The rapacious god has transformed himself into an enormous eagle to abduct the beautiful Trojan youth Ganymede (his love interest du jour) and transport him to Olympus where he would serve as cup bearer of the gods – a plum position that apparently bestowed some perks of immortality upon the disoriented boy.
Miniature as a sculptural group this dangling duo might be, but these earrings are by no means discrete and dainty – each is 6 centimeters tall from the peak of that delightfully spiky, crunchy acanthus to Ganymede’s pointed toes. Not for the faint of heart or droopy of earlobes…. A clever matched set, the earrings are loose mirror copies of one another, somehow capturing the boy in a tender embrace with his avian captor, a cloak in sheet gold billowing and blowing his nude body.
The pair was found together (I add the caveat allegedly, again) in a hoard near Thessaloniki and date to the last decades of the 4th century B.C. Whether or not they formed a parure with the other jewelry in the hoard (including the most divine rock crystal bangles and a strap necklace) is up for debate. More clearly, the Zeus and Ganymede pair has taken inspiration from a large-scale sculptural group in bronze by Leochares, known only from literary sources and through Roman copies in marble (including a brilliantly sited one at Sperlonga).
The myth is a very ancient one, known from the Iliad and showcased in Athenian art from at least the 6th century B.C., and is often interpreted as paradigmatic of the custom of pederasty in Archaic and Classical Greece. If so, while that free hanging group is a whimsical masterstroke by the jeweler, the subject itself is a surprising choice for female adornment, no?
