117 Andrew Calimach, Independent Researcher. Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Andrew Calimach, electronic mail: acalimach@gmail.com Editor’s Note: The cover of THYMOS is a representation of Bertel Thorwaldsen’s sculpture Ganymede Waters Zeus as an Eagle (1817). The Danish artist’s theme is discussed in the following essay, which also provides the reader with a fuller understanding of the myth behind the work of art. THYMOS: Journal of Boyhood Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 2007, 117-137. © 2007 by the Men’s Studies Press, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.mensstudies.com thy.0102.117/$12.00 DOI: 10.3149/thy.0102.117 The Exquisite Corpse of Ganymede: A Cursory Overview of an Ancient Gender Studies Discourse ANDREW CALIMACH Independent Researcher This essay examines surviving traces of the Zeus and Ganymede myth and identifies two interwoven discourses on male love in antiquity: one, a tradi- tion integral to a Cretan initiatory rite and its didactic nature evidenced by an analogous and opposite Boeotian cautionary myth; the other, a nucleus of polemic and shifting male love constructions from Minoan times through Late Antiquity. The mythic tradition is discussed as an archetypal key to identify- ing the ancient pedagogical and erotic functions of male love and the ancients’ evolving attitudes toward such relationships. As the myth and its offshoots, which are presented here in the form of a pastiche evocative of the atmos- phere of the tradition, reflect their Classical and modern echoes through West- ern and Oriental interpretations, a recurring male love ethic and aesthetic is seen to take shape. Keywords: male love, pederasty, ancient Greek rites and initiations, homo- sexual morality, Greek mythology, Zeus and Ganymede The boy and the eagle pictured on the cover of this journal have signified radi- cally different things to different people over the course of time. Bertel Thorvaldsen, the sculptor of the group from which the cover piece was selected, was a northern Eu- ropean who chose to live much of his life in a Mediterranean clime with weather and mores more to his liking. There he sculpted a number of pieces attesting to his appre- ciation for the young male form. To him, the Greek couple, Zeus and Ganymede, surely signified the beauty and tenderness of male love, 1, see page 118 a statement that in his time could only be made symbolically.