Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters (Deipnosophistae) 601f · 601f
Who carried off Ganymede
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Myrtilus — οὐ τὸν Δία φησὶν ἁρπάσαι τὸν Γανυμήδην ἀλλὰ Μίνωα. οἱ δὲ προειρημένοι Χαλκιδεῖς παρ’ αὑτοῖς φασιν ἁρπασθῆναι τὸν Γανυμήδην ὑπὸ τοῦ Διὸς καὶ τὸν τόπον δεικνύντες Ἁρπάγιον καλοῦσιν, ἐν ᾧ καὶ μυρρίναι διάφοροι πεφύκασιν. καὶ τὴν πρὸς Ἀθηναίους δ’ ἔχθραν διελύσατο Μίνως, καίπερ ἐπὶ θανάτῳ παιδὸς συστᾶσαν, Θησέως ἐρασθεὶς καὶ τὴν θυγατέρα τούτῳ γυναῖκα ἔδωκε Φαίδραν, ὡς Ζῆνις ἢ Ζηνεύς φησιν ὁ Χῖος ἐν τῷ περὶ τῆς πατρίδος συγγράμματι.
…says that it was not Zeus who carried off Ganymede, but Minos. But the Chalcidians I mentioned say that Ganymede was carried off by Zeus from their own land, and pointing out the place they call it Harpagion, and remarkable myrtles grow there. And Minos ended his enmity with the Athenians too, although it had arisen over the death of his son, because he fell in love with Theseus, and he gave him his daughter Phaedra as his wife, as Zenis or Zeneus of Chios says in his work on his homeland.
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The setting
Two local claims to the myth of Ganymede, the Trojan boy carried off to be Zeus' cupbearer. Echemenes wrote a history of Crete and Zenis or Zeneus of Chios one of his island, and both books are lost.
A note on this passage
Both claims are local pride. A Cretan historian gives Ganymede to the Cretan king; the Chalcidians keep Zeus but move the abduction to their own countryside and show visitors the spot. The Cretans had a custom of their own in which a lover ritually carried off his beloved, described by the historian Ephorus (quoted in Strabo, <i>Geography</i> 10.4.21), and a Cretan Minos fits it.<br><br>The Minos story is stranger still. In the usual myth his son Androgeos died in Attica, and Athens paid for it with youths sent to the Minotaur until Theseus killed it. Zenis tells it as a love story that ends in a wedding.
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