EosTithonus2.0001

M. de Marolles, "Aurora and Tithonus", plate for Tableaux du Temple des Muses (Paris 1655).

Aurora (Eos in Greek) is the goddess of the dawn. She abducted Tithonus as a boy and married him and bore a son, Memnon, with him. Famously, Aurora never aged, but Tithonus did, as he was mortal. The engraving at right shows the mythographers' version that Aurora eventually turned Tithonus into a grasshopper. The two embrace the only way they know how, she as forcefully amorous immortal and he as aged man/insect in the moment of metamorphosis.

The caption beneath the picture points to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 237-38: τοῦ δ’ ἦ τοι φωνὴ ῥέει ἅσπετος, οὐδέ τι κίκυς / ἐσθ’, οἵη πάρος ἕσκεν ἐνὶ γναμπτοῖσι μέλεσσιν — "His voice now flows unceasingly, nor has it any strength at all, such as it formerly was in his flexible legs." (I provide the Greek text Allen, correcting the Greek in Marolles'.)