#tityus

Apollo, Leto and Tityus

• Attic red figure crater
• 470 BC3 - 465 BCE
• Attributed to the Aegisthus Painter

Apollo rescues his mother Leto from the giant Tityus. The god is depicted as a youth with long, uncut hair, a crown of laurel and a bow in hand. The giant, draped in a leopard-skin cape, grasps Leto by the shoulder. The offending hand is pierced by three arrows. The goddess attempts to pull away and lifts her veil. Her sacred tree, the palm, stands just behind her.

part 5:

From Ovid’s Metamorphosis: (-translated by Anthony S. Kline)

“The bloodless spirits wept as he spoke, accompanying his words with the music. Tantalus did not reach for the ever-retreating water: Ixion’s wheel was stilled: the vultures did not pluck at Tityus’s liver: the Belides, the daughters of Danaüs, left their water jars: and you, Sisyphus, perched there, on your rock. Then they say, for the first time, the faces of the Furies were wet with tears, won over by his song: the king of the deep, and his royal bride, could not bear to refuse his prayer, and called for Eurydice. She was among the recent ghosts, and walked haltingly from her wound. The poet of Rhodope (Orpheus) received her, and, at the same time, accepted this condition, that he must not turn his eyes behind him, until he emerged from the vale of Avernus, or the gift would be null and void.”

Let’s take a closer look at some of the secondary characters mentioned in Ovid’s passage. Tantalus (great-grandfather of Agamemnon) was a King who, after being admitted to dine with the gods, killed his own son (Pelops) to serve the gods to test their powers of perception. For this moral crime, he was cast into Hades where he endured the torment of everlasting hunger and thirst. When he bent to drink the waters at his feet- the water receded away, or when he reached for the fruit on the tree above- the wind blew the branches out of reach. Ixion was a corrupt mortal, who after killing his father in law and attempting to seduce Hera, was punished by Zeus to be strapped over a an ever spinning, solar flaming wheel. Tityus was a giant who attempted to rape Leto; the mother of Artemis and Apollo. After being slain by Apollo, the giant was punished in hades by being staked to the ground and having two vultures peck out his regenerating liver (similar to Zeus’ punishment for Prometheus with an eagle). The Belides (Daenaeds/water nymphs) were fifty daughters who were ordered by their father to murder their husbands on their wedding nights. In Tartarus they were cursed to carry water jars for eternity to fill an ever-emptying tub. Sisyphus was a trickster mortal who cheated death, and was cursed to roll a boulder uphill for eternity; another fruitless labor. The Furies (or Erinyes) were dark deities who punished mortals who spilled familial blood. The Furies were born from such an act, as when Uranus castrated his father, Cronos, they emerged from the blood. In the Greek tragedy; The Oresteia , they haunt Orestes for killing his mother, Clytemnestra.

As always, thanks for looking and reading!