Ganymede

nor do I listen to Homer, who says Ganymede was carried off by the gods for his beauty, to serve Jove his drink:

And, to omit the loves of women, to whom nature has granted greater license, who either doubts about the rape of Ganymede what the poets mean, or does not understand what Laius in Euripides both says and desires?

And for beauty Zeus made Ganymede his cup-bearer.

Ganymede, indeed, because he was snatched from among men while a boy, seems to have done nothing brilliant;

More comely was Ganymede, or dearer to his lover?

It would be long to review also those whom you have buried among the stars and boldly attended upon as gods.

now into the very likenesses of his acts, into the eagle that snatched, the swan that had sung.

Antinous he consecrated, just as Zeus did Ganymede;

For not even from boys did your gods abstain:

And from the conflagration of Ida to the rape of Ganymede, sixty-five years.

) To be sure, Ganymede whom I am carrying off from the halls of Dardanus.

Cyclops, am I Ganymede, Zeus’s minion?

I shall rest well enough with my Ganymede here;

There was the Dardanian boy, dainty morsel of Zeus’ bed, drawing off the wine he mixed in the depths of golden bowls, Ganymede the Phrygian;

woe to Dardania, its wailing, wailing, for the horsemanship of Ganymede, bedfellow of Zeus.

Erichthonios begat Tros, king of the Trojans, and Tros had three noble sons, Ilos, Assarakos, and Ganymede who was comeliest of mortal men;

So the name given Ganymede, compounded of the two foregoing elements, signifies not physically but mentally attractive;

And I aver that even in the case of Ganymede, it was not his person but his spiritual character that influenced Zeus to carry him up to Olympus.

that is to say, he rejoices to hear; and in another place, harbouring shrewd devices in his heart.