Tithonus

In Greek mythology, Tithonus or Tithonos was the lover of Eos, Titan [In classical Greek, the female titans are "Titanides", but "titaness" is rarely used in modern English.] 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". ["Homeric Hymn to Apollo" 165-173; "Homeric Hymns" 5 and 9.]

Eos kidnapped Ganymede and Tithonus, both from the royal house of Troy, to be her lovers. [Anchises is another mortal from the Trojan house abducted by a goddess (Aphrodite) for erotic purposes. Tithonus is mentioned by Aphrodite as an example to encourage Anchises in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 218ff.] The mytheme of the goddess's immortal lover is an archaic one; when a role for Zeus was inserted, a bitter new twist appeared: [Homeric Hymn; compare the mytheme in its original, blissful form in the pairing of Selene and Endymion, a myth that was also located in Asia Minor. Peter Walcot, ("The Homeric 'Hymn' to Aphrodite': A Literary Appraisal" "Greece & Rome" 2nd Series, 38.2 October 1991, pp. 137-155) reads the Tithonus example as a "corrective" to the myth of Ganymede (pp. 149-50): "the example of Ganymedes... promises too much, and might beguile Anchises into expecting too much, even an ageless immortality" (p. 149).] According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, when Eos asked Zeus for Tithonus to be immortal, [In a variant, Zeus decided he wanted the beautiful youth Ganymede for himself; to repay Eos he promised to fulfill one wish.] she forgot to ask for eternal youth (218-38). Tithonus indeed lived forever:"but when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not 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 had 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. [Some stories say that Eos turned Tithonus into a grasshopper or cicada.] 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. [Servius' commentary on [Virgil's "Aeneid", i.493; ps-Apollodorus, "Bibliotheke" iii.12.4 and "Epitome" v.3.] 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. [As on one in the Vatican Museums, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, acc. no. 12241 (illustrated by Marilyn Y. Goldberg, "The 'Eos and Kephalos' from Caere: Its Subject and Date" "American Journal of Archaeology" 91.4 [October 1987:605-614] p. 608 fig. 2.).]

Poems

*"Tithonus" by Alfred Tennyson was originally written as "Tithon" in 1833 and completed in 1859. [cite web|url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/tithonus.html|title=Victorian Web: Alfred Tennyson's "Tithonus"|accessdate=2006-09-02]

The poem is a dramatic monologue in blank verse from the point-of-view of Tithonus. Unlike the original myth, it is Tithonus who asks for immortality, and it is 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

*In the newly restored poem of Sappho, the myth of Tithonus is mentioned. The right half of this poem was previously found in fr. 58 L-P. The fully restored version of the poem can be found in M.L. West, “The New Sappho,” ZPE 151 (2005), 1-9.

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 will 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 is both now immortal and still aging.

Notes

External links

* [http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25337-1886659,00.html Sappho's poem]
* [http://charon.sfsu.edu/TENNYSON/TITHONUS.HTML Tennyson's poem]
*cite web | url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/tithonus.html|title=Victorian Web: Alfred Tennyson's "Tithonus"|accessdate=2006-09-02