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Dec. 1st, 2006 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperThis one's for the Greek mythology geeks out there. Here's the deal--ambrosia and nectar. Food and drink of the gods, right? Ambrosia in particular being the stuff that shows up repeatedly as both sustaining the immortals and conferring immortality as well, for example in that neat little myth about Demeter trying to confer immortality on a baby by anointing him in ambrosia and sticking him in a hearth.
My question is this--if ambrosia's such nifty stuff, it would stand to reason that somebody makes it. It surely can't just be lying around. So is there some deity, greater or lesser, who hangs out making ambrosia and nectar while all the major Olympians are snogging mortals or each other, causing earthquakes and tidal waves, and starting wars?
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solarbird, whose Google fu is vastly superior to my own, has pointed me at a few intriguing leads involving Hebe and Ganymede as cupbearers of the gods, serving this stuff on Olympus. But that only tells me that it was their job to bring the stuff, not necessarily that they made it. But Dara did also find another reference to Hebe having a magical chalice that apparently just generated ambrosia, as well as several references seeming to indicate that the Greeks were basing the tales of ambrosia off of actual honey. And she found yet another reference that suggests that no actual description of the making of ambrosia ever showed up in classical Greek myths.
How about it, folks? Anybody got some solid references? Less solid references? Amusing guesses vaguely in the ballpark? Sing out!
(Disclaimer: Of course, none of this is directly pertinent to the story I'm writing except in the sense that my version of Hephaestus has a stock of ambrosia laid up at his place, which led me to think that he has to get it from somewhere. I don't think I actually need to specify this as an on-camera detail, but hell, I might! Plus, I'm just curious!)
My question is this--if ambrosia's such nifty stuff, it would stand to reason that somebody makes it. It surely can't just be lying around. So is there some deity, greater or lesser, who hangs out making ambrosia and nectar while all the major Olympians are snogging mortals or each other, causing earthquakes and tidal waves, and starting wars?
solarbird, whose Google fu is vastly superior to my own, has pointed me at a few intriguing leads involving Hebe and Ganymede as cupbearers of the gods, serving this stuff on Olympus. But that only tells me that it was their job to bring the stuff, not necessarily that they made it. But Dara did also find another reference to Hebe having a magical chalice that apparently just generated ambrosia, as well as several references seeming to indicate that the Greeks were basing the tales of ambrosia off of actual honey. And she found yet another reference that suggests that no actual description of the making of ambrosia ever showed up in classical Greek myths.How about it, folks? Anybody got some solid references? Less solid references? Amusing guesses vaguely in the ballpark? Sing out!
(Disclaimer: Of course, none of this is directly pertinent to the story I'm writing except in the sense that my version of Hephaestus has a stock of ambrosia laid up at his place, which led me to think that he has to get it from somewhere. I don't think I actually need to specify this as an on-camera detail, but hell, I might! Plus, I'm just curious!)
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Date: 2006-12-02 07:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 07:41 am (UTC)And yeah, the honey reference is pretty clear, but that sounds more like a real-world explanation for where the ambrosia myths came from. What I'm actually looking for here is any reference within the actual myths themselves to where the stuff came from. Kind of like, if you will, the difference between saying that BSG gets its ambrosia alcohol from Greek mythos, and saying that IC, it's brewed on oh, say, Caprica. ;)
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Date: 2006-12-02 07:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 08:00 am (UTC)ambrosia (fr Gr, ambrotos, "immortal") An elixir of life, the food of the gods that conferred immortality. Homer portrays the gods using as food, asn unguent, as perfume, and as fodder for horses. It was the divine food that was brought by doves to Zeus and is contrasted with nectar, the divine drink. The concept of ambrosia may have developed from an idealization of honey. It is more likely that ambrosia was the common and primitive cereal food of early Greece.
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Date: 2006-12-02 08:26 am (UTC)I was just coming back to post that!
Date: 2006-12-02 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 08:43 am (UTC)http://www.ancientlibrary.com/seyffert/0498.html
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Date: 2006-12-02 08:50 am (UTC)"JSTOR: Virgil and the Wooden Horse
show us some supreme moments; late Greek epic indeed conducts us ... lists 23 men, sustained by sandwiches of ambrosia made by Athena herself, ..."
Which of course, doesn't imply Athena made the ambrosia but only the sandwiches, I think, given the information below:
(One of the River Gods, offspring of Oceanus and Tethys:)
"Simois. A Trojan river, who made ambrosia spring up for the horses of Hera and Athena to eat, at the time of the Trojan War. Simois' daughter Astyoche 3 is, according to some, mother of Tros 1, who called the people of the land Trojans, after his own name. His other daughter Hieromneme is sometimes said to be the mother of Anchises 1, Aeneas' father [Apd.3.12.2; Hes.The.342; Hom.Il. 5.775ff.]."
Which would explain where Athena got the ambrosia for the sandwiches. (SANDWICHES ...??? I think that must be a translation thing.)
Here's an interesting discussion on your very topic:
http://www.mythography.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1734
"Ambrosia. The food of the gods in classical mythology. The term may mean food in the narrow sense of eatables, in which case it is the counterpart of nectar, the drink of the gods; or it may mean food in the wider sense of sustenance, when it embraces drink also. What the gods were actually supposed to eat is a matter of conjecture. In the English language any especially delicious food may be called ambrosia; but this usage has become uncommon."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 14)
"Nectar and ambrosia, in the myths, were the foods of the gods, foods that preserved their immortality and that flowed miraculously in some mythical paradise. Oftentimes, world trees grew in paradise and produced these divine foods. The supernatural Tree of Buddha, the haoma tree (a sacred vine of the Zoroastrians), and the Tree of Life in many lands all produced immortal sustenance. People in many early cultures believed that their deities ate special foods unknown to humans: The gods were immortal, and they must have consumed something that made them so...Some writers described nectar as a drink made of honey and fruit, and ambrosia as a kind of porridge made from honey, fruit, olive oil, cheese, barley, and water. Others described ambrosia as an herb that grew on earth (some identified it as parsley or wild sage), an herb they believed prolonged human life just as the ambrosia of the gods preserved their immortality. But it was generally believed that mortals would suffer deadly consequences if they ate the gods' ambrosia or drank the gods' nectar, whatever those divine foods might be..."
---Nectar and Ambrosia: An Encyclopedia of Food in World Mythology, Tamra Andrews [ABC-CLIO:Santa Barbara] 2000 (p. 158)
[NOTE: this book contains far more information than can be paraphrased. Your librarian can help you find a copy]
"Ambrosia and nectar, food, drink and other supplies of the gods. In the Iliad the gods use ambrosia as soap and perfume, and fed their horses ambrosia eidar ambrosial (or perhaps immortal) food'. It is by means of nektar and desired ambrosia', distilled into his breast, that Achilles is protected from exhaustion by Athene, at Zeus's urging. It is with ambrosia and red nektar that Patroclus' and Achilles' bodies are preserved from decay after their death. According to Hesiod the gods eat nektar and ambrosia. Sappho tells of the gods' mixing-bowl, krater, filled with ambrosia to drink. Other early poets, too, seem to regard ambrosia as the liquid or nektar as the solid or simply do not specify."
---Food in the Ancient World From A to Z, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 2003 (p. 7)
I find it amusing and ironic that the scientific name for common ragweed is Ambrosia artemisiifolia.
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Date: 2006-12-02 02:16 pm (UTC)Her lj nick is
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Date: 2006-12-02 06:51 pm (UTC)Greek myth as you know was not organized. It grew organically, embellished by each bard and poet playing with it. So for example, Homer or his predecessors probably invented the "moly" plant Odysseus uses to get the better of Circe, and then later writers (not that any did, but they might) could furnish further details about moly. So (I think), Homer inserted one possible explanation for ambrosia's origin in passing, and a later author invented the story of Athena feeding the men in the Trojan Horse to explain why they didn't get hungry.
This won't help too much because I'm rehashing what folks already found above, but me boot up The Perseus Library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/vor?target=en%2C1&collection=Perseus%3Acollection%3AGreco-Roman&lookup=ambrosia&formentry=1&template=&.submit=Search&searchText=&alts=1&extern=1&group=collcat&.cgifields=group&.cgifields=alts&.cgifields=type&.cgifields=extern) and see if I can track down the places in the primary sources where ambrosia is mentioned. Perseus has pretty much all the main sources, although not really obscure ones. (I worked on this database one, whee!) Here's some items gleaned from a search for ambrosia (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/vor?target=en%2C1&collection=Perseus%3Acollection%3AGreco-Roman&lookup=ambrosia&formentry=1&template=&.submit=Search&searchText=&alts=1&extern=1&group=collcat&.cgifields=group&.cgifields=alts&.cgifields=type&.cgifields=extern)
tracking down the sources mentioned above: Apollodorus no help; just mentions ambrosia being used to make baby immortal.
The "Athena feeding the troops" story is apparently from a later Greek epic fleshing out Homer (who, in fact, doesn't touch the Trojan horse story):
"Tryphiodorus is a writer of a somewhat lower stamp, perhaps equal in power to Smyrnaeus, but inferior in taste and judgment. He concentrates himself chiefly on the wooden horse and the events immediately connected with it, fifty lines being given to a minute description of all its parts, from which it appears that it was a costly as well as elaborate performance,--its eyes being made of beryl and amethyst, and its teeth of silver. Ulysses, as in Smyrnaeus, lays down the programme of operations: the heroes rise one after another, as at the challenge of Hector in the seventh book of the Iliad, and volunteer in the service; and when they are lodged in the horse, Pallas provides them with ambrosia; immediately after which they are aptly compared to beasts running down a rock to escape a winter torrent, and waiting in their den, famished with hunger." ~ Commentary on Vergil's account of the Fall of Troy (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0050&query=line%3D%2384&word=ambrosia) and its predecessors.
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Date: 2006-12-02 06:51 pm (UTC)Homer's Iliad5.767 (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0217&query=line%3D%23464&word=ambrosia)
[767] Hera did as he had said. She lashed her horses, and they flew forward nothing loath midway betwixt earth and sky. As far as a man can see when he looks out upon the sea [pontos] from some high beacon, so far can the loud-neighing horses of the gods spring at a single bound. When they reached Troy and the place where its two flowing streams Simoeis and Skamandros meet, there Hera stayed them and took them from the chariot. She hid them in a thick cloud, and Simoeis made ambrosia spring up for them to eat.
A-HA. The doves quote.
Homer Odyssey Book 12 line 55: (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0218&query=line%3D%23489&word=ambrosia)
"Here not even a bird may pass, no, not even the timid doves that bring ambrosia to Father Zeus, but the sheer rock always carries off one of them, and Father Zeus has to send another to make up their number; no ship that ever yet came to these rocks has got away again, but the waves and whirlwinds of fire are freighted with wreckage and with the bodies of dead men."
This passage is Circe telling Odysseus of various routes he might take, and it's clear in context that Circe is referring to the Clashing Rocks of the Jason and the Argonauts story. Odysseus opts to take the other route, past Scylla and Charybdis. These mythical places didn't acquire a fixed geography until well after Homer's day.
Hm. I haven't searched all 140 references to ambrosia, but it looks like all the rest are just "so and so anointed so and so with ambrosia" or "so and so got some ambrosia from a back closet"... there's a little more that gives you the sense that it was viewed as something the consistency of an ointment or jelly-- or honey--, but that's about it.
If you're feeling obsessive compulsive, check my search link above. I have a feeling that the sources your friends have already found are about all we have.
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Date: 2006-12-02 10:09 pm (UTC)I'm not actually going into where it comes from on camera--I only need to mention it as something Hephaestus has available for my heroine. This is all mostly just me being curious about where he got it from. ;)
Thanks for chiming in!
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Date: 2006-12-02 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 10:18 pm (UTC)Re: I was just coming back to post that!
Date: 2006-12-02 10:19 pm (UTC)Plus, the thought of something made from honey and apples sounds really tasty. :9
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Date: 2006-12-02 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-02 10:20 pm (UTC)Re: I was just coming back to post that!
Date: 2006-12-02 11:51 pm (UTC)Re: I was just coming back to post that!
Date: 2006-12-04 06:13 am (UTC)