Galatea (; ) is the post-antiquity name popularly applied to the statue carved of ivory alabaster by Pygmalion of

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

, which then came to life in

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

. Galatea is also the name of a sea-nymph, one of the fifty

Nereids In Greek mythology, the Nereids or Nereides ( ; ; , also Νημερτές) are sea nymphs (female spirits of sea waters), the 50 daughters of the 'Old Man of the Sea' Nereus and the Oceanids, Oceanid Doris (Oceanid), Doris, sisters to their bro ...

(daughters of Nereus) mentioned by Hesiod and

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

. In

Theocritus Theocritus (; , ''Theokritos''; ; born 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily, Magna Graecia, and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry. Life Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings ...

''Idylls VI'' and ''XI'' she is the object of desire of the one-eyed giant Polyphemus and is linked with Polyphemus again in the myth of Acis and Galatea in

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

's ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' (, , ) is a Latin Narrative poetry, narrative poem from 8 Common Era, CE by the Ancient Rome, Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''Masterpiece, magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its Cre ...

''. She is also mentioned in

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...

's ''

Eclogues The ''Eclogues'' (; , ), also called the ''Bucolics'', is the first of the three major works of the Latin poet Virgil. Background Taking as his generic model the Greek bucolic poetry of Theocritus, Virgil created a Roman version partly by o ...

'' and ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan War#Sack of Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Ancient Rome ...

''.

Etymology

Though the name "Galatea" has become so firmly associated with Pygmalion's statue as to seem antique, its use in connection with Pygmalion originated with a post-classical writer. No extant ancient text mentions the statue's name, Reinhold notes that the first edition of Lemprière's '' Bibliotheca Classica'' (1788), does not have an entry for "Galatea", which was inserted in later editions. although Pausanias mentions a statue of Calm, Galene (). As late as 1763, a sculpture of the subject shown by Falconet at the Paris Salon (''see illustration'') carried the title ("Pygmalion at the feet of his statue that comes to life"). That sculpture, currently at the

Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum is a public art museum located in the Mount Vernon, Baltimore, Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. Founded and opened in 1934, it holds collections from the mid-19th century that were amassed substantially ...

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

, now bears the expected modern title ''Pygmalion and Galatea''. According to Meyer Reinhold, the name "Galatea" was first given wide circulation in

Jean-Jacques Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Republic of Geneva, Genevan philosopher (''philosophes, philosophe''), writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment through ...

's ''scène lyrique'' of 1762, ''Pygmalion''. The name had become a commonplace of

pastoral The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target au ...

fictions, because of the well-known myth of Acis and Galatea; one of Honoré d'Urfé's characters in '' L'Astrée'' was a Galatea, though not this sculptural creation.

Myth

The story of Pygmalion appeared earliest in a

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

work, Philostephanus' history of Cyprus, "De Cypro". It is retold in Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'', where the king Pygmalion is made into a sculptor who fell in love with a marble statue he had crafted with his own hands. In answer to his prayers, the goddess

Aphrodite Aphrodite (, ) is an Greek mythology, ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, procreation, and as her syncretism, syncretised Roman counterpart , desire, Sexual intercourse, sex, fertility, prosperity, and ...

brought it to life and united the couple in marriage. This novella remained the classical telling until the end of the seventeenth century. The trope of the animated statue gained a vogue during the eighteenth century. The '' daemon'' of Pygmalion's goddess, animating her

cult image In the practice of religion, a cult image is a Cultural artifact, human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, Spirit (supernatural entity), spirit or Daimon, daemon that it embodies or represents. In several traditions, incl ...

, bore him a son Paphus—the

eponym An eponym is a noun after which or for which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. Adjectives derived from the word ''eponym'' include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Eponyms are commonly used for time periods, places, innovati ...

of the city of Paphos—and Metharme. Of "this ecstatic relationship", Meyer Reinhold has remarked, "there may be lurking a survival of the ancient cult of the Great Goddess and her consort". Cinyras, perhaps the son of Paphus, or perhaps the successful suitor of Metharme, founded the city of Paphos on Cyprus, under the patronage of Aphrodite, and built the great temple to the goddess there. ''Bibliotheke'', the Hellenistic compendium of myth long attributed to Apollodorus, mentions a daughter of Pygmalion named Metharme. She was the wife of Cinyras, and the mother of

Adonis In Greek mythology, Adonis (; ) was the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. He was considered to be the ideal of male beauty in classical antiquity. The myth goes that Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip ...

, beloved of Aphrodite, although Myrrha, daughter of Cinyras, is more commonly named as the mother of Adonis. It was commonly rumored in Roman times that Praxiteles's cult image of Aphrodite of Knidos in Aphrodite's temple was so beautiful that at least one admirer arranged to be shut in with it overnight.

Interpretation

The myth indicates that a cult image of

was instrumental in some way in the

founding myth An origin myth is a type of myth that explains the beginnings of a natural or social aspect of the world. Creation myths are a type of origin myth narrating the formation of the universe. However, numerous cultures have stories that take place a ...

of Paphos. It also seems axiomatic, apart from miraculous intervention, that the living representative of a cult image could be none but the chief priestess. Robert Graves gives a socio-political interpretation of the story, as a mythologized overthrow of a matrilineal cult. In his view Pygmalion, the consort of the goddess's priestess at Paphos, kept the

of Aphrodite as a means of retaining power during his term, after which, Graves speculates, he refused to give up the goddess's image "and that he prolonged this by marriage with another of Aphrodite's priestesses—technically his daughter, since she was heiress to the throne—who is called Metharme ("change"), to mark the innovation".

Notes and references

External links

Galatea the Nereid in classical literature and art

at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (images of Galatea)
{{Authority control Women in Greek mythology Metamorphoses characters * Deeds of Aphrodite Metamorphoses into humanoids in Greek mythology Mythological Cypriots Objects in Greek mythology

Etymology

Myth

Interpretation

See also

Notes and references

External links