Galatea (mythology)

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Galatea (mythology)

The name "Galatea"
Though the name "Galatea" has become so firmly associated with Pygmalion's statue as to seem antique, it originated with a post-classical writer. No extant ancient text mentions her name. As late as 1763, a sculpture of the subject shown by Falconet

Étienne Maurice Falconet

File:Milo of Croton Falconet.jpg?tienne Maurice Falconet , is counted among the first rank of France Rococo sculpture, whose patron was Mme de Pompadour....
at the Salon

Paris Salon

The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Acad?mie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748?1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the world....
carried the title Pygmalion aux pieds de sa statue qui s'anime. That sculpture, currently at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, now bears the expected modern title Pygmalion and Galatea.

A reference to Galatea in modern English is a metaphor for a statue that has come to life.

According to Meyer Reinhold, the name "Galatea" was first given wide circulation in Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a major philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth century The Age of Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought....
's scène lyrique of 1762, Pygmalion.

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The name "Galatea"

Though the name "Galatea" has become so firmly associated with Pygmalion's statue as to seem antique, it originated with a post-classical writer. No extant ancient text mentions her name. As late as 1763, a sculpture of the subject shown by Falconet

Étienne Maurice Falconet

File:Milo of Croton Falconet.jpg?tienne Maurice Falconet , is counted among the first rank of France Rococo sculpture, whose patron was Mme de Pompadour....
at the Salon

Paris Salon

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Pastoral

Pastoral, as an adjective, refers to the lifestyle of shepherds and pastoralists, moving livestock around larger areas of land according to seasons and availability of water and food....
fictions; one of Honoré d'Urfé

Honoré d'Urfé

Honor? d'Urf?, marquis de Valromey, comte de Ch?teauneuf was a France novelist and miscellaneous writer....
's characters in L'Astrée was a Galatea, though not this sculptural creation.

The myth

The story of Pygmalion appeared earliest in a Hellenistic work, Philostephanus'

Philostephanus

Philostephanus of Cyrene, Libya was a Hellenistic civilization writer from North Africa Africa, who was a pupil of the poet Callimachus in Alexandria and doubtless worked there during the 3rd century BC....
history of Cyprus, "De Cypro". It is retold in Ovid's

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses (poem)

The Metamorphoses by the Ancient Rome poet Ovid is a Narrative poetry in fifteen books that describes the Creation myth and history of the world....
, where the king Pygmalion is made into a sculptor who fell in love with an ivory statue he had crafted with his own hands. In answer to his prayers, the goddess Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
brought it to life and united the couple in marriage. This novella remained the classical telling until the end of the seventeenth century. The trope

Trope (literature)

A literary trope is a common pattern, theme , motif in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning....
of the animated statue gained a vogue during the eighteenth century.

The daemon
Daemon (mythology)

The words daemon, d?mon, are Latinized spellings of the Greek language da???? , used purposely today to distinguish the daemons of Ancient Greek religion, good or malevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes" , from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, a malignant...
of Pygmalion's goddess, animating her cult image

Cult image

In the practice of religion, a cult image is a man-made object that is venerated for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents....
, bore him a son Paphus

Paphos

Paphos Paphos is the mythical birthplace of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, and the founding myth is interwoven with the goddess at every level....
—the eponym

Eponym

An eponym is a person, whether real or fictitious, after whom a particular toponym, ethnonym, regnal year, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named....
of the city of Paphos

Paphos

Paphos Paphos is the mythical birthplace of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, and the founding myth is interwoven with the goddess at every level....
—and Metharme. Of "this ecstatic relationship," Meyer Reinhold has remarked, "there may be lurking a survival of the ancient cult of the Great Goddess

Great Goddess

Great Goddess refers to the concept of an almighty goddess, or to the concept of a mother goddess, including:*Great Goddess, anglicized form of the Latin Magna Dea...
and her consort."

Cinyras

Cinyras

According to Greek mythology, the king Cinyras of Cyprus was a son of Apollo and the husband of Galatea . With Galatea, he fathered Adonis and Myrrha....
, perhaps the son of Paphus, , or perhaps the successful suitor of Metharme, founded the city of Paphos on Cyprus, under the patronage of Aphrodite, and built the great temple to the goddess there.

Bibliotheke, the Hellenistic compendium of myth long attributed to Apollodorus, mentions a daughter of Pygmalion named Metharme. She was the wife of Cinyras, and the mother of Adonis

Adonis

Adonis is a figure of West Semitic origin, where he is a central cult figure in various mystery religions, who enters Greek mythology in Hellenistic culture....
, beloved of Aphrodite. Although Myrrha

Myrrha

In Greek mythology, Myrrha was a daughter of the king Theias Assyria and the mother of Adonis by Theias. Two different versions of Adonis' birth existed....
, daughter of Cinyras, is more commonly named as the mother of Adonis.

It was commonly rumored in Roman times that Praxiteles

Praxiteles

Praxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, was the most renowned of the Attica sculptors of the 4th century BC. He was the first to sculpt the nude Woman in a life-size statue....
' Aphrodite

Aphrodite of Knidos

The Aphrodite of Cnidus was one of the most famous works of the ancient Greece Sculpture Praxiteles of Classical Athens . It and its copies are often referred to as the Venus Pudica type, on account of her covering her groin with her right hand....
of Knidos

Knidos

Cnidus or Knidos was an ancient Greece city in Anatolia, part of the Dorian Hexapolis. It was situated at the extremity of the long Dat?a peninsula, which forms the southern side of the Sinus Ceramicus or Gulf of G?kova....
, the cult image in her temple

Greek temple

Greek temples were structures built to house deity statues within Greek sanctuaries in Greek paganism. The temples themselves did usually not directly serve a cult purpose, since the sacrifices and rituals dedicated to the respective deity took place outside them....
was so beautiful that at least one admirer arranged to be shut in with it overnight.

Galatea was a sea nymph.She was the daughter of the sea god, Nereus.Cyclops,the hideous monster loved her very much.But, Galatea was already in love with another man, Acis,the son of Pan.Once Cyclops got angry that Galatea didn't love him, and he found the young couple on the shore kissing,that he threw Galatea in the ocean,and he chased Acis all over his island and threw rocks at Acis, and Acis died. Cyclops felt ashamed, and ran into his cave.When Galatea reached the shore and saw that her loved one died, she weapt over Acis's dead body. When Galatea's tears mixed with the ocean foam,the sand, and Acis's blood, Acis's body turned into a blue statue,that stands in the middle of the Grece's biggest river,and the gods made Acis,the river god.

Galatea (mythology)

The name "Galatea"

The myth

See also