The Abduction of Ganymede
Ganymede was a Trojan Prince and the most beautiful youth in the world. He was so beautiful that he caught the eye of Zeus, king of gods. Filled with lust, Zeus took the form of an eagle and abducted him from Mount Ida. Unlike most of Zeus’s other conquests, Ganymede actually received divine immortal status as Zeus made him his cup bearer in Mount Olympus.
In the Aeneid, Zeus’s ravishing of Ganymede is cited as one of the reasons that the goddess Hera, Zeus’s wife, hates the Trojans and sides against them in the Trojan War.
Image: The Abduction of Ganymede by Peter Paul Rubens (1612)
Notes:
This is part of the Greek Mythology Tumblr Challenge (Day 6 – Abduction Myth). You can join at any time, heres how.
Check out mythologyrules’s recent post on Ganymede for Platonic theories on the Trojan Prince.