View source for Tithonus

==Mythology==
[[File:Tithonos Eos Louvre G438 detail.jpg|thumb|Eos pursues the reluctant Tithonus, who holds a [[lyre]], on an [[Attica|Attic]] ''[[oinochoe]]'' of the [[Achilles Painter]], {{Circa|470–460 BC}} ([[Musée du Louvre|Louvre]]).]]
Eos is said to have taken Tithonus, from the royal house of Troy, to be her lover.{{efn-lr|In the [[Homeric Hymn|Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite]], Tithonus is cited as an example to [[Anchises]], another Trojan prince, later abducted by [[Aphrodite]].}}<ref name="Aphrodite 218">''Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite'', 218 ''ff''.</ref> The myth of Eos and Tithonus' love was known to [[Homer]], who wrote that in the morning Eos rose from the bed she shared with Tithonus in order to give her light to mankind.<ref>[[Homer]], ''[[Odyssey]]'' [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0218%3Abook%3D5%3Acard%3D1 5.1]: "And now, as Dawn rose from her couch beside Tithonos - harbinger of light alike to mortals and immortals." Trans. [[Samuel Butler (novelist)|Samuel Butler]].</ref>

The [[mytheme]] of the goddess' mortal lover is an archaic one; when a role for Zeus was inserted, a bitter twist appeared: according to the [[Homeric Hymn]] to Aphrodite, when Eos asked Zeus to make Tithonus [[immortality|immortal]], she forgot to ask that he be granted [[eternal youth]].{{efn-lr|Compare the mytheme in its original, blissful form, in the pairing of [[Selene]] and [[Endymion (mythology)|Endymion]], a myth that also associated with Asia Minor.  Peter Walcot considers Tithonus a "corrective" example to the myth of Ganymede: "the example of Ganymedes promises too much, and might beguile Anchises into expecting too much, even an ageless immortality".  ("The Homeric 'Hymn' to Aphrodite: A Literary Appraisal" in ''Greece & Rome'' 2nd Series, vol. 38, part 2 (October 1991), pp. 137–155, at 149.)}}{{efn-lr|In one version, Zeus decided he wanted the beautiful youth Ganymede for himself; to repay Eos, he promised to fulfill one wish.}}<ref>''Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite'', 218–238.</ref> Tithonus indeed lived forever,
<blockquote>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.<ref name="Aphrodite 218" /></blockquote>

In later tellings, he eventually became a [[cicada]] (''tettix''),<ref name=":rh">Hard, Robin, ''The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology"'', Psychology Press, 2004, {{ISBN|9780415186360}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=r1Y3xZWVlnIC&pg=PA47 p. 47].</ref><ref>Keightley, p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=lWAEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA63 63]; [[Suda]], s.v [https://topostext.org/work/240#si.122 "Old Man Tithonus"].</ref>  eternally living, but begging for death to overcome him.{{efn-lr|In some variants, Eos deliberately turns Tithonus into a cricket or a cicada.}} In the [[Olympian gods|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. In the account of [[Hieronymus of Rhodes]] from the third century BC, the blame is shifted from Eos onto Tithonus, who asked for immortality but not agelessness from his lover, who was then unable to help him otherwise and turned him into a cicada.<ref>Tsagalis and Markantonatos, p. [https://books.google.com/books?id=sFA_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT297 297]</ref> [[Propertius]] wrote that Eos did not forsake Tithonus, old and aged as he was, and would still embrace him and hold him in her arms rather than leaving him deserted in his cold chamber, while cursing the gods for his cruel fate.<ref>[[Propertius]], ''Elegies'' [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0494%3Abook%3D2%3Apoem%3D18b 2.18b]</ref>

Eos bore Tithonus two sons, [[Memnon (mythology)|Memnon]] and [[Emathion]]. According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, Memnon was raised by the [[Hesperides]] on the coast of Oceanus.<ref>Quintus Smyrnaeus, ''Fall of Troy'', ii. 495.</ref> According to the historian [[Diodorus Siculus]], Tithonus, who had travelled east from Troy into [[Assyria]] and founded [[Susa]], was bribed with a golden grapevine to send his son Memnon to fight at Troy against the Greeks.<ref>Diodorus Siculus book 4.75, book 2.22.</ref>

The [[Tithonus poem]] is one of the few nearly complete works of the Greek lyric poet [[Sappho]], having been pieced together from fragments discovered over a period of more than a hundred years.{{efn-lr|The first modern printing of the complete poem was published in two sections by Michael Gronewald and Robert W. Daniel in ''Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik'' vol. 147, pp. 1–8, and vol. 149, pp. 1–4 (2004); an English translation by [[Martin Litchfield West|Martin West]] is printed in the ''Times Literary Supplement'', 21 or 24 June 2005.  The right half of this poem was previously found in fragment 58 L-P.  The fully restored version can be found in M. L. West, "The New Sappho", in ''Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik'', vol. 151, pp. 1–9 (2005).}}