Acis and Galatea (mythology)

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Acis (Greek: Άκις) was the spirit of the Acis River in Sicily,Ovid. Metamorphoses xiii. 750–68. beloved of the nereid, or sea-nymph,Hesiod. Theogony; Homer. Iliad. Galatea (Γαλάτεια; "she who is milk-white"). Galatea returned the love of Acis, but a jealous suitor, the Sicilian Cyclops Polyphemus,Philoxenus of Cythera, Theocritus Idylls VI; Ovid Metamorphoses xiii.750-68. killed him with a boulder. Distraught, Galatea then turned his blood into the river Acis. The Acis River flowed past Akion (Acium) near Mount Etna in Sicily.
==Details==
According to Ovid's Metamorphoses, Acis was the son of Faunus and the river-nymphSymaethis, daughter of the River Symaethus. 
The tale occurs nowhere earlier than in Ovid; it may be a fiction invented by Ovid "suggested by the manner in which the little river springs forth from under a rock". According to Athenaeus, ca 200 CEAthenaeus, Deipnosophistae 1.6e the story was first concocted as a political satire against the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, whose favourite concubine, Galatea, shared her name with a nereid mentioned by Homer. OthersScholiast on Theocritus' Idyll VI quoting the historian Duris and the poet Philoxenus of Cythera claim the story was invented to explain the presence of a shrine dedicated to Galatea on Mount Etna.
A first-century fresco removed from an Imperial villa at Boscotrecase, preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius, and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Polyphemus and Galatea in a landscape shows the three figures as incidents in a landscape.
==Cultural references==
 
The tale of Acis and Galatea was familiar from the Renaissance onwards: there are paintings of the subject, sometimes as mythological incidents in a large landscape, by Adam Elsheimer.National Gallery of Scotland. Elsheimer changed his mind midway and painted out the figures, rendering the painting a pure landscape. Elsheimer highlights Nicolas Poussin (National Gallery of Ireland), and Claude Lorrain (Dresden).Other images of Acis, Galatea and Polyphemus are displayed at the ICONOS site.
In music, the story was the basis for Lully's Acis et Galatée. Handel created both Acis and Galatea and Aci, Galatea e Polifemo on the story and Antonio de Literes wrote the zarzuela Acis y Galatea. Nicola Porpora's opera Polifemo and Jean Cras's opera Polyphème are also based on the story.
Claude Lorrain's painting of Acis and Galatea inspired Fyodor Dostoevsky's description of the 'Golden Age'; explicitly in 'A Raw Youth' and in Stavrogin's dream in 'The Devils', and implicitly in 'The Dream of a Ridiculous Man'.
File:Parc de Versailles, Bosquet des Dômes, Galatée, Jean-Baptiste Tuby 04.jpg|The Nereid Galatea listening with surprise to the shepherd Acis playing his flute. Sculpture by Jean-Baptiste Tuby, 1667-75(grove of the Domes, gardens of Versailles)
File:Parc de Versailles, Bosquet des Dômes, Acis, Jean-Baptiste Tuby 02.jpg|Acis playing the flute. Sculpture by Jean-Baptiste Tuby, 1674(Grove of Domes, gardens of Versailles)
==Notes==
==References==
*Grimal, Pierre (1986). The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-20102-5.
*Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology: Acis
*Theoi.com: Akis
*Galatea the Nereid in classical literature and art
Category:Greek Mythology
Category:Roman mythology
Category:Deities