In Greek mythology, Tithonus or Tithonos was the lover of
Eos, Titanid of the dawn. He was a Trojan by birth, the son of King Laomedon of Troy.
Eos kidnapped Ganymede and Tithonus, both from the royal house of Troy, to be her
lovers.[1] The mytheme of
the goddess's immortal lover is an archaic one; when a role for Zeus was inserted, a bitter new twist appeared:[2] According to the Homeric Hymn, when Eos asked Zeus for Tithonus
to be immortal,[3] she forgot to ask for eternal youth.
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." (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite)
In later tellings he eventually turned into a cicada, eternally living, but begging for death to overcome him.[4] 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.
Memnon later became King of the East, until he was killed by Achilles. Some mythographers say
that Tithonus also had a mortal wife, named Cissia (otherwise unknown).
A newly-found poem on Tithonus is the fourth extant complete poem by ancient Greek lyrical poetess Sappho. The poem was published for the first time by Martin West in the Times Literary Supplement, 21 or
24 June 2005.
Poems
- "Tithonus" by Alfred Tennyson was originally written as "Tithon"
in 1833 and completed in 1859.[5]
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.
Cultural references
Aldous Huxley's novel, "After Many a Summer
Dies the Swan" was titled after a verse from the Lord
Tennyson poem "Tithonus."
An episode of the television show The X-Files
was titled "Tithonus." It concerned a man who cheated Death, but eventually came to see
his immortality as a curse rather than a gift.
Notes
- ^ Anchises is another mortal from the
Trojan house abducted by a goddess (Aphrodite) for erotic purposes. Tithonus is mentioned by
Aphrodite as an example to encourage Anchises in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite,
218ff.
- ^ Homeric Hymn; compare the mytheme in
its original, blissful form in the pairing of Selene and Endymion, a myth that was also located in Asia Minor. Peter Walcot, ("The Homeric 'Hymn' to
Aphrodite': A Literary Appraisal" Greece & Rome 2nd Series, 38.2 October 1991, pp. 137-155) reads the Tithonus
example as a "corrective" to the myth of Ganymede (pp. 149-50): "the example of Ganymedes... promises too much, and might beguile
Anchises into expecting too much, even an ageless immortality" (p. 149).
- ^ In a variant, Zeus decided he wanted the beautiful youth Ganymede for
himself; to repay Eos he promised to fulfill one wish.
- ^ Some stories say that Eos turned Tithonus into a grasshopper or
cicada.
- ^ Victorian Web: Alfred Tennyson's "Tithonus". Retrieved on 2006-09-02.
External links
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