The name Amalthea, in Greek "tender goddess", is clearly an
epithet, signifying the presence of an earlier nurturing goddess[1] or maiden-goddess[2] whom the
Hellenes, whose myths we know, knew to be located in
Crete, where
Minoans may have called her a version of "
Dikte".[3]
Mythology
There were different traditions regarding Amalthea.[4] Amalthea is sometimes represented as the
goat who suckled the infant-god in a cave in Cretan Mount Aigaion ("Goat Mountain"),[5] sometimes as a goat-tending
nymph[6] of uncertain parentage (the daughter of
Oceanus,[7]Helios,[8] Haemonius,[9] or—according to
Lactantius—
Melisseus[10]), who brought him up on the milk of her goat.[11] The possession of multiple and uncertain mythological parents indicates wide worship of a deity in many cultures having varying local traditions. Other names, like
Adrasteia, Ide, the nymph of
Mount Ida, or
Adamanthea, which appear in mythology handbooks,[12] are simply duplicates of Amalthea.
In the tradition represented by
Hesiod's Theogony,
Cronus swallowed all of his children immediately after birth. The mother goddess
Rhea, Zeus' mother, deceived her brother-consort Cronus by giving him a stone wrapped to look like a baby instead of Zeus. Since she instead gave the infant Zeus to Adamanthea to nurse in a cave on a mountain in Crete, it is clear that Adamanthea is a doublet of Amalthea. In many literary references, the Greek tradition relates that in order that Cronus should not hear the wailing of the infant, Amalthea gathered about the cave the
Kuretes or the Korybantes to dance, shout, and clash their spears against their shields.[13]
The aegis
Amalthea's skin, or that of her goat, taken by Zeus in honor of her when she died, became the protective
aegis in some traditions.[14]
Among the stars
"Amaltheia was placed amongst the stars as the constellation Capra—the group of stars surrounding
Capella on the arm (ôlenê) of
Auriga the Charioteer."[15]Capra simply means "she-goat" and the star-name Capella is the "little goat", but some modern readers confuse her with the male sea-goat of the
Zodiac,
Capricorn, who bears no relation to Amalthea, no connection in a Greek or Latin literary source nor any ritual or inscription to join the two.
Hyginus describes this
catasterism in the Poetic Astronomy, in speaking of Auriga, the Charioteer:
Parmeniscus says that a certain
Melisseus was king in Crete, and to his daughters Jove was brought to nurse. Since they did not have milk, they furnished him a she-goat, Amalthea by name, who is said to have reared him. She often bore twin kids, and at the very time that Jove was brought to her to nurse, had borne a pair. And so because of the kindness of the mother, the kids, too were placed among the constellations.
Cleostratus of Tenedos is said to have first pointed out these kids among the stars.
But
Musaeus says Jove was nursed by
Themis and the nymph Amalthea, to whom he was given by
Ops, his mother. Now Amalthea had as a pet a certain goat which is said to have nursed Jove.[16]
See also
Auðumbla, primeval cow in Norse mythology who nourished the primordial entities Ymir and Búri
^"...the business of Amaltheia, caves and the nurturing of Zeus lands us squarely in Minoan times",
John Bennet remarked in passing (Bennet, "The Structure of the Linear B Administration at Knossos" American Journal of Archaeology89.2 [April 1985:231–249] p. 107 note 39); cf.
M.P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion (1950:537ff).
^An Egyptian inscription of
Amenhotep III (1406–1369 BCE) discussed by Michael C. Astour, "Aegean Place-Names in an Egyptian Inscription" American Journal of Archaeology70.4 (October 1966:313–317), "shows that the Egyptian scribe conceived the Minoan form of Diktê as the
Northwest Semitic word dqt... Aigaion oros=Diktê may well be a Graeco-Semitic doublet, for in
Ugaritic ritual texts dqt (literally 'small one') was the term for 'female head of small cattle for sacrifice' and a goat rather than a sheep. Dqt is also found as a divine name in a Ugaritic list of gods, which reminds us of the goat that nourished Zeus in the
Dictaean cave." (p. 314).
^The early fourth-century Christian apologist
Lactantius (Institutiones I.22) makes the father of Amalthea and her honey-providing sister
Melissa, a Melisseus, "king of Crete"; this example of the common Christian
Euhemerist interpretation of Greek myth as fables of humans superstitiously credited with supernatural powers during the passage of time does not represent the actual cultural history of Amalthea, save in its synthesised reflection of an alternative mythic tradition, that infant Zeus was fed with honey: see
Bee (mythology).
^According to
Aratus of Sicyon, the
Achaeans believed that his happened in their capital
Aegium (Strabo, Geography, VIII 7,5). Legendary infancy episodes of some historical figures—and poetical figures, such as Longus'
Daphnis—were suckled by goats, and the actual practice lingered in Italy into the nineteenth century: see William M. Calder, III, "Longus 1. 2: The She-Goat Nurse" Classical Philology78.1 (January 1983:50–51).
^Bernard Evslin, Gods, Demigods and Demons: A Handbook of Greek Mythology: s.v. "Adamanthea", "Amalthea"; Patricia Monaghan, Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines, 2009, s.v. Adamanthea".
Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4.
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.