Amalthea (mythology)

In a narrative attributed to the mythical poet Musaeus, and likely dating to the 4th century BC or earlier, Amalthea, a nymph, nurses the infant Zeus and owns a goat which is terrifying in appearance.

The first author to explicitly combine them is the Roman poet Ovid (1st century BC/AD), whose story of Zeus's nursing weaves together elements from multiple earlier accounts.

Another version of Zeus's childhood is found in the 2nd-century AD Fabulae, in which Amalthea hides the infant in a tree and gathers the Kouretes to dance noisily, so that the child's crying cannot be heard.

Among the relatively few surviving representations of Amalthea in ancient art are a 2nd-century AD marble relief which depicts her as a nymph feeding Zeus out of a large cornucopia, and multiple coins and medallions from the Roman Empire.

[2] While 19th-century scholars proposed various derivations,[3] these were dismissed in the early 20th century by Alfred Chilton Pearson, who suggested that the name may be related to amalós (ἀμαλός, 'soft, tender, weak') and amálē (ἀμάλη, 'sheaf, bundle').

[13] According to Lewis Richard Farnell, Amalthea may have been associated, at some point early on, with the Cretan goddess Dictynna, whose name is likely related to Mount Dicte (sometimes considered the birthplace of Zeus).

[20] According to the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus, the 5th-century BC mythographer Pherecydes described the horn's ability to provide endless food and drink as desired, and considered it to belong to the nymph Amalthea.

[30] According to a summary of the Catasterismi of Eratosthenes (written by an author referred to as "Pseudo-Eratosthenes"),[31] in the account attributed to Musaeus, Zeus's mother Rhea gave him as a newborn child to Themis, who handed him over to the nymph Amalthea, who had the infant nursed by a she-goat.

[34] According to the De astronomia (a work of astral mythology likely composed in the 2nd-century AD),[35] which similarly recounts the narrative from Musaeus,[36] this weapon which Zeus uses against the Titans is the aegis.

[46] In Greek works of astral mythology, the tale of the goat who nurses the young Zeus is adapted to provide an aition (or origin myth) for certain stars.

[56] At the end of the account given by Pseudo-Eratosthenes, the text contains a lacuna (or gap), where he would have described Zeus placing the goat among the stars;[57] in the Catasterismi, the god would have performed this action for her role in his defeat of the Titans, and her nursing of him during his youth.

[58] According to Robert Fowler, the nursing of Zeus by a goat and the originally independent tradition of the magical horn had become "entangled" by the time of Pherecydes;[59] Jan N. Bremmer, however, states that it was not until Ovid (who was active around the beginning of the 1st century AD) that the two tales were brought together.

[85] Later in the work, Hyginus mentions Althaea,[86] which M. L. West interprets as referring to Amalthea,[87] and describes her as one the daughters of Ocean (here seemingly meaning Oceanus),[88] alongside Adrasteia and Ida.

[93] In the account given by the late-1st-century BC writer Didymus, the infant Zeus is raised by the nymphs Amalthea and Melissa, the daughters of Melisseus, who feed him honey and the milk of a goat.

[94] In Apollodorus's version of Zeus's infancy, the god is born in a cave on Cretan Mount Dicte, where he is fed on the milk of Amalthea; he is raised by the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, the daughters of Melisseus, and protected by the Kouretes, who noisily clang their spears and shields.

[96] Amalthea also seems to have been associated with Melisseus in the now lost Orphic Rhapsodies, a 1st-century BC or 1st-century AD theogonic poem which was attributed to the mythical poet Orpheus in antiquity.

[122] The work depicts Amalthea as a goat, and shows the infant Jupiter drinking her milk, accompanied by a young satyr,[123] and was for some time thought to have been produced in antiquity.

[125] The myth of the goat Amalthea was a common subject for the Flemish painter Jacob Jordaens,[126] whose paintings of the scene in some cases included elements such as a satyr playing a flute or tambourine, or a nymph holding a milk pitcher looking while at the audience.

[130] Julien also produced a relief in which Amalthea is a she-goat, which depicts, in addition to the young Jupiter and several nymphs, a number of Corybantes shown dancing raucously.