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;

When your father invited the gods to a very well-ordered banquet at his own dear Sipylus, in return for the meals he had enjoyed, then it was that the god of the splendid trident seized you, his mind overcome with desire, and carried you away on his team of golden horses to the highest home of widely-honored Zeus, to which at a later time Ganymede came also, to perform the same service for Zeus.

And I praised the lovely son of Archestratus, whom I saw at that time beside the Olympic altar, winning victory with the valor of his hands—beautiful in form, and blended with that youthful bloom which once kept Ganymede from shameless death, with the help of Cyprian Aphrodite.

More comely was Ganymede, or dearer to his lover?

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

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

For not even from boys did your gods abstain:

Antinous he consecrated, just as Zeus did Ganymede;

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

Cyclops, am I Ganymede, Zeus’s minion?

I shall rest well enough with my Ganymede here;

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

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;

And as this intimacy continues and the lover comes near and touches the beloved in the gymnasia and in their general intercourse, then the fountain of that stream which Zeus, when he was in love with Ganymede, called desire flows copiously upon the lover;

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.