Ganymedes: The Adolescent Boy Zeus Abducted and Raped

The ancient Greeks told many stories about their god Zeus raping mortal adolescent girls, often shape-shifting into various animal and human forms in order to do so. Just to name a few examples, he is said to have abducted the Phoenician princess Europe in the form of a bull and raped her, raped the Aitolian princess Leda in the form of a swan, raped the Boiotian princess Antiope in the form of a satyr, raped the Argive princess Danaë in the form of a shower of gold coins, and tricked his own great-granddaughter Alkmene into having sex with him by impersonating her husband Amphitryon (which is, of course, another form of rape).

There’s a popular modern joke that 90% of the problems in Greek mythology are caused by Zeus not being able to “keep it in his pants,” but, even in ancient times, Zeus’s rapacious habits were already the subject of mockery. The Athenian playwright Aristophanes (lived c. 446 – c. 386 BCE) wrote a comedy titled The Clouds, which was first performed at the City Dionysia in Athens in 423 BCE and later revised at some point between 420 and 417 BCE. In the play, an amoral character gives advice on what a man should do if he is caught in the act of adultery, saying, in lines 1080–1081, that he should “. . . ἐς τὸν Δί᾽ ἐπανενεγκεῖν, κἀκεῖνος ὡς ἥττων ἔρωτός ἐστι καὶ γυναικῶν:” (“. . .point at Zeus, and how he is also overcome with lust for women!”)

Many people, however, are not aware that Zeus’s habit of raping adolescents was not exclusively heterosexually oriented. In fact, in ancient times, one of the most famous stories about Zeus abducting and raping someone was about how he abducted a handsome adolescent boy named Ganymedes in the form of an eagle and forced him to become his catamite.

Yes, Zeus rapes adolescents

I’m going to talk about the myth of Zeus and Ganymedes, but, first, I think it is necessary to defend what I have already said.

At this point, some people are probably already about to object to my claim that Zeus raped adolescent girls. They’re all probably about to insist that he did nothing of the sort and that he merely had consensual extramarital affairs with adult women. The reason some people think this is because they are only familiar with the stories of Greek mythology through heavily bowdlerized modern retellings that portray Zeus’s serial rapes as consensual “love affairs.” Make no mistake, though; in the original ancient Greek sources, almost every single one of those famous “love affairs” is, in fact, a rape.

The ancient Greek sources don’t usually pay attention to the issue of consent, because these sources were nearly all written by men who didn’t think consent was important, but, if you read the sources with consent in mind, it’s usually very clear that the women with whom Zeus has his “affairs” do not consent to those “affairs.” For instance, here is the description of the rape of Europe from a scholion (i.e., an ancient scholarly commentary) on the Iliad 12.292, as translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (with some minor spelling edits of my own):

“Zeus saw Europe, the daughter of Phoinix, gathering flowers in a meadow with some nymphs and fell in love with her. So he came down and changed himself into a bull and breathed from his mouth a crocus. In this way he deceived Europe, carried her off, and crossed the sea to Krete where he had intercourse with her. Then, in this condition, he made her live with Asterion, the king of the Kretans. There, she conceived and bore three sons: Minos, Sarpedon, and Rhadamanthys. The tale is in Hesiodos and Bakchylides.”

According to this scholion, Zeus tricked Europe into approaching him by turning himself into a bull and making a crocus flower come out of his mouth. Then he abducted her, carried her off across the sea to the island of Krete, located hundreds of miles away from her home in Phoenicia, and, once he had her trapped on the island away from her family, he had intercourse with her.

Nowhere in this story is there room for Europe to have given consent, nor is there room for it in any other ancient retellings of this story. Even if we assume that Europe wanted to have sex with Zeus, a person who has been abducted and taken to a place they cannot easily leave (like, in this case, an island) cannot meaningfully consent to sex with their abductor, because their situation inherently creates coercive pressure for them to do what their abductor wants.

ABOVE: The Rape of Europe, painted in 1562 by the Venetian Renaissance painter Titian

Additionally, many of the women Zeus is said to have raped—including Europe, Leda, Antiope, and Danaë—are said to have been unmarried virgins at the time when Zeus raped them. This strongly implies that the ancient Greeks imagined them as no older than their late teenaged years.

Ancient Greek girls typically began menstruating when they were between thirteen and seventeen years old. Girls in western countries today often begin menstruating much younger, but this is a change that has taken place over the past century, probably as a result of better nutrition; for most of human history, the average age of menarche was fourteen, rather than twelve as it is now.

Soon after a girl began menstruating, her father would begin looking to marry her off to a man whom he deemed an appropriate husband for her. The girl herself generally had little-to-no say over which man her father would force her to marry and even the girl’s mother’s say was limited. In many cases, it probably took a year or two for the father to find a husband whom he deemed appropriate, but there was intense social pressure to marry the girl off sooner rather than later. Most Greek parents forced their daughters to marry when they were in their mid-to-late teenaged years.

Because men normally married later in life, the husband was usually at least twice the bride’s age at the time of the wedding. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (lived 384 – 322 BCE) states in his Politics 1335a that the ideal age for a woman to marry is when she is eighteen years old and the ideal age for a man to marry is when he is thirty-seven years old.

In practice, the average Greek girl was probably forced to marry when she was around fifteen or sixteen years old. The ancient Greeks therefore most likely imagined most of the “women” Zeus is said to have raped as having been this age or even slightly younger. Thus, even if we completely ignore the myth of Zeus and Ganymedes, we already know that Zeus likes abducting and raping adolescent girls; the story of Ganymedes only illustrates that he also likes abducting and raping adolescent boys.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Side A of a Boiotian red-figure bell-krater dating to between c. 450 and c. 425 BCE, depicting Zeus raping the Argive princess Danaë in the form of a shower of gold coins, now on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris

How the ancient Greeks (normatively) thought about sexuality

With that little defense out of the way, I feel that I need to cover some basic background information on normative ancient Greek sexuality, because this information is going to be important when I discuss the myth of Zeus and Ganymedes.

As I discuss in several previous articles, including this one from June 2019 about Greek homosexuality in general, this one from August 2021 about whether Sappho was really a lesbian, and this article from September 2021 about ancient Greek and Roman kink, the ancient Greeks did not generally think about sexuality in the same ways that most Americans think about it in the twenty-first century. They did not generally think of sexuality in terms of which gender a person was attracted to, but rather in terms of the role a person took during sex.

Normative Greek society generally regarded free adult men who were fully reproductively intact and fully gender-conforming as the only humans who were really “complete”; they saw women, children, enslaved people, eunuchs, and even gender-non-conforming free adult men as innately inferior, incomplete, and defined by their essential lack of masculinity.

Similarly, normative Greek sexuality regarded sex as an activity in which a free adult man was supposed to prove his masculinity by dominating an inferior person, such as a woman, an adolescent boy, or an enslaved person of any gender, by sexually penetrating one or more of their orifices.

For a free adult man to penetrate someone was seen as superior, masculine, and glorious, while for a free adult man to be penetrated was seen as inferior, feminine, shameful, and degrading. Consequently, it was socially acceptable for a Greek man to have sexual relations with people of all genders—as long as he was always the one who did the penetrating and never the one who was penetrated.

Free adult men who allowed themselves to be sexually penetrated were seen as feminine and therefore utterly weak, disgraceful, and disgusting. Greek society generally mocked such a man, calling him insulting names such as κίναιδος (kínaidos), βάταλος (bátalos), εὐρύπρωκτος (eurýprōktos), and μαλακός (malakós).

ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix, dating to around 470 BCE or thereabouts, depicting a man sexually penetrating a woman in the missionary position

Ancient Greek pederasty

The ancient Greeks had a system known as pederasty, which generally involved sexual relations between a free adult man and a free adolescent boy of the same social class. It is unclear how widespread pederasty was in Greek society; it may have only been practiced among Greek aristocrats or it may have been practiced more widely throughout Greek society at large. Regardless of how widespread the system was, though, it is absolutely essential to understanding the myth of Zeus and Ganymedes, which is fundamentally a pederastic myth.

Greek boys typically began their military training when they were about eighteen years old and completed it when they were about twenty years old, after which point they were considered adults, but they typically did not marry wives until they were at least in their late twenties or early thirties. When a young man was old enough that he was considered an adult, but young enough that he was still unmarried, it was socially acceptable for him to become an ἐραστής (erastḗs), which means “lover.”

The erastes would court an adolescent boy who belonged to the same social class as him. This boy would generally be somewhere in the range between the ages of thirteen and twenty—old enough that he was an adolescent, but young enough that he was not considered a full adult. Such an adolescent boy was known as an ἐρώμενος (erṓmenos), which means “beloved.”

The would-be erastes was expected to court the eromenos aggressively by giving him expensive gifts or even sleeping outside his window. Greek vase paintings often show would-be erastai presenting eromenoi with live animals, like rabbits and roosters. The eromenos was expected to resist the would-be erastes’s advances, at least at first, and he might have multiple adult male suitors at a given time. It was seen as shameful for an eromenos to give in too quickly. Eventually, however, he was generally expected to give in and accept an adult man as his erastes.

In Athens during the Classical Period (lasted c. 510 – c. 323 BCE), there was a law which forbade any man from sexually penetrating an adolescent boy who was a citizen because it was believed that taking the feminine role during sex as an adolescent might corrupt a citizen boy and cause him to grow into a weak and effeminate citizen man.

In practice, this law was probably rarely enforced and it was probably fairly common for erastai to anally and/or orally penetrate their eromenoi. One way people tried to get around the law without technically breaking it, though, was by having intercrural sex, where the erastes would rub his erect penis between the eromenos’s thighs in order to sexually gratify himself.

It is in this historical context that the Greeks developed and told the myth of Zeus and Ganymedes. Ancient Greek authors and vase paintings often present Zeus as an archetypal erastes and Ganymedes as an archetypal eromenos.

ABOVE: Tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix by the Briseïs Painter dated to c. 480 BCE, showing an erastes (the young adult male partner) kissing an eromenos (the adolescent boy partner)

The myth of Zeus and Ganymedes

The myth itself holds that Ganymedes was an adolescent Trojan prince who was extraordinarily beautiful. Zeus is said to have abducted him, raped him, and eventually made him his personal cupbearer. In most Classical Greek artistic depictions, Zeus is shown abducting Ganymedes in human form. In the version of the myth that is best known today, however, he is said to have swooped down in the form of an eagle, snatched up Ganymedes in his talons, and carried him off.

The earliest mention of Zeus’s abduction of Ganymedes occurs in the Iliad, an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter that was most likely originally composed in the early seventh century BCE and is considered one of the earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature. The mention of Zeus’s abduction of Ganymedes occurs in the Iliad 20.232–235:

“. . . Γανυμήδης,
ὃς δὴ κάλλιστος γένετο θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων:
τὸν καὶ ἀνηρείψαντο θεοὶ Διὶ οἰνοχοεύειν
κάλλεος εἵνεκα οἷο ἵν᾽ ἀθανάτοισι μετείη.”

This means, in my own English translation:

“. . . Ganymedes,
who indeed was born the most beautiful of mortal humans;
and the deities snatched him up to be a wine-bearer for Zeus
on account of his beauty, so that he might be among the immortal ones.”

The Iliad is very coy in general when it comes to talking about same-sex relations. Notably, as I discuss in this article I published in October 2020, the Iliad never explicitly says that the heroes Achilleus and Patroklos are lovers, but it seems to hint at it repeatedly.

By contrast, multiple later ancient Greek authors explicitly say that Achilleus and Patroklos were lovers—including the Athenian tragic playwright Aischylos (lived c. 525 – c. 455 BCE) in his tragedy Myrmidons (Fragments 135 and 136), the Athenian philosopher Plato (lived c. 429 – c. 347 BCE) in his philosophical dialogue the Symposion, the Athenian orator Aischines (lived 389 – 314 BCE) in his speech Against Timarchos, and the speaker Theomnestos in the dialogue Erotes, which is attributed to the Syrian satirist Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after c. 180 CE).

It is therefore not surprising that the Iliad does not explicitly say that Zeus sexually desired Ganymedes. Many later Greek authors, however, very explicitly say that Zeus sexually desired him. The Greek poet Pindaros of Thebes (lived c. 518 – c. 438 BCE) composed his “First Olympian Ode” in around the year 476 BCE. He alludes to the abduction of Ganymedes in lines 40–45 as follows:

“. . . τότ᾽ Ἀγλαοτρίαιναν ἁρπάσαι
δαμέντα φρένας ἱμέρῳ χρυσέαισί τ᾽ ἀν᾽ ἵπποις
ὕπατον εὐρυτίμου ποτὶ δῶμα Διὸς μεταβᾶσαι,
ἔνθα δευτέρῳ χρόνῳ
ἦλθε καὶ Γανυμήδης
Ζηνὶ τωὔτ᾽ ἐπὶ χρέος.”

This means, in my own translation:

“. . . when the god of the shining trident [i.e., Poseidon] seized you [i.e., Pelops],
his mind overcome with uncontrollable lust, with his golden horses,
mounted, brought you to the high house of widely-honored Zeus,
where, at a later time,
came also Ganymedes,
for Zeus for the same need.”

Here Pindaros says explicitly what the Iliad doesn’t: that Poseidon abducted Pelops out of ἵμερος, which means “uncontrollable lust,” and Zeus abducted Ganymedes for the same reason.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons depicting Side A of an Attic red-figure bell-krater by the Berlin Painter, dating to between c. 500 and c. 490 BCE, depicting the nude Ganymedes playing with a hoop and holding a rooster, with Zeus on Side B in hot pursuit, now held in the Louvre Museum

Some Greek poets also use the myth of Zeus’s abduction and rape of Ganymedes to justify their own pederastic inclinations. Theognis of Megara was an ancient Greek lyric poet who lived in around the sixth century BCE and is known for having composed many poems about pederasty. In his Elegiacs 1.1345–1350, he declares:

“Παιδοφιλεῖν δέ τι τερπνόν, ἐπεί ποτε καὶ Γανυμήδους
ἠράσατο Κρονίδης ἀθανάτων βασιλεύς,
ἁρπάξας δ᾽ ἐς Ὄλυμπον ἀνήγαγε, καί μιν ἔθηκε
δαίμονα παιδείης ἄνθος ἔχοντ᾽ ἐρατόν.
οὕτω μὴ θαύμαζε, Σιμωνίδη, οὕνεκα κἀγὼ
ἐξεφάνην καλοῦ παιδὸς ἔρωτι δαμείς.”

This means, in my own translation:

“And to love boys is a delightful thing, ever since even Ganymedes
was lusted after by the Son of Kronos, the king of the immortal ones,
who, seizing him, ascended to Olympos and set him up
as a daimon [i.e., a divine being], having the attractive flower of youth.
Therefore do not be amazed, Simonides, that, on account of this,
it has come to light that even I am overcome with lust for a beautiful boy.”

The Greek word that I have translated here as “lusted after” is ἠράσατο, which is often translated as “loved.” This, however, is a bit of a mistranslation. The word is very sexually charged and, especially when it is used in lyric poetry, is associated with intense, burning, physical desire of the kind that can drive a person insane and that can seem uncontrollable. This is not a word poets use when they want to say that Zeus respects someone for their personality; it’s a word they use when they want to say that Zeus wants to have hard sex with them.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a scene from an Attic red-figure kalyx-krater by the Eucharides Painter, dating to between c. 490 and c. 480 BCE, depicting Ganymedes pouring wine for Zeus, on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Just in case there was any doubt whatsoever about what Zeus did with Ganymedes, the Athenian tragic playwright Sophokles (lived c. 497 – 405 BCE) explicitly references Zeus engaging in intercrural sex with Ganymedes in Fragment 345 of his now-lost tragedy The Kolchian Women. The fragment has been preserved through quotation by the much later Greek antiquarian Athenaios of Naukratis, who flourished in around the late second or early third century CE, in his work Wise Men at Dinner 3.602e. The fragment describes Ganymedes as:

“. . . μηροῖς ὑπαίθων τὴν Διὸς τυραννίδα . . .”

This means, in my own English translation:

“. . . with his thighs, warming the tyranny of Zeus . . .”

The ancient Athenian tragic playwright Euripides (lived c. 480 – c. 406 BCE) also heavily implies that Zeus had sex with Ganymedes. He has the chorus in his tragedy Iphigeneia at Aulis, which was first performed at the City Dionysia in Athens in 405 BCE, say the following words about Ganymedes, in lines 1048–1052:

“ὁ δὲ Δαρδανίδας, Διὸς
λέκτρων τρύφημα φίλον,
χρυσέοισιν ἄφυσσε λοιβὰν
ἐν κρατήρων γυάλοις,
ὁ Φρύγιος Γανυμήδης.”

This means, in my own translation:

“And the son of Dardanos, the
beloved delight of Zeus’s bed,
dipped the bowl
into the golden hollows of kraters,
the Phrygian Ganymedes.”

As you can see, Pindaros and Theognis both describe Zeus as having been overcome with lust for Ganymedes, Sophokles describes Ganymedes as “with his thighs, warming the tyranny of Zeus,” and Euripides describes Ganymedes as “the beloved delight of Zeus’s bed.” It is abundantly and undeniably clear that, according to the version of the myth that was mainstream among Greek authors in the fifth century BCE, Zeus used Ganymedes for his own sexual gratification.

It is certainly no accident that Ganymedes’s name entered the Latin language as Catamitus, which became a common noun in Latin for an adolescent boy whom an older adult man uses for his own sexual gratification. This is the source of the English word catamite.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a Greek terra-cotta statue of Zeus abducting Ganymedes dating to between c. 480 and c. 470 BCE, discovered at Olympia, now on display in the Archaeological Museum of Olympia

Ancient critics and reinterpreters of the myth

Not all ancient Greek authors approved of the myth of Zeus’s abduction of Ganymedes. Indeed, probably the most famous ancient critic of the myth is none other than the Athenian philosopher Plato, who seems to have had a rather negative view of sexual activity in general, but an especially negative view of sexual activity between people of the same gender.

It is true that Plato’s writings glorify sexual attraction to beautiful bodies, both male and female, but they portray this attraction as merely the first step toward the love of Beauty as a metaphysical concept. They generally depict sexual activity as a distraction from the following of this path and therefore not something that a person should pursue, except for the sole purpose of procreation. (Plato himself, however, is reported to have never married nor fathered any children, so he doesn’t seem to have been much into the procreation thing either.)

Plato’s Symposion contains much discussion of pederasty. In the dialogue, the speaker Aristophanes tells a story about the origin of sexual attraction that has served as inspiration for works of modern queer media, including Hedwig and the Angry Inch’s song “The Origin of Love” and the music video for Lil Nas X’s song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” the latter of which contains a great deal of hidden Greek and Roman symbolism, which I analyze in depth in this post I published back in April 2021. Many people, however, forget that the Symposion ultimately portrays Socrates as heroic for resisting the young man Alkibiades’s repeated attempts to seduce him.

Plato’s views seem to have become increasingly opposed to pederasty and homosexuality in general over the course of his life. In his Republic 3.403b-c, he portrays Socrates as arguing that, in the ideal state, an erastes should be permitted to kiss and touch an eromenos, but only with the eromenos’s consent and only innocently, as a father might kiss or touch his son, and should not under any circumstances be allowed to have sexual relations with the eromenos. He declares, as translated by Paul Shorey:

“Thus, then, as it seems, you will lay down the law in the city that we are founding, that the lover may kiss and pass the time with and touch the beloved as a father would a son, for honorable ends, if he persuade him. But otherwise he must so associate with the objects of his care that there should never be any suspicion of anything further, on penalty of being stigmatized for want of taste and true musical culture.”

Probably near the end of his life, Plato write a dialogue titled Laws, which is the only dialogue he undisputedly wrote that does not include the character of Socrates. In Laws 1.636b-d, Plato portrays the unnamed Athenian speaker in the dialogue—who probably is as close a mouthpiece for Plato himself as any character in his dialogues—as denouncing all forms of same-sex intercourse as “contrary to nature.” The Athenian speaker immediately goes on to specifically condemn the story of Ganymedes, saying that the Kretans obviously made up the story in order to justify their perverted love of pederasty. He declares, as translated by R. G. Bury:

“And whether one makes the observation in earnest or in jest, one certainly should not fail to observe that when male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced is held to be due to nature, but contrary to nature when male mates with male or female with female, and that those first guilty of such enormities were impelled by their slavery to pleasure.”

“And we all accuse the Kretans of concocting the story about Ganymedes. Because it was the belief that they derived their laws from Zeus, they added on this story about Zeus in order that they might be following his example in enjoying this pleasure as well. Now with the story itself we have no more concern; but when men are investigating the subject of laws their investigation deals almost entirely with pleasures and pains, whether in States or in individuals.”

Another ancient Greek author who seems to have disapproved of pederasty was the Athenian historian Xenophon (lived c. 430 – c. 354 BCE), who, like Plato, was a student of the philosopher Socrates. Xenophon portrays Socrates as arguing in his Symposion 8.29–30—contrary to all writers known before this time—that there was absolutely nothing sexual or lustful about Zeus’s attraction to Ganymedes and that Zeus simply admired him for his personality. In the dialogue, Socrates delivers the following words, as translated by Hugh Tredennick (with some edits of my own):

“All the mortal women whom Zeus loved for their physical beauty he left mortal after he had sex with them, but all those men who won his regard by their nobility of mind he made immortal. Examples of these are Herakles and the Dioskouroi; and we are told of others as well. I myself maintain that Ganymedes too was carried off by Zeus to Olympos on account not of his body but of his mind. His very name supplies the evidence.”

“Homer, as you know, has the phrase ‘γάνυται δέ τ’ ἀκούων’ [‘and he is glad to hear it’], which means ‘and he is pleased to hear it.’ And somewhere else there is the phrase ‘πυκινὰ φρεσὶ μήδεα εἰδώς’ [‘in his heart knowing shrewd counsels’]. This in turn means ‘in his heart knowing wise advice.’ Putting these two together, we find that Ganymedes is held in honour among the gods by a name which means not ‘pleasing in body’ but ‘pleasing in mind.’”

This is, to be very clear, certainly not a mainstream interpretation of the myth, but rather a highly idiosyncratic one that is only found in this one dialogue by Xenophon.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the tondo from an Attic red-figure kylix by the Penthesileia Painter depicting Zeus and Ganymedes, dating to between c. 475 and c. 465 BCE, now held in the collection of the Ferrara Archaeological Museum

Why this myth is problematic

Many modern works about Greek mythology refer to Ganymedes as Zeus’s “lover.” Some works even celebrate the myth of Zeus and Ganymedes as an example of a “gay relationship” from Greek mythology.

These descriptions, however, clearly do not accurately describe the relationship between Zeus and Ganymedes in the version of the myth that was best known among Greek writers in antiquity. In no surviving ancient version of the myth of Ganymedes is he ever described as giving any form of consent to sexual relations with Zeus. Instead, Zeus is consistently described as “snatching” him up and carrying him off to Mount Olympos.

In the same way that I said at the beginning of this article that Europe could not have consented to sex with Zeus after he abducted her, Ganymedes could not have consented to sex with him after he abducted him either. A person who has been abducted and taken to a place they cannot easily leave (like, in this case, Mount Olympos) is in a situation where there is coercive pressure for them to do what their abductor wants. Ganymedes is therefore not a “lover” in these stories, but rather a victim of violent abduction and rape.

The ancient sources are ambiguous and inconsistent about Ganymedes’s age. Literary sources generally describe Ganymedes as a παῖς (paîs), which means “boy.” Like the English word “boy,” this is a generally vague word, which could refer to anyone from an infant to a twenty-year-old. It generally, however, implies someone who is very young.

Ancient artistic depictions of Ganymedes portray his age with great inconsistency and variation. Some ancient artistic depictions portray him looking like a quite physically mature young man who seems to be in his late teenaged years or even his early twenties.

In most depictions, however, he is clearly what we would consider underage. Some depictions—such as the kalyx-krater by the Eucharides Painter and the terra-cotta statue of Zeus abducting Ganymedes from Olympia, both of which I showed earlier in this article—even portray Ganymedes looking like a small, prepubescent child, perhaps somewhere in the realm of eight to eleven years old.

This is clearly not a myth that we should celebrate today, but it is one that I think is important to remember and talk about.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a Roman relief carving dating to the late first century CE depicting Zeus abducting Ganymedes in the form of an eagle