Reflections on Ganymede

Abstract

During the Ancient Greek and Roman periods, the myth of Ganymede, a beautiful Trojan boy who was abducted by Zeus on Mount Ida to be his immortal cupbearer, became the legendary origin and symbol of the aristocratic practice of pederasty. Resultingly, the various retellings of the myth reflect changes in societal perceptions of pederasty and display the unique relationship between myth, humanity, and culture. In the 21st century, artificial intelligence has similarly shone a new light on the relationship between human creativity and technology which will evolve over time as its place in society and academia is found. This paper has a two-fold goal: first to analyze the changes of which story elements are emphasized, the authors’ attitudes towards Ganymede and Zeus’ relationship, and the parallels between Ganymede’s character and eromenoi in twenty-four literary references to Ganymede across approximately 1300 years of Antiquity, and secondly, to compare those findings to the AI program ChatGPT, given the same prompt and data.