Ganymede
We'll return to Norse mythology later. Today we look at the most blatantly gay (or bi) Greek myth, the story of Zeus and Ganymede. Zeus was the king of the Greek gods. In the myth, Zeus fell in love (or in lust) with a beautiful mortal youth named Ganymede. In some accounts, Ganymede was a prince of Troy.
For thousands of years, this myth has been a favorite for artists to illustrate, whether because of the opportunity to depict a beautiful naked youth, or because the artist was gay and liked the story, or both.
In the story, Zeus visits Ganymede in the form of an eagle, as in the sculpture above by Benvenuto Cellini, c. 1540 in Florence, Italy.
In this modern image by Pierre et Gilles, the eagle seems to be hypnotizing Ganymede.
The eagle then carries Ganymede away to Mount Olympus, the home of the gods. This is a copy of a sketch by Michelangelo, from the royal collection of Britain's Queen Elizabeth.
This 1638 painting by Rubens, called "The Abduction of Ganymede," depicts the same event.
As does this 1935 sculpture by German sculptor Ernst Seger, now in the gardens of San Simeon, the William Randolph Hearst estate in California.
After transporting him to Mount Olympus, Zeus made Ganymede his cup bearer, the one whose duty was to pour and serve wine to the god. This is an 1833 bas-relief by Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen showing the goddess Hebe passing the wine to Ganymede. Hebe had been the cup bearer before Ganymede came along. The eagle doesn't really belong here, since once he returned to Mount Olympus, Zeus would have reverted to his normal form, but it's here as a symbol to tell us that this is Ganymede.
Why should Zeus go to all that trouble to get a cup bearer when he already had one? Because he had an ulterior motive, as shown in this wall decoration in the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany. "Come here, boy, and sit on my lap." Again, the eagle is superfluous and is here as a symbol to tell us that this is Ganymede.
This Greek vessel from 460 BC in the Archaeological Museum of Spina, Greece makes it clear what Zeus (at left) wanted with Ganymede (right). There's no eagle here, but there is a rooster, which was a male erotic symbol to the Greeks, just as we use the word "cock" to mean both rooster and penis.
Far from being scandalous, the myth was a model for ancient Greek social behavior, where it was completely acceptable for an adult married man (the erastes) to mentor, educate and protect an adolescent boy (the eromenos) and fuck him as part of the relationship.
This plate makes Zeus' and Ganymede's relationship even clearer. Although it's done in the style of ancient Greek pottery, I think it's modern. If those things in the background are giant Easter eggs, they are certainly anachronistic.
But the myth of Ganymede lives on. This 1906 ad for Budweiser beer presents a "modern version of Ganymede," with Ganymede clutching a bottle of Bud, presumably to serve to Zeus in his job as cup bearer. Interestingly, Zeus has become an American bald eagle, which is also featured in the Anheuser-Busch logo. I wonder if the ad was created by a gay copywriter who managed to sneak it past the executives, knowing that any reader with a classical education would see it as an ad celebrating the story of Zeus and his catamite.
By the way, the word catamite is derived from the Latin form of the name Ganymede, Catamitus.
In some sources, Zeus' wife Hera was furious with Zeus about Ganymede, with some justification. Although Zeus was quite the libertine, and in many other myths he seduced mortals (all women), Ganymede was the only one of his lovers who got brought back to Mount Olympus to live with the gods. Zeus even made Ganymede immortal, to ensure that they could be together forever.
Fun fact: The four major moons of the planet Jupiter (the Roman god corresponding to Zeus) are named Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, all mythical characters seduced by Zeus.
5 comments:
Anal sex is more Roman, and something for for your slaves. The ideal pederastic sex was interfemoral, hence Alexander being "slain by his lover's thighs".
So that picture of anal is a modern forgery for pornographic purposes.
Basically anal became the ideal because academics made it the sine qua non of homosexuality, to separate their own histories of masturbating with other guys and interfemoral and frot from pathological homosexuals. (As an aside, working-class men already made this distinction, charging gay men for the chance to suck their cocks, and masturbating with friends when they were boys.)
Fast forward to the 1970s. There's a sexual smorgasbord out there. But as formerly closeted suburban yuppie gays enter the gay community, well, we talk a lot about how drag queens were victims of respectability politics. So were oral, masturbation, frot, and interfemoral, but not in the same way. These closeted yuppie gays who immediately became gay leaders because money had internalized a lot of psychoanalysis during their quest for a cure. Freud himself was not convinced homosexuality was a pathology, nor was it necessarily a minority or curable. His followers, however, had other ideas.
You see this new psychoanalysis in gay circles and ultimately in Karen circles. It's about as useful as any other pop psychology (i.e., a fraud). One element? The "immature" clitoral orgasm. So these yuppie gays concluded the standard male orgasm was also immature. But the inguinal canal isn't exactly used in sex, since the scrotum gets in the way. So they concluded the anus, being a hole, is where men have true orgasm, just as women can only have true orgasm in the vagina.
Only a small minority of women experience vaginal orgasm.
Actually now that I think about it, that image of the erastes fucking the eromenos is 100% modern porn forgery: There's a glory hole, three-day sex, and the eromenos is circumcised.
*three-way sex
I didn't know all of that. Thanks for the lesson in mythology!
Erastes
Post a Comment