The Eagle of Zeus: Ganymede, Altair and the cowherd legend
The eagle that bears Zeus's thunderbolts and abducts Ganymede, Antinous and the star Altair, which in China is the cowherd in love with the weaver.
Among the figures flying along the summer Milky Way there is a great bird of prey with outspread wings. The constellation of Aquila is dominated by Altair, one of the brightest stars in the sky, flanked by two fainter companions that seem to outline the body and wings of the bird in flight. For the Greeks it could only be the eagle of Zeus, the king of birds in the service of the king of the gods.
The messenger of the king of the gods
In Greek tradition the eagle was the animal sacred to Zeus and the keeper of his weapons. According to some sources, during the war against the Titans it was an eagle that brought the god the thunderbolts forged by the Cyclopes, and that from then on it became his inseparable companion. In ancient iconography Zeus is often portrayed with the eagle at his feet or on his sceptre, and the bird appears as a sign of his power on coins and statues.
The eagle also has a darker role in the myth of Prometheus: to punish him for stealing fire from the gods, Zeus had him chained on the Caucasus, where an eagle devoured his liver every day, and it grew back during the night. Heracles killed the bird with an arrow and freed the Titan. Some ancient mythographers identified the constellation with this very eagle, set beside the neighbouring Arrow.
Ganymede and Aquarius
The best-known version, however, links Aquila to Ganymede, a Trojan prince of extraordinary beauty. The myth tells that Zeus saw him tending flocks on Mount Ida and sent his eagle to carry him off, or in some versions turned himself into an eagle. Ganymede was taken to Olympus, where he became cupbearer of the gods, pouring nectar in place of Hebe.
According to tradition, Ganymede was then placed in the sky as the constellation Aquarius, the water-bearer, which lies not far from Aquila. The abduction of Ganymede was a theme much loved by artists, from Greek sculpture to Correggio and Rubens. In Roman times a group of stars beside Aquila was dedicated to Antinous, the youth loved by the emperor Hadrian; Ptolemy records the name, but this figure is no longer in use.
Altair, the cowherd and the weaver
The name Altair derives from an Arabic expression meaning “the flying eagle”. In China the same star is the protagonist of one of the most famous legends: it is Niulang, the young cowherd, in love with Zhinü, the celestial weaver, identified with Vega. The two were separated by the Milky Way, the silver river of heaven, and may meet only once a year.
On the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the legend says, a flock of magpies forms a bridge over the celestial river to allow the meeting. From this tale come the Chinese festival of Qixi and the Japanese festival of Tanabata, still celebrated today. Thus the same star is a divine raptor in the West and a patient lover in the East.
Aquila therefore unites power and desire, the force that lifts and the force that carries off. Messenger of Zeus, tormentor of Prometheus, abductor of Ganymede, it represents the vertical bond between earth and sky, between the world of humans and that of the gods. In traditional symbolism it has been associated with keen sight, kingship and loftiness of vision.