Ambrosia

For other uses, see Ambrosia (disambiguation).
Look up ambrosia in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
The Food of the Gods on Olympus (1530), majolica dish attributed to Nicola da Urbino

In the ancient Greek myths, ambrosia (/æmˈbroʊziə, -ʒə/, Ancient Greek: ἀμβροσία 'immortality') is the food or drink of the Greek gods,[1] and is often depicted as conferring longevity or immortality upon whoever consumed it.[2] It was brought to the gods in Olympus by doves and served either by Hebe or by Ganymede at the heavenly feast.[3][4]

Ancient art sometimes depicted ambrosia as distributed by the nymph named Ambrosia, a nurse of Dionysus.[5]

  1. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ambrosia" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 800.
  2. ^ Griffiths, Alan H. (1996), "Ambrosia", in Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Anthony (eds.), Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-521693-8
  3. ^ Homer, Odyssey xii.62
  4. ^ Cicero. De Natura Deorum. p. 1.40.
  5. ^ Ruth E. Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity: Functions and Meanings of Silver Plate in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries (Ashgate, 2004), p. 133; Christine Kondoleon, Domestic and Divine: Roman Mosaics in the House of Dionysos (Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 246; Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 136, 142, 276–277.