Ganymede

1. Greek Mythology. A Trojan boy of great beauty whom Zeus carried away to be his lover and to be cupbearer to the gods.
2. One of the four brightest satellites of Jupiter and the seventh in distance from the planet. Originally sighted by Galileo, it is one of the largest satellites in the solar system.

[Latin Ganymēdēs, from Greek Ganumēdēs.]

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Ganymede and Zeus in the form of an eagle, antique marble statue; in the Vatican Museum (credit: Anderson — Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

In Greek legend, the son of King Tros (or Laomedon) of Troy. Because of his unusual beauty, he was carried off by Zeus disguised as an eagle, and he became cupbearer to the gods. Other versions of the legend trace his abduction to other gods or to King Minos of Crete. The story has long been held to have homosexual implications, and the word catamite is derived from his Latin name, Catamitus.

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Ganymēde (Ganymēdēs), in Greek myth, son of Tros (or Laomedon), king of Troy, carried off by the gods or the eagle of Zeus or Zeus himself because of his beauty, to be the cup-bearer of Zeus, who gave in exchange to his father a pair of divine horses. In later times he was thought to be immortalized as the zodiacal sign Aquarius. From the Latin version of his name (Catamītus) is derived the word ‘catamite’. For the Middle Ages he typified homosexual love, but during the Renaissance his ascent to Zeus symbolized for some the soul's ascent to the absolute.

Ganymede most often refers to:

• Ganymede (mythology), Trojan prince in Greek mythology
• Ganymede (moon), Jupiter's largest moon, named after the mythological character

Ganymede, Ganymed or Ganymedes may also refer to:

• Ganymedes (eunuch), tutor of Arsinoe IV of Egypt and adversary to Julius Caesar
• Ganymed (Goethe), a poem by Goethe
• Ganymede (band), a 2000s American synthpop band
• Ganymed (band), a 1970s Austrian disco band
• 1036 Ganymed, an asteroid
• Ganymede, the name used by Rosalind when she is disguised as a man in Shakespeare's As You Like It
• Ganymede, the servant of the sculptor Pygmalion in the operetta Die schöne Galathee by Franz von Suppé
• Ganymede, the name of the 2008 annual project release by the Eclipse Software Foundation

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