Galatea (mythology)
Galatea (/ˌɡæləˈtiːə/; Greek: Γαλάτεια; "she who is milk-white")[1] is a name popularly applied to the statue carved of ivory alabaster by Pygmalion of Cyprus, which then came to life in Greek mythology.
Galatea is also the name of a sea-nymph, one of the fifty Nereids (daughters of Nereus) mentioned by Hesiod and Homer.[2] In Theocritus Idylls VI and XI she is the object of desire of the one-eyed giant Polyphemus and is linked with Polyphemus again in the myth of Acis and Galatea in Ovid's Metamorphoses.[3] She is also mentioned in Virgil's Eclogues and Aeneid.[4]
Etymology
Though the name "Galatea" has become so firmly associated with Pygmalion's statue as to seem antique, its use in connection with Pygmalion originated with a post-classical writer. No extant ancient text mentions the statue's name,
According to Meyer Reinhold, the name "Galatea" was first given wide circulation in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's scène lyrique of 1762, Pygmalion. The name had become a commonplace of pastoral fictions, because of the well-known myth of Acis and Galatea; one of Honoré d'Urfé's characters in L'Astrée was a Galatea, though not this sculptural creation.
Myth
The story of Pygmalion appeared earliest in a Hellenistic work, Philostephanus' history of Cyprus, "De Cypro".[8] It is retold in Ovid's Metamorphoses,[9] where the king Pygmalion is made into a sculptor who fell in love with a marble statue he had crafted with his own hands. In answer to his prayers, the goddess Aphrodite brought it to life and united the couple in marriage. This novella remained the classical telling until the end of the seventeenth century. The trope of the animated statue gained a vogue during the eighteenth century.[10]
The
Cinyras, perhaps the son of Paphus,[11] or perhaps the successful suitor of Metharme, founded the city of Paphos on Cyprus, under the patronage of Aphrodite, and built the great temple to the goddess there.[12]
Bibliotheke, the Hellenistic compendium of myth long attributed to Apollodorus, mentions a daughter of Pygmalion named Metharme.[13] She was the wife of Cinyras, and the mother of Adonis, beloved of Aphrodite, although Myrrha, daughter of Cinyras, is more commonly named as the mother of Adonis.
It was commonly rumored in Roman times that Praxiteles's cult image of Aphrodite of Knidos in Aphrodite's temple was so beautiful that at least one admirer arranged to be shut in with it overnight.[14]
Interpretation
The myth indicates that a cult image of
See also
- Galene (mythology)
- List of Metamorphoses characters
- Galata, Cyprus
- Galatea (moon), a moon of Neptune
- 74 Galatea, main-belt asteroid
- Galatea, New Zealand
- La Galatea, 1585 book by Miguel de Cervantes
- Gallathea or Galatea, 1588 play by John Lyly
- Die schöne Galathée, 1865 operetta by Franz von Suppé
- Pygmalion and Galatea, 1871 play by W. S. Gilbert
- Galatea 2.2, 1995 pseudo-autobiographical novel by American writer Richard Powers
- Galatea is the name of the main flagship in the 1998 PC game Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War
- Galatea is the name of the gynoid in the 1999 film Bicentennial Man.
- Galatea, a 2000 interactive fiction video game
- Galatea of Justice League Unlimited (2001–2006)
- Galatea is the name of a character in the anime series Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040
Notes and references
- Nereids. Galateia as "sea-calm Goddess" seems a likely inference; the reasoning for Galateia as Milky-White comes from the adjectival form of galaktos, galakteia.
- ^ Hesiod, Theogony 250; Homer, Iliad, 18.45.
- ^ Ovid, Met. 13.738, 13.789.
- ^ Virgil, Ec. 1.30, 1.31, 3.64, 3.72, 7.37, 9.39, Aen. 9.103.
- ^ Helen H. Law, "The name Galatea in the Pygmalion myth", The Classical Journal, 27 (1932), pp. 337–342
- ^ JSTOR 3296568. Reinhold notes that the first edition of Lemprière's Bibliotheca Classica(1788), does not have an entry for "Galatea", which was inserted in later editions.
- ^ Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.1.9
- ^ Reinhold 1971, p. 316.
- ^ Metamorphoses x.243ff.
- Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes23 (1960), pp. 239–255.
- ^ According to the Roman Hyginus, Fabula 142, Cinyras was a son of Paphus, thus legitimate in the patrineal manner, but Bibliotheke makes Cinyras an interloper, arriving with some of his people from Syria on the nearest coast of Asia, thus a suitor from outside, in the matrilineal manner; the conflict is instructive.
- ISBN 0-451-62803-9.
- ^ Bibliotheke, iii.14.3.
- Lucian of Samosata.
- ISBN 0-14-017199-1.
External links
- Galatea the Nereid in classical literature and art
- Galatea depicted with Polyphemus on a golden harpsichord by Michele Todini, Rome, 1675 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art