Tithonus

Eos pursues the reluctant Tithonos, who holds a lyre, on an Attic oinochoe of the Achilles Painter, circa 470–460 BC (Louvre).

In Greek mythology, Tithonus (/tɪˈθoʊnəs/ or /taɪ-/; Ancient Greek: Τιθωνός, translit. Tithonos) was the lover of Eos, Goddess of the Dawn.[lower-roman 1] Tithonus was a prince of Troy, the son of King Laomedon by the Naiad Strymo (Στρυμώ).[lower-roman 2] The mythology reflected by the fifth-century vase-painters of Athens envisaged Tithonus as a rhapsode, as attested by the lyre in his hand, on an oinochoe (wine jug) of the Achilles Painter, circa 470–460 BC. Competitive singing, as in the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, is also depicted vividly in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and mentioned in the two Hymns to Aphrodite.[2]

An asteroid (6998) has been named after Tithonus.

Myth

Eos is said to have taken Tithonus, from the royal house of Troy, to be her lover.[lower-roman 3][3]

The mytheme of the goddess' mortal lover is an archaic one; when a role for Zeus was inserted, a bitter twist appeared: according to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, when Eos asked Zeus to make Tithonus immortal, she forgot to ask that he be granted eternal youth.[lower-roman 4][lower-roman 5][4] Tithonus indeed lived forever,

but when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs, this seemed to her in her heart the best counsel: she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs.[3]

In later tellings, he eventually became a cricket, eternally living, but begging for death to overcome him.[lower-roman 6] In the Olympian system, the "queenly" and "golden-throned" Eos can no longer grant immortality to her lover as Selene had done, but must ask it of Zeus, as a boon.

Eos bore Tithonus two sons, Memnon and Emathion. In the Epic Cycle that revolved around the Trojan War Memnon, wearing armor made by Hephaestus, came to help the Trojans. A battle took place in which Memnon killed Antilochus and Achilles killed Memnon, but the God Zeus granted Memnon immortality at the request of Memnon's mother Eos (Dawn), while Achilles was killed by the god Apollo and Paris when he rushed towards the gates of Troy. According to the historian Diodorus Siculus, Tithonus, who had travelled east from Troy into Assyria and founded Susa, was bribed with a golden grapevine to send his son Memnon to fight at Troy.[5]

Memnon is called "son of Dawn" by Hesiod.[6] According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, Memnon came not from the east, but was raised by the Hesperides on the coast of Oceanus.[7] This would make Memnon king of the west and son of the east, as his father Tithonus was a Trojan by birth; from the western Ocean Troy lies towards the dawn (the east), the true homeland of Memnon's father. His mother Eos was also the mother of the west wind Zephyrus, which according to Homer blows from the ocean to give cool air to humanity.[8] The goddess Dawn and her father Hyperion (god of the sun) travel from the east to the west to bring light to the whole earth. Another poem mentioning Tithonus was written by the Greek lyric poet Sappho.[lower-roman 7]

Eos (as Thesan) and Tithonus (as Tinthu or Tinthun) provided a pictorial motif inscribed or cast in low relief on the backs of Etruscan bronze hand-mirrors.[lower-roman 8][9]

Modern poems

The poem is a dramatic monologue in blank verse from the point of view of Tithonus. Unlike the original myth, it is Tithonus who asks for immortality, and it is Aurora, not Zeus, who grants this imperfect gift. As narrator, Tithonus laments his unnatural longevity, which separates him from the mortal world as well as from the immortal but beautiful Aurora.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, Eos (Aurora in Latin) was the sister of Helios and Selene. As one of the major offspring of the Titans, she is sometimes referred to as one of the Titanides (a Titaness; the English plural "Titanesses" is rarely used), but like the Olympians, is usually described by the more general term "goddess".
  2. ↑ In an alternative version of the myth, mentioned by Pseudo-Apollodorus, Tithonus was the son of Cephalus, another lover of Eos, and father of Phaethon.[1]
  3. ↑ In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Tithonus is cited as an example to Anchises, another Trojan prince, later abducted by Aphrodite.
  4. ↑ Compare the mytheme in its original, blissful form, in the pairing of Selene and Endymion, a myth that also associated with Asia Minor. Peter Walcot considers Tithonus a "corrective" example to the myth of Ganymede: "the example of Ganymedes promises too much, and might beguile Anchises into expecting too much, even an ageless immortality". ("The Homeric 'Hymn' to Aphrodite: A Literary Appraisal" in Greece & Rome 2nd Series, vol. 38, part 2 (October 1991), pp. 137–155, at 149.)
  5. ↑ In one version, Zeus decided he wanted the beautiful youth Ganymede for himself; to repay Eos, he promised to fulfill one wish.
  6. ↑ In some variants, Eos deliberately turns Tithonus into a cricket or a cicada.
  7. ↑ The first modern printing of the complete poem was published in two sections by Michael Gronewald and Robert W. Daniel in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik vol. 147, pp. 1–8, and vol. 149, pp. 1–4 (2004); an English translation by Martin West is printed in the Times Literary Supplement, 21 or 24 June 2005. The right half of this poem was previously found in fragment 58 L-P. The fully restored version can be found in M. L. West, "The New Sappho", in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 151, pp. 1–9 (2005).
  8. ↑ As on one in the Vatican Museums, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, acc. no. 12241

See also

References

  1. ↑ Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 3.14.3
  2. ↑ Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 165–173, Homeric Hymns 5, 9.
  3. 1 2 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 218 ff.
  4. ↑ Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 218–238.
  5. ↑ Diodorus Siculus book 4.75, book 2.22.
  6. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony, 984.
  7. ↑ Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy, ii. 495.
  8. ↑ Homer, Odyssey, iv. 565.
  9. ↑ Marilyn Y. Goldberg, "The 'Eos and Kephalos' from Caere: Its Subject and Date", in American Journal of Archaeology vol. 91, part 4, pp. 605–614, fig. 2 (October, 1987).
  10. ↑ "Victorian Web: Alfred Tennyson's "Tithonus"". Retrieved 2006-09-02.
  11. ↑ Stallings, A. E. (1 November 1999). "Archaic Smile: Poems". Univ of Evansville Pr – via Amazon.
  • Sappho's poem
  • Tennyson's poem
  • "Victorian Web: Alfred Tennyson's "Tithonus"". Retrieved 2006-09-02.
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