1 Gemmae. International Journal on Glyptic Studies, 1, 2019, 63-80. Metamorphoses of Tithonus in Roman Glyptic Véronique Dasen University of Fribourg/Paris, UMR8210 Anhima Tithonus, the young lover of Eos, the goddess of dawn, met a miserable fate. Many texts allude to the tragic result of his divine abduction. One of the earliest versions of the story is mentioned in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, in which Aphrodite speaks to Anchises, her mortal lover, comparing his fate to that of two other humans, Ganymedes and Tithonus, both from the Trojan genos, just like him, and loved by the gods as much as he was. 1 Ganymedes, son of Tros, the eponymous king of Troy, and the nymph Callirhoe, was abducted and taken to Olympus where he remains forever young as the gods’ cup-bearer, ‘immortal and unaging’, ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως. 2 Tithonus, king Priam’s brother, was taken by Eos to her home at the fringe of the inhabited world. 3 The strength of their passion was proverbial. The image of Dawn leaving Tithonus in bed to flood the earth with light is a poetic topos since Homer, revived and magnified during the Augustan age. 4 Unlike Ganymedes, however, Tithonus was condemned to eternal old age, the unfortunate victim of an incomplete vow Eos had made in his favour. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess recalls how Dawn made the mistake to ask Zeus to grant her lover immortality but forgot to ask him to save Tithonus from aging. 5 Aphrodite therefore reassures Anchises that she will be careful not to make him immortal to avoid him suffering from the same fate. In another version of the myth, attributed to the poet Melanthius, Tithonus is entirely responsible for this incomplete vow. 6 The story is used as an exemplum to remind the reader that the mortal condition cannot be transgressed. The fate of humans is to welcome death as something good. Mimnermus of Colophon (end of the 7 th century BCE) expresses the wish to die at the age of sixty, ‘unattended by sickness and grievous cares’, because Tithonus’ everlasting old age is something evil, κακὸν, ‘more terrible than even woeful death’. 7 Over time, Tithonus weakens and dwindles with no end in sight. He wears down, minuit, as Horace writes in an Ode. 8 In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Eos cares for Tithonus in such a way that it reflects the ambiguity of his status: she feeds him with bread, like a human, and ambrosia, like a god; she lies him 1 This study was presented at the conference on La notion de caricature dans l’Antiquité, organised in Rennes in October 2015 by Anne Gangloff and Christophe Vendries, and was further elaborated at the seminar of François de Polignac, EPHE in January 2016, and at the College de France conference on Vieillir et être vieux dans le Proche-Orient ancien in May 2017. I am grateful to all participants for our exchanges. I thank also Alexander Mitchell for the translation <www.expressum.eu>. 2 Iliad, 20.230-235: ‘and godlike Ganymedes, who was born the fairest of mortal men’ (transl. A.T. Murray, Loeb); Hymn to Aphrodite, 214: ‘immortal and unaging’, ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως (transl. M.L. West, Loeb); Auger 2008. On Ganymedes and the promise of blessed afterlife in Greek iconography, see Dasen 2018a. 3 See Horace, Odes, 1.28.8: Tithonusque remotus in auras; Apollodorus, Bibl. 3.12, 4. Edge of the Ocean: e.g. Iliad, 11.1; Odyssey, 14.1; Aristophanes, Acharnians, 688. 4 Virgil, Aeneid, 4.585: ‘And now early Dawn, leaving the saffron bed of Tithonus, was spirnkiling her fresh rays upon the earth’ (transl. H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb). Et iam prima nouo spargebat lumine terras/ Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile; ibid., 9.459-460; Virgil, Georgics, 1.445-447; Ovid, Fastes, 6.473; Ovid, Heroids, 4.96. See also Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica, 6.1. The motif is also found in Iliad, 11.1 and Odyssey, 5.1. 5 HhomAph., 218-238. 6 Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters, 1.6c: ‘Melanthius appears to have planned more effectively than Tithonus. For Tithonus desired immortality but now hangs in his bedroom, deprived of all pleasures by old age, ἐν θαλάµῳ κρέµαται’ (transl. S. Douglas Olson, Loeb). See also Eusth. ad Il. 756, 24-35. 7 Mimnermus of Colophon, Elegiac Poetry, frgt 4 and 6 (transl. D. E. Gerber, Loeb). 8 Horace, Odes, 2.16.30: ‘protracted old age wasted Tithonus away’ (transl. N. Rudd, Loeb).