In Greek mythology, Amalthea or Amaltheia (grc|Ἀμάλθεια) is the figure most commonly identified as the nurse of Zeus during his infancy. She is described either as a nymph who raises the child on the milk of a goat, or, in some accounts from the Hellenistic period onwards, as the goat itself.
As early as the archaic period, there exist references to the "horn of Amalthea" (known in Latin as the cornucopia), a magical horn said to be capable of producing endless amounts of any food or drink desired. 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. After Zeus reaches adulthood, he uses the goat's skin as a weapon in his battle against the Titans. Amalthea is first described as a goat by the 3rd-century BC poet Callimachus, who presents a rationalised version of the myth, in which Zeus is fed on Amalthea's milk. Aratus, also writing in the 3rd century BC, seemingly identifies Amalthea with the star Capella, and describes her as "Olenian" (the meaning of which is unclear).
There is disagreement among scholars as to when the tale of Zeus's upbringing was first merged with that of the magical horn. 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. A passage from a scholium (or commentary) on Aratus's account has been taken as evidence that the two myths may have been connected prior to Ovid. 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. Other accounts of Zeus's upbringing describe Amalthea as being related to Melisseus, the king of Crete, including an Orphic version of the story.
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. In modern art, she has been the subject of 17th- and 18th-century works by sculptors such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pierre Julien and painters such as Jacob Jordaens.
The etymology of (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Ἀμάλθεια) is unknown. While 19th-century scholars proposed various derivations, these were dismissed in the early 20th century by Alfred Chilton Pearson, who suggested that the name may be related to (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ἀμαλός,) and (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ἀμάλη,). The verb (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ἀμαλθεύειν,), previously attested only by the Lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria (5th or 6th century AD) and the Etymologicum Magnum (12th century AD), was thought by Otto Gruppe in 1906 to derive from Amalthea's name; Gruppe's suggestion was refuted by the word's discovery in a fragment, published the following year, from the writings of the 5th-century BC tragedian Sophocles. According to Pearson, the two words should instead be understood as having existed alongside each other, with this notion of "abundance" or "plenty" being embodied in certain mythological figures.
In Hesiod's Theogony, an 8th-century BC poem which contains the earliest known account of Zeus's birth, there is no mention of Amalthea. Hesiod, does, however, describe the newborn Zeus as being taken to a cave on "the Aegean mountain" in Crete, which some scholars interpret as meaning "Goat's Mountain", seen as a reference to the story of Amalthea; Richard Wyatt Hutchinson takes this term as possible indication that the tradition in which Amalthea is a goat, though only attested from the Hellenistic period, may have existed earlier than that of her as a nymph. Other scholars, however, including M. L. West, see no reason to view Hesiod's name for the mountain as a reference to Amalthea. 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).
The "horn of Amalthea", referred to in Latin literature as the cornucopia, is a magical horn generally described as being able to produce an inexhaustible supply of any food or drink desired. The tale of this horn seems to have originated as an independent tradition to the raising of Zeus, though it is uncertain when the two merged. The "horn of Amalthea" is mentioned as early as the archaic period by poets such as Anacreon and Phocylides (who both date to the 6th century BC), and is commonly referenced in comedies, such as those by Cratinus (5th century BC) and Aristophanes (5th to early 4th centuries BC). 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. In a lost poem by the 5th-century BC poet Pindar, Heracles fought against the river-god Achelous (who battled him in the form of a bull) for the hand of Deianeira, and during the fight Heracles pulled off one of Achelous's horns; the god then reclaimed his horn by trading it for the magical horn which he obtains from Amalthea, a daughter of Oceanus. In the same passage in which he cites Pherecydes, Apollodorus (1st to 2nd centuries AD) retells this story, and describes the nymph Amalthea as the daughter of Haemonius, whose name, meaning "Thessalian", indicates that this Amalthea is separate to the nurse of Zeus. In Apollodorus's account, Amalthea's horn is that of a bull (an element also mentioned by the 4th-to-3rd-century BC poet Philemon), seemingly a result of confusion with the bull's horn of Achelous, while in other versions of the myth, told by Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC) and Strabo (1st century BC/AD), the horn of Amalthea is identified with that of Achelous.
Amalthea is the figure most commonly described as the nurse of Zeus during his infancy, and in this role is often considered to be a nymph. In the account of Zeus's upbringing from the now lost work Eumolpia (likely composed in or before the 4th century BC), which was attributed in antiquity to the mythical poet Musaeus, Amalthea was the nurse of the young Zeus, and a nymph. According to a summary of the Catasterismi of Eratosthenes (written by an author referred to as "Pseudo-Eratosthenes"), 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. Pseudo-Eratosthenes goes on to describe that this goat was the daughter of Helios, and was so terrifying in appearance that the Titans, out of fear, asked Gaia to hide her in a cave on Crete; Gaia complied, entrusting the goat to Amalthea. After Zeus reaches adulthood, he receives an oracle advising him to use the goat's skin as a weapon in his war against the Titans (due to its terrifying nature). According to the De astronomia (a work of astral mythology likely composed in the 2nd-century AD), which similarly recounts the narrative from Musaeus, this weapon which Zeus uses against the Titans is the aegis.
Various accounts of Zeus's upbringing rationalise Amalthea as a goat; these versions start appearing in the Hellenistic period. The first author to describe her as a goat seems to have been the 3rd-century BC poet Callimachus, who relates that, after Zeus's birth, the god is taken by the Arcadian nymph Neda to a hidden location in Crete, where he is reared by the nymph Adrasteia, and fed the milk of Amalthea. In his description of Zeus suckling Amalthea's breast, Callimachus employs the word (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: μαζόν), which typically denotes the breast of a human (rather than the teat of a goat), thereby, according to Susan Stephens, "call[ing] attention to his own rationalizing variant of the myth". According to a scholium (or commentary) on Callimachus's account, from one of Amalthea's horns flows ambrosia, and from the other comes nectar. In the version of Zeus's infancy from Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), the child is reared by nymphs (who are not named) on the milk of the goat Amalthea, as well as honey, and adds that Amalthea is the source of Zeus's epithet (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: αἰγίοχος,). An account which is largely the same as that given by Pseudo-Eratosthenes is found in a scholium on the Iliad, though the scholiast describes Amalthea herself as the goat whose hide Zeus uses in his fight against the Titans (rather than the owner of the goat).
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. The 3rd-century BC poet Aratus, in his description of the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga) and the surrounding stars, explains that the star of the Goat (Capella) sits above the Charioteer's left shoulder. He identifies this goat with Amalthea, describing it as the goat who suckled the young Zeus; in this passage, he employs the word for the goat's breast, similarly to Callimachus, who may be his source for this information. He also states that the "interpreters of Zeus" refer to her as the Olenian goat, which may be an allusion to a version in which Zeus is reared, by a goat, near Olenos in Achaea, or to the location of the star, on the arm (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: ὠλένη) of Auriga; alternatively, it may indicate that the Goat's father is Olenus (the son of Hephaestus), an interpretation given by a scholium on the passage. 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; 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.
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; 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. In Ovid's account, presented in his Fasti, Amalthea is once again the owner of the goat, and is described as a naiad who lives on Mount Ida. She hides the young Zeus in Crete (away from his father, Cronus), where he is suckled by the she-goat. On one occasion, the goat snaps off one of its horns on a tree, and Amalthea, filling the broken horn with fruit, brings it back to the young Zeus; this tale, an aition for the cornucopia, appears to be the earliest attempt at providing an origin for the object. Zeus later places the goat (and perhaps her broken-off horn) in the heavens, with the goat becoming the star Capella. Ovid's narrative brings together elements from multiple earlier accounts, which he intertwines in an episode characterised by John Miller as a "miniature masterpiece". His source for the narrative's overall outline appears to be Eratosthenes: he describes Amalthea as a nymph, and seemingly alludes to Zeus's war with the Titans, though he notably departs from the Eratosthenic story by describing the goat as 'beautiful' (Latin: formosa) and possessing majestic horns. Ovid harks back to Aratus's account in the first words of his narrative, which mirror the opening phrase of the Aratean story, as well as through his description of the goat as "Olenian". Barbara Boyd also sees in Ovid's narrative significant influence from the Callimachean account of Zeus's infancy.
Though Ovid's Fasti is the first known source to clearly narratively merge the tradition of Zeus's upbringing with that of Amalthea's magical horn, Miller points to a (somewhat garbled) scholium on Aratus as evidence that the two tales may have already been connected by the time of Ovid. The scholiast, who appears to mix two differing versions, one in which Zeus's nurse is an Arcadian woman, and another in which she is a goat, describes this nurse's horn as being the horn of Amalthea, which he associates with the constellation of the Goat; Amalthea's horn here would seem to be the magical horn of plenty, though the two are not explicitly identified. Miller also points, as possible further evidence of a tradition in which the two tales were connected, to the scholium on Callimachus, whose mention of ambrosia and nectar flowing from the goat's horns may have been related to the young Zeus's nourishment, and a 2nd-century AD marble relief, which seems to show Amalthea feeding the young Zeus from a large cornucopia.
In the account of Zeus's infancy in the Fabulae (a mythological handbook attributed to Hyginus, and likely composed in the 2nd century AD), his elder siblings are seemingly not swallowed (as they are in Hesiod's Theogony), though his mother Rhea still gives Cronus a stone in place of Zeus, which he consumes. Upon realising the deception, Cronus scours the earth for his son, while Hera carries the infant to Crete, where she entrusts him to Amalthea, who appears to be a nymph in this account. To keep Zeus from his father, Amalthea hides him in a cradle, which she places in a tree, such that he "could not be found in the sky, on earth, or on the sea". To prevent Cronus from hearing the cries of the young child, Amalthea brings together the Kouretes, and hands them shields and spears, which she instructs them to clang noisily around where the child lies. According to Martin Nilsson, this account is likely not the creation of Hyginus himself, and probably has some basis in an association of the young Zeus with tree worship. Later in the work, Hyginus mentions Latin: Althaea, which M. L. West interprets as referring to Amalthea, and describes her as one the daughters of Ocean (here seemingly meaning Oceanus), alongside Adrasteia and Ida. He adds that these three are alternatively considered daughters of Melisseus, the king of Crete, and nurses of Zeus.
Other versions of Zeus's upbringing also describe Amalthea as being related to Melisseus, the king of Crete. 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. 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. Similarly, in the De astronomia, Amalthea is the she-goat who suckles Jupiter (the Roman equivalent of Zeus), and she is owned by his nurses, the daughters of Melisseus. 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. Luc Brisson and M. L. West write that, in the poem, Amalthea was the wife of Melisseus (a detail transmitted by the 5th-century AD Neoplatonist philosopher Hermias), and that her daughters by him, the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, raised the young Zeus in the cave of Night, while the Kouretes guarded the entrance of the cave. In 's reconstruction of the poem, however, Zeus is raised by the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida (still the daughters of Melisseus), and is fed on the milk of Amalthea, who Bernabé describes as a "goat-nymph" (Spanish; Castilian: ninfa-cabra). An Orphic work may have been the source for the version of Zeus's upbringing told by Apollodorus.
Diodorus Siculus, in a euhemerist reworking of Amalthea's myth, describes her as an especially beautiful young woman, who is wed to Ammon, the king of Libya; Ammon gifts to her a region of great fertility, which is the shape of a bull's horn, and which, taking its name from her, comes to be known as "Amalthea's Horn". In this version, Amalthea and Ammon are also described as the parents of Dionysus. The 1st-century BC Roman writer Cicero, in a letter to his friend Atticus, mentions an Latin: amaltheum, which was likely some form of shrine to Amalthea; on his estate, Atticus had such a shrine, within which were illustrations of Amalthea's mythology, and Cicero, seeking to erect a similar structure on his land in Arpinum, requests that Atticus provide him details of his own shrine and of Amalthea's mythology. In a version from the 2nd-century AD Greek writer Zenobius, when Zeus places the goat from his childhood among the stars (as the constellation known as the "heavenly goat"), he sets aside one of her horns, which he gifts to the nymphs who raised him. The De astronomia, after its account of Jupiter's upbringing, states that, alongside Jupiter, the goat Amalthea also raises Aegipan, and Nonnus, a 5th-century AD Greek writer, describes Pan as the shepherd of the goat Amalthea.
There are relatively few surviving depictions of Amalthea in ancient Greek and Roman art. On a marble relief, which likely dates to the 2nd century AD, she is shown as a nymph, holding a large cornucopia out to the young Zeus, from which the infant eats. The scene also includes a young Pan playing a syrinx, two goats, and an eagle and a snake sitting in a tree. In this representation, Miller sees a number of parallels with Ovid's narrative, and he points to the relief as evidence that Amalthea's horn may have been part of the myth of Zeus's upbringing prior to Ovid, suggesting that Ovid and the artist who produced the relief may have been working from a shared source. There exist several other representations of Amalthea as a nymph, though she is more commonly depicted as a goat. As a goat, she is often shown suckling the young Zeus, or with the child mounted upon her back. Amalthea is also found on coins and medallions from the Roman Empire, including those from during the reigns of Titus and Gallienus.
In the Book of Job in the Septuagint (dated to around the 2nd century BC), the name of the youngest daughter of Job, Keren-happuch, is rendered as (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Ἀμαλθείας Κέρας,), a name which the Roman author Pliny the Elder explicitly identifies with the cornucopia. In the 4th-century AD, the Christian bishop Gregory of Nyssa writes that the text's usage of this term should not be taken as reason to believe in the mythical Greek tale of Amalthea, but that it is the text's way of emphasising the virtuous character and beautiful appearance of Job's daughter.
In modern art, Amalthea was the subject of a sculpture by the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which was among his first works, having been produced in 1615 or earlier. The work depicts Amalthea as a goat, and shows the infant Jupiter drinking her milk, accompanied by a young satyr, and was for some time thought to have been produced in antiquity. The work, which was acquired by Scipione Borghese in 1615, may have served a political purpose; it may have been used by the Borghese family as a way of portraying the appointment of Pope Paul V as ushering in a "new Golden Age", represented by the mythical figure of Amalthea, who personified abundance. The myth of the goat Amalthea was a common subject for the Flemish painter Jacob Jordaens, 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. A print by Schelte a Bolswert, after one of Jordaens' paintings of Amalthea, is accompanied by an inscription which presents a moral interpretation of the myth, explaining that Jupiter's adulterous ways are unsurprising, given he is raised by a goat and satyrs, an upbringing which leads him to emulate a "goat's nature". Around 1786 to 1787, the French sculptor Pierre Julien produced a work depicting Amalthea as a nymph, covered in drapery and accompanied by a goat; when the sculpture was exhibited in 1791, it received high praise, attracting comparison from one critic with the classical Greek sculptures of Praxiteles and Phidias. 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.
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