Amalthea (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Amalthea or Amaltheia (Ancient Greek: Ἀμάλθεια) is the figure most commonly identified as the nurse of Zeus during his infancy. She is described either as a nymph who raises the child on the milk of a goat, or, in some accounts from the Hellenistic period (c. 323–30 BC) onwards, as the goat itself.

As early as the archaic period (c. 800–480 BC), there are references to the "horn of Amalthea" (known in Latin as the cornucopia), a magical horn said to be capable of producing endless amounts of any food or drink desired. In a narrative attributed to the mythical poet Musaeus and dating to around the 4th century BC, Amalthea, a nymph, nurses the infant Zeus and owns a goat which is terrifying in appearance. After Zeus reaches adulthood, he uses the goat's skin as a weapon in his battle against the Titans. The first known author to describe Amalthea as a goat is the 3rd-century BC poet Callimachus, who presents a rationalised version of the myth in which Zeus is fed on Amalthea's milk. Aratus, also writing in the 3rd century BC, identifies Amalthea with the star Capella, and describes her as "Olenian" (the meaning of which is unclear).

There is disagreement among scholars as to when the tale of Zeus's upbringing was first merged with that of the magical horn. They are explicitly combined by the Roman poet Ovid (1st century BC/AD), whose story of Zeus's nursing weaves together elements from multiple accounts. A passage from a scholium on Aratus's version (that is, a marginal note in one of the text's manuscripts) has been taken as evidence that the two myths may have been connected prior to Ovid. In the 2nd-century AD Fabulae, Amalthea hides the infant in a tree and gathers the Kouretes to dance noisily, so that the child's crying cannot be heard. Other accounts of Zeus's upbringing describe Amalthea as related to Melisseus, the king of Crete, including an Orphic version of the story.

Among the few surviving representations of Amalthea in ancient art are a 2nd-century AD marble relief, which depicts her as a nymph feeding Zeus out of a large cornucopia, and multiple coins and medallions from the Roman Empire. In modern art, she has been the subject of 17th- and 18th-century works by sculptors such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pierre Julien and painters such as Jacob Jordaens.