Nysa (wet nurse)
Nysa ( Greek Νύσα ) is the wet nurse of Dionysus in Greek mythology . According to Diodorus she was a daughter of Aristaios , according to Apollonios of Rhodes, however, her name was Makris .
Homer already calls the wet nurses of Dionysus on the "holy mountain Nyseion", the Homeric hymn tells of the nymphs in the valleys of the mountain Nysa who feed the little Dionysus in a grotto. In Nonnos of Panopolis she is mentioned as a companion of Dionysus on his journey to India. According to Arrian , Dionysus founded a city in India in her honor after his victory over the Indians.
A single wet nurse named Nysa has been documented since Hellenistic times. Her seated statue, 8 cubits high, holding a thyrsus and wreathed with ivy, was carried in the famous procession of Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Alexandria on a chariot in the wake of Dionysus. Moved by an internal mechanism, she occasionally rose to dispense milk from a golden bowl.
On two ancient monuments, an Attic black-figure vase by the painter Sophilos (around 580 BC) and a mosaic from the 4th century AD in Paphos ( Cyprus ), a nymph with the name "ΝΥΣΑ" is inscribed on numerous other monuments it can be deduced from the context of action, the handover, bathing or breastfeeding of Dionysus.
literature
- Ute W Gottschall, sv Nysa I, Nysai, in: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae VIII (1997) 902-905
- Richard Wagner: Nysa . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 3.1, Leipzig 1902, Col. 567 f. ( Digitized version ).