Epitome 26. Water-pourer
IT would seem that he owes his name to the action that he is performing; for he is standing with a wine-jar in his hand and is pouring out a large stream of liquid. Some say that this is Ganymedes, thinking to find sufficient proof in the fact that the figure is represented like a cup-bearer pouring wine. They cite the poet Homer as a witness,* because he describes how Ganymedes was carried off to serve as cup-bearer to Zeus because of his exceptional beauty, a service that the gods had judged him worthy to fulfil, and states that he attained immortality, something unknown among human beings. The fluid that he is pouring out represents the nectar that is drunk by the gods, and as evidence of that they adduce the fact that that is supposed to be the beverage of the gods.
Hyginus
The Constellation
The Water-pourer has his feet set fast on the winter tropic. His left hand is stretched out toward the back of Capricorn, while his right hand almost touches the mane of Pegasos. He is looking toward the east. Because he is depicted in such a way, he necessarily seems to be almost lying on his back. The stream of water pours out toward the Fish that is portrayed as being on its own, which we will talk about below. Both when rising and setting, the head of the Water-pourer precedes the rest of his body.
He has two faint stars on his head, one bright star on each shoulder, a large star on his left elbow, one on his front hand, a faint one on each nipple, one on the inside of his thighs, one on each knee, one on his left leg, and one on each foot. In all, fourteen. The stream of water and the urn itself have thirty stars, but of all these stars only the first and last are bright.
The Mythology
According to many accounts, this is Ganymedes; Zeus snatched him away from his parents because of his physical beauty, and is supposed to have made him cup-bearer to the gods.
Or according to Hegesianax, this is Deucalion, because such quantities of water poured from the sky during his reign that this is said to have caused a great flood. Euhemerus indicates, however, that this is Cecrops, commemorating the antiquity of his race, and showing that water was used in sacrifices to the gods before wine was revealed to mortals, and that Cecrops ruled before the discovery of wine.
Commentary
(i) This constellation was usually identified with Ganymedes, son of Tros, a young Trojan prince who was snatched away to become cup-bearer to Zeus on Olympos. This was a very ancient myth, and Eratosthenes appealed directly to Homer’s account (Il. 20.232–5), although the Iliad does not in fact say that he was granted immortality, as the Epitome suggests, but that he was taken away to live with the immortals. That he was abducted by an eagle and that Zeus became his lover were ideas of later origin (see p. 58).
(ii) Hyginus cites two alternatives from other sources, which may well have been mentioned previously by Eratosthenes. Perhaps this is Deucalion, the hero of the Greek myth of the great flood (Ap. 1.7.2); in that case, he is depicted as a water-pourer for merely symbolic reasons.
(iii) Or this is Cecrops, the earthborn first king of Athens (see Ap. 3.14.1–2), who can be imagined to be pouring a libation to the gods. It could be argued in this connection that he had reigned at such an early period that wine was not yet available to be used for that purpose, and he could thus be imagined as being quite literally a water-pourer, by contrast to Ganymedes, who would have poured nectar, the drink of the gods. In Attica wine was supposed to have been revealed by Dionysos to Icarios (see p. 37), who lived during the reign of a later king, Pandion.
(iv) The scholia to Germanicus report a tradition that identified this constellation with Aristaios, who introduced many useful arts, and above all funded the rites that summoned the Etesian winds to moderate the heat brought by the rising of the dog-star (see further on p. 117, and for the rites, A.R. 2.520–7); for which reason the gods honoured him by granting him a place in the heavens. He is evidently to be pictured as making a libation to Zeus in connection with the cult that he had founded. This Aristaios was a son of Apollo by the nymph Cyrene; for his life and the arts that were attributed to him, see Diodorus 4.81–2.
(v) Or this is the Demon of the Nile, who regulated the flow of that river. Our source (schol. Arat. 283) refers to Pindar, who provided some account of this being, as does Apollonius of Tyre (6.26); he was apparently pictured as standing at the head of the river, here symbolized in the water that he is pouring, and he was supposed to have altered its flow, to bring about the seasonal variations, by shifting the position of his feet.