴγειος aigeios , descending from a goat), and Capra is the Latin name for the animal.

As the daughter of Helios , Aix was really intended as a goat. In one of the Cretan versions, Zeus peeled off the hide after he had grown up to make a shield out of it; after all, as a thank you to heaven, he moved her to the constellation Carter . As the personifications show, the figure probably began as a Trojan - Phrygian mountain goddess, in the north-west of Asia Minor . Under the name Ide she became a nymph of the Ida Mountains there . As the daughter of Olenos , Aix (or Aiga ) became the eponym of Aigai in the neighboring Aiolien .

Other traces lead to the north coast of the Peloponnese , to the area of ​​the Achaean Aigion near the city of Olenos , where Zeus is said to have been suckled by the goat, as well as to Epeiros (here the nurse is a Dodonean nymph) and even to the Cycladic island of Naxos , where Aglaosthenes moved the cave in question in his naxaká .

The most famous legends, however, revolve around the Ida Mountains on Crete, whose name is identical to the Phrygian ridge and often causes confusion in the legends. Here, on the big island, the name of the protective nymph is Amaltheia; it is later raised to the stars. Your goat only plays a role as a milk giver and as a donor of the indestructible Aigis fur. When the name Amaltheia was transferred to the beast, the goat-footed god Pan was its shepherd. Euhemeros made Aix the wife of Pan, who - nevertheless - becomes Aigipan's mother of Zeus .

Adrasteia only came into play later, probably through the mediation of the above-mentioned ideas and the (also Asia Minor) Idean dactyls . She replaced Amaltheia and Ida as wet nurse in the stories, or was placed at their side. This is the first time that they appear in pairs, as sisters Adrasteia and Ida. The originally Dodonian nymphs become daughters of the Cretan Melisseus .

The "bears"

The names Helike and Kynosura go back to the priest Epimenides , a follower of the Cretan Zeus cult, as the pair of nymphs who raised the baby. In the Achaean version, Aiga is one of the two; it will be replaced later by Kynosura. In any case, Helike remained undisputed as Helike Arktos (Greek ἄρκτος bear).

Here the legend of the displacement to heaven is repeated, but in a different constellation. When Kronos - apparently aware of Rhea's hiding place - pursued the wet nurses and their pupils, he turned them into little and big bears .

The bees"

As already mentioned above, Amaltheia and Ida were also interpreted as the daughters of King Melisseus, who taught his people the art of beekeeping (Greek μέλι Meli , honey).

The two nourished the Zeus child with goat milk and honey. Sometimes the name Amaltheia was transferred to the goat that belonged to the nymphs; then again Ida and Adrasteia are the daughters of Melisseus. Finally, Amaltheia and Melissa are referred to as the breadwinners (Greek μέλισσα, bee).

According to other legends, the bees themselves became active and poured their honey into the boy's mouth: according to Columella of their own accord, according to Euhemeros, because they had been trained to do this by the Phryxonian nymphs.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eratosthenes , Katasterismoi 13 and 100 f.
  2. ↑ Virgil , Aeneid 9,175.
  3. ^ Hygin , Astronomica 2.13.
  4. ↑ Strabon , Geographika 8,387.
  5. ↑ Walther Sontheimer : Aglaosthenes. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 1, Stuttgart 1964, column 133.
  6. ^ Pseudo-Plutarch, Proverbia 127.
  7. ↑ Callimachus , Hymns 1.46 ff.
  8. ↑ Bibliotheke of Apollodor 1,1,6.
  9. ↑ Plutarch , Symposiaka 3,9,2,2.
  10. ^ Aratos from Soloi , Phaenomena 35.
  11. ↑ Apollonios of Rhodes , Argonautica 2,360 and 3,1195.
  12. ↑ Eratosthenes, Katasterismoi 2 and 30.
  13. ↑ Hygin, Fabulae 182.
  14. ↑ Eugen Abel : Orphica , fragments 109 f.
  15. ↑ Didymos in Lactantius , Institutiones 1,22.
  16. ^ Franz Olck : Bee. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 1, Stuttgart 1897, Col. 448 f.