Everything about Tithonus totally explained
In
Greek mythology,
Tithonus or
Tithonos was the lover of
Eos,
Titan of the dawn. He was a
Trojan by birth, the son of King
Laomedon of Troy by a
water nymph named Strymo ("harsh"). In the mythology known to the fifth-century vase-painters of Athens, Tithonus was envisaged as a
rhapsode, as the lyre in his hand, on an
oinochoe of the
Achilles Painter, ca. 470 BC–460 BCE (
illustration) attests. Competitive singing, as in the
Contest of Homer and Hesiod, is also depicted vividly in the
Homeric Hymn to Apollo and mentioned in the two
Hymns to Aphrodite.
Eos kidnapped
Ganymede and Tithonus, both from the royal house of Troy, to be her lovers. The
mytheme of the goddess's immortal lover is an archaic one; when a role for Zeus was inserted, a bitter new twist appeared: According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, when Eos asked Zeus for Tithonus to be
immortal, she forgot to ask for
eternal youth. Tithonus indeed lived forever
» "but when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he couldn't 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'd 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. 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. In the
Epic Cycle that revolved around the
Trojan War, Tithonus, who has travelled east from Troy into Assyria and is the founder of
Susa, is bribed to send his son Memnon to fight at Troy with a golden grapevine. Memnon was called "King of the East" by
Hesiod, but he was killed on the plain of Troy by
Achilles.
Aeschylus says in passing 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.
Eos and Tithonus (inscribed
Tinthu or
Tinthun) provided a pictorial motif that was inscribed on
Etruscan bronze hand-mirrorbacks, or cast in low relief.
Poems
The poem is a dramatic monologue in
blank verse from the point-of-view of Tithonus. Unlike the original myth, it's Tithonus who asks for immortality, and it's
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.
"Tithonus" by Paul Muldoon was originally published in The New Yorker and included in the book Horse Latitudes (2006).
Herder: Tithonus und 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 is titled "Tithonus." It concerns a man who cheated Death, but eventually came to see his immortality as a curse rather than a gift. The man is able to "sense" death coming for people and attempts to catch the face of Death in photographs, believing that if he sees his face, he'll finally die.
In the television show Doctor Who and the spin-off show Torchwood, the character Jack Harkness faces the same fate as Tithonus in that when brought back from the dead, he discovers he's both now immortal and still aging.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Tithonus'.
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