FALLING IN LOVE WITH GALATEA

 

                          

 FALLING IN LOVE WITH GALATEA

 

Galatea is an ivory statue carved by King Pygmalion who fell in love with it.  King of Cyprus Pygmalion is a great sculptor.   

 

Pygmalion crafted the marble statue with his own hands and made it look beautiful.

 

Pygmalion prayed to Goddess Aphrodite,  who gave life to Galatea and blessed the couple to live in blissful matrimony.

Aphrodite is the most beautiful goddess of sexual love and beauty in Greek mythology, identified with Venus by the Romans.

                   

                       

                                               Aphrodite

She was known primarily as a goddess of love and fertility and occasionally presided over marriage.

 

Galatea is an ancient Greek name meaning "she who is milk-white".

 

 

Galatea is a Nereid one of  the fifty sea nymphs held  in Greek mythology to be the daughters of the sea god Nereus.

 

                            

          

                                                   Sea Nymph Nereids

There is a difference between mermaids and Nereids.

 

Unlike mermaids, Nereids appear fully human and do not manifest scales or a tail upon contact with water. Unlike mermaids, they don't smell like the ocean and come off as smelling human. Nereids do not develop tails when in contact with water.

                                

Nereids are sea nymphs of the Greek mythology. They were (as the name implies) daughters of Nereus, the “old man of the sea’ of Greek mythology. He was a kind of  predecessor of the sea god before Poseidon. He was the son of Gaia (Earth, the mother of titans, grandmother of gods) and her son Pontus (literally, the Sea). His wife was Doris, another sea goddess daughter of the titan Oceanus (the Ocean) and the Titaness Tethys. Doris was considered as the goddess of rich fishing grounds found at the mouths of rivers. Their daughters, the Nereids were therefore pure goddesses, immortal with powers similar to their parents. For example, they could shapeshift and live underwater.

 

The Nereids were said to be beautiful young maidens, commonly found frolicking amongst the waves of the Mediterranean, or sunning themselves on rocky outcrops.
 

 

NEREID  GALATEA                                       The Nereids were the 50 sea nymph daughters of Nereus, the ancient sea god, and his wife, the Oceanid Doris. Amongst the sisters to Galatea were the likes of Amphitrite, who would become wife to Poseidon, and Thetis, the mother of Achilles by Peleus.   The Nereids were traditionally perceived as being part of the retinue of Poseidon, but were thought to be present throughout the Mediterranean Sea, and were often helpful guides to sailors lost and in distress.

ACIS AND GALATEA :

                                      

                     Acis and Galatea - Antoine-Jean Gros, (1771-1835) - PD-art-100

The Nereid Galatea appears specifically in one myth; the tale of Acis and Galatea.

The story of Acis and Galatea takes place upon the island of Sicily, where Acis was a mortal shepherd. Galatea had observed Acis, and had fallen in love with him, and the shepherd had subsequently fallen in love with Galatea.

Sicily though, was also the home of the Cyclopes, and the most famous of the Cyclopes, Polyphemus, had himself fallen in love with Galatea.

Polyphemus came up with a simple way of getting rid of his love rival, and simply picked up a boulder and crushed Acis beneath it.

Galatea would mourn for her lost love, and the Nereid decided to create an eternal memorial to Acis. This Galatea did by creating the River Acis from the blood of the shepherd, a river that would flow around Mount Etna and into the Mediterranean Sea.

Polyphemus would get some degree of comeuppance for his actions, when later Odysseus and his crew came to the island of the Cyclopes. 

There are other versions to this tale of Galatea though, with some versions even having the Nereid enamored by the attention of Polyphemus, with the Cyclopes described not as a thug, but as a sensitive inhabitant of Sicily, able to woo Galatea.

While on the subject of the beautiful Galatea let us examine our own (Indian) Goddess of Beauty Indrani.

Indrani also known as Sachi, is the queen of the devas in Hinduism. Described as tantalisingly beautiful, proud and kind, she is the daughter of the Asura Puloman and the consort of the king of the devas, Indra.

 

Kāmadeva is represented as a young, handsome man who wields a bow and arrows. His bow is made of sugarcane, and his arrows are decorated with five kinds of fragrant flowers. The five flowers are white lotus, Ashoka tree flowers, Mango tree flowers, Jasmine flowers and blue lotus flowers.

 

Kamadeva is the most handsome man in Indian mythology a la Adonis from Greek mythology.

 

Adonis, in Greek mythology, a youth of remarkable beauty, the favorite of the goddess Aphrodite. Traditionally, he was the product of the incestuous love Smyrna (Myrrha) entertained for her own father, the Syrian king Theias.

 

PYGMALION AND GALATEA

 

It is correct that the name Galatea is associated with the statue crafted by Pygmalion, and subsequently brought to life, in antiquity the statue was never given a name, and was only called Galatea. Hundreds of years later during the Renaissance period, when the story was reinvigorated, it became a popular story for artists.

 

                                           

 

 

The story of Pygmalion and Galatea is quite known and popular nowadays. Pygmalion, a famous sculptor, falls in love with his own creation and wishes to give this creation life. This simple and imaginary concept is actually the basis of a psychological understanding of male behavior and wishes.