Ambrosia

The Food of the Gods on Olympus (1530), majolica dish attributed to Nicola da Urbino

In the ancient Greek myths, ambrosia (/æmˈbrziə, -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.