Endymion. A young man of great beauty (called by some the king of Elis), Endymion was the son of Calyce and Aëthlius (a son of Zeus) or Zeus himself. He was loved by Selene (Luna) or by Artemis (Diana, also called Phoebe and Cynthia) in her guise as moon-goddess. According to Pausanias, the goddess bore him fifty daughters.
Endymion wished for eternal sleep, some say because he wanted to perpetuate his romance with the goddess, who visited him in his dreams on Mount Latmus; Apollodorus, however, states that Endymion sought immortality and agelessness through everlasting sleep. At Selene’s request Zeus granted the wish. Yet another tradition, from the Great Eoiae by a follower of Hesiod, recounts that Endymion later fell in love with Hera and was flung by Zeus into Hades.


Classical Sources. Hesiodic poet, Great Eoiae 11. Plato, Phaedo 72C. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 4.j7f. Theocritus, Idylls 3.50, 20.35—38. Catullus, Carmina 66.jfF. Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum 5.20.25; Tusculanae disputationes 1.38.92. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 1.7.5—6. Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.1.2, 5.1.3—5, 5.8.1. Hyginus, Tabulae 271. Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods 19, “Aphrodite and Selene.”


Further Reference. Le Comte,Edward S. 1944. Endymion in England: The Literary History of a Greek Myth. New York: King’s Crown Press.