LOVERS’ LEGENDS
The Myths
Exactly what were the gods and heroes? Fictions? Fairy tales? Far from it. To the Greeks,12 they were the encounter with the divine, as well as true history; far more real to them than the ancient Greeks themselves are to us today. By means of myths, the Greeks stamped the names and the places they claimed as their own, their customs, their very existence, with the stamp of authenticity. Thus the myths remain an open window through which we can look upon our forefathers and the ways they imagined themselves.
The stories in this collection, restored from original sources in translation, outline the archetypal territory of Greek male love, as well as the boundaries crossed only at risk of divine retribution. We know of many more such tales, but they, as countless other treasures of ancient Greece, have been lost or destroyed. The list below, of gods and their lovers, suggests the breadth of the tradition, but is by no means complete.
- The champion of male love was Apollo, patron of culture and protector of the young. Besides Hyacinthus, Cyparissus, and Orpheus he had many beloveds whose stories have been lost.13
- The first god ever to love a man was Poseidon, who loved Pelops, and perhaps also Kaineus, to whom he granted invulnerability in exchange for his love.14
- The king of the gods, Zeus, was "set on fire" by the sightof Ganymede's thighs.15
- Hermes, as befits a protector god of the athletic fields, playgrounds of the handsome, had his beloved Antheus.
- Of Pan's boyfriends we know only one: Daphnis, whom he taught to play the panpipes.
- Dionysus loved Ampelos, "Vine,"16 but of this god's affairs not much more is known, perhaps because they were part of his lost mysteries.17
In matters of male love, the heroes lived up to their title. The most prolific was Hercules, whose male lovers were, as the poet Theocritus assures us,18 numberless. In the realm of passion Hercules was omnivorous, renowned for his prowess with women as well as with youths. His twelve labors are legend, but perhaps an even greater exploit was his encounter with the fifty daughters of
