In Greek mythology, Endymion was variously a handsome Aeolianshepherd, hunter, or king who was said to rule and live at Olympia in Elis. He was also venerated and said to reside on Mount Latmus in Caria, on the west coast of Asia Minor. There is confusion over Endymion's correct identity, as some sources suppose that he was, or was related to, the prince of Elis, and others suggest he was a shepherd from Caria. There is a later suggestion that he was an astronomer: Pliny the Elder mentions Endymion as the first human to observe the movements of the moon, which accounts for Endymion's love. Consequently, there have been two attributed sites of Endymion's burial: the citizens of Heracleia ad Latmo claimed that Endymion's tomb was on Mount Latmus, while the Eleans declared that it was at Olympia. However, the role of lover of Selene, the moon, is attributed primarily to Endymion who was either a shepherd or an astronomer, either profession providing justification for him to spend time beneath the moon.
Mythology
is one of the many poets who tell how Selene, the Titangoddess of the moon, loved the mortal Endymion. She believed him to be so beautiful that she asked Endymion's father, Zeus, to grant him eternal youth so that he would never leave her. Alternatively, Selene so loved how Endymion looked when he was asleep in the cave on Mount Latmus, near Miletus in Caria, that she entreated Zeus that he might remain that way. In some versions, Zeus wanted to punish Endymion for daring to show romantic interest in Hera. Whatever the case, Zeus granted Selene's wish and put Endymion into an eternal sleep. Every night, Selene visited him where he slept, and by him had fifty daughters who are equated by some scholars with the fifty months of the Olympiad. According to a passage in Deipnosophistae, the sophist and dithyrambic poet Licymnius of Chios tells a different tale, in which Hypnos, the god of sleep, in awe of his beauty, causes him to sleep with his eyes open, so he can fully admire his face. The Bibliotheke claims that: According to Pausanias, Endymion deposed Clymenus, son of Cardys, at Olympia. Describing the "early history" of the Eleans, Pausanias reports that: Pausanias also reports seeing a statue of Endymion in the treasury of Metapontines at Olympia. Propertius, Cicero's Tusculanae Quaestiones, and Theocritus discuss the Endymion myth to some length, but reiterate the above to varying degrees. The myth surrounding Endymion has been expanded and reworked during the modern period by figures like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Keats in his 1818 narrative poemEndymion.
Background
No explicit narrative has survived. In Argonautica the "daughter of Titan," the Moon, was witness to Medea's fearful night-time flight to Jason, and "rejoiced with malicious pleasure as she reflected to herself: 'I'm not the only one then to skulk off to the Latmian cave, nor is it only I that burn with desire for fair Endymion'" she muses. "But now you yourself it would seem, are a victim of a madness like mine." Lemprière's Classical Dictionary reinforces Pliny's account of Endymion's attachment to astronomy and cites it as the source of why Endymion was said to have a relationship with the moon as she passed by. The mytheme of Endymion being not dead but endlessly asleep, which was proverbial ensured that scenes of Endymion and Selene were popular subjects for sculpted sarcophagi in Late Antiquity, when after-death existence began to be a heightened concern. The Louvre example, discovered at Saint-Médard-d'Eyrans, France, is one of this class. Some believe that he was the personification of sleep, or the sunset in, and duein dive], which would imply a representation of that sort. Latin writers explained the name from somnum ei inductum, the "sleep put upon him". The myth of Endymion was never easily transferred to ever-chaste Artemis, the Olympian associated with the Moon. In the Renaissance, the revived moon goddessDiana had the Endymion myth attached to her.
