Ambrosia - Other Examples in Mythology

Other Examples in Mythology

• In one version of the story of the birth of Achilles, Thetis anoints the infant with ambrosia and passes the child through the fire to make him immortal but Peleus, appalled, stops her, leaving only his heel unimmortalised (Argonautica 4.869-879).
• In the Iliad xvi, Apollo washes the black blood from the corpse of Sarpedon and anoints it with ambrosia, readying it for its dreamlike return to Sarpedon's native Lycia. Similarly, Thetis anoints the corpse of Patroclus in order to preserve it. Additionally, both ambrosia and nectar are depicted as unguents (xiv. 170; xix. 38).
• In the Odyssey, Calypso is described as having "spread a table with ambrosia and set it by Hermes, and mixed the rosy-red nectar." It is ambiguous whether he means the ambrosia itself is rosy-red, or if he is describing a rosy-red nectar Hermes drinks along with the ambrosia. Later, Circe mentions to Odysseus that a flock of doves are the bringers of ambrosia to Olympus.
• In the Odyssey (ix.345–359), Polyphemus likens the wine given to him by Odysseus to ambrosia and nectar.
• One of the impieties of Tantalus, according to Pindar, was that he offered to his guests the ambrosia of the Deathless Ones, a theft akin to that of Prometheus, Karl Kerenyi noted (in Heroes of the Greeks).
• In the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess uses "ambrosian oil" as perfume, "divinely sweet, and made fragrant for her sake."
• In the myth of Psyche and Eros, Psyche is given ambrosia by Hermes upon her completion of the quests set by Aphrodite and her acceptance on Olympus. After she partakes, she and Eros are wed as gods.
• Some ancient Egyptian statues of Anubis read,"...I am death...I eat ambrosia and drink blood..." which hints that ambrosia is a food of some sort.
• In the Aeneid, Aeneus encounters his mother in an alternate, or illusory form. When she became her godly form "Her hair's ambrosia breathed a holy fragrance." (pp. 13)