Nectar (mythology)
Nectar (Greek νέκταρ) is in Greek mythology - just like ambrosia - food for the gods.
Concept history, differences from ambrosia
It is believed that originally there was no distinction between nectar and ragweed.
According to WH Roscher, nectar and ambrosia were originally two different forms of the same substance - honey , which, like manna, was viewed as dew that had fallen from the sky and was used both as food and as a drink.
In some versions it is reported that an eagle brought nectar to the growing Zeus in his hiding place in Crete from a high mountain spring, while the ambrosia was washed up on the beach.
In Homer's poems and later works, nectar is a drink and ambrosia is a food .
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher : Nektar and Ambrosia , 1883; see also article in Roscher's Lexicon of Mythology .