Acis and Galatea (mythology)

:"For other meanings, see ACIS (disambiguation)"In Ovid's Metamorphoses (xiii.750-68) Acis was the spirit of the Acis River in Sicily, beloved of the nereid, or sea-nymph, [Hesiod "Theogony"; Homer "Iliad".] Galatea ("she who is milk-white"). Galatea returned the love of Acis, but a jealous suitor, the Sicilian Cyclops Polyphemus, [Philoxenus of Cythera, Theocritus "Idylls VI"; Ovid "Metamorphoses" xiii.750-68.] killed him with a boulder. Distraught, Galatea then turned his blood into the river Acis. The Acis River flowed past Akion (Acium) near Mount Etna in Sicily.

Details

According to Ovid's "Metamorphoses", Acis was the son of Faunus and the river-nymph Symaethis, daughter of the River Symaethus.

The tale occurs nowhere earlier than in Ovid; it may be a fiction invented by Ovid "suggested by the manner in which the little river springs forth from under a rock". [Citation
last = Schmitz
first = Leonhard
author-link = Leonhard Schmitz
contribution = Acis
editor-last = Smith
editor-first = William
title = Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
volume = 1
pages = 13
publisher =
place = Boston, MA
year = 1867
contribution-url = http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/0022.html ] According to Athenaeus, ca 200 CE [Athenaeus, "Deipnosophistae" 1.6e] the story was first concocted as a political satire against the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius, whose favourite concubine, Galatea, shared her name with a nereid mentioned by Homer. Others [Scholiast on Theocritus' "Idyll VI" quoting the historian Duris and the poet Philoxenus of Cythera] say the story was invented to explain the presence of a shrine dedicated to Galatea on Mount Etna.

A first-century fresco removed from an Imperial villa at Boscotrecase, preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius, and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art [ [http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_Of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=13&viewMode=0&item=20.192.17 "Polyphemus and Galatea in a landscape"] ] shows the three figures as incidents in a landscape.

Cultural references

The tale of Acis and Galatea was familiar from the Renaissance onwards: there are paintings of the subject, sometimes as mythological incidents in a large landscape, by Adam Elsheimer [(National Gallery of Scotland. Elsheimer changed his mind in midstream and painted out the figures, rendering the painting a pure landscape. [http://www.nationalgalleries.org/elsheimer/highlights_7.html] ] Nicolas Poussin (National Gallery of Ireland), Claude Lorrain (Dresden), [Other images of Acis, Galatea and Polyphemus are displayed at the [http://www.iconos.it/index.php?id=1168 ICONOS site] .]

In music, the story was the basis for Lully's "Acis et Galatée", Handel's "Acis and Galatea" and Antonio de Literes' zarzuela "Acis y Galatea". Jean Cras's opera "Polypheme" is also based on the story.

Notes

References

*Grimal, Pierre (1986). "The Dictionary of Classical Mythology". Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-20102-5.
* [http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/0022.html Smith, "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology"] : Acis
* [http://www.theoi.com/Potamos/PotamosAkis.html Theoi.com: Akis]
* [http://www.theoi.com/Pontios/NereisGalateia.html Galatea the Nereid in classical literature and art]