In the ancient Greek myths, ambrosia (/æmˈbroʊziə, -ʒə/, Ancient Greek: ἀμβροσία 'immortality'), the food or drink of the Greek gods,[1] is often depicted as conferring longevity or immortality upon whoever consumed it.[2] It was brought to the gods in Olympus by doves and served either by Hebe or by Ganymede at the heavenly feast.[3][4]
Ancient art sometimes depicted ambrosia as distributed by the nymph named Ambrosia - a nurse of Dionysus.[5]
Ambrosia is very closely related to the gods' other form of sustenance, nectar. The two terms may not have originally been distinguished;[6] though in Homer's poems nectar is usually the drink and ambrosia the food of the gods; it was with ambrosia that Hera "cleansed all defilement from her lovely flesh",[7] and with ambrosia Athena prepared Penelope in her sleep,[8] so that when she appeared for the final time before her suitors, the effects of years had been stripped away, and they were inflamed with passion at the sight of her. On the other hand, in Alcman,[9] nectar is the food, and in Sappho[10] and Anaxandrides, ambrosia is the drink.[11] A character in Aristophanes' Knights says, "I dreamed the goddess poured ambrosia over your head—out of a ladle." Both descriptions could be correct, as ambrosia could be a liquid considered a food (such as honey).
The consumption of ambrosia was typically reserved for divine beings. Upon his assumption into immortality on Olympus, Heracles is given ambrosia by Athena, while the hero Tydeus is denied the same thing when the goddess discovers him eating human brains. In one version of the myth of Tantalus, part of Tantalus' crime is that after tasting ambrosia himself, he attempts to steal some to give to other mortals.[12] Those who consume ambrosia typically have ichor, not blood, in their veins.[13]
Both nectar and ambrosia are fragrant, and may be used as perfume: in the Odyssey Menelaus and his men are disguised as seals in untanned seal skins, "...and the deadly smell of the seal skins vexed us sore; but the goddess saved us; she brought ambrosia and put it under our nostrils."[14] Homer speaks of ambrosial raiment, ambrosial locks of hair, even the gods' ambrosial sandals.
Among later writers, ambrosia has been so often used with generic meanings of "delightful liquid" that such late writers as Athenaeus, Paulus and Dioscurides employ it as a technical terms in contexts of cookery,[15] medicine,[16] and botany.[17] Pliny used the term in connection with different plants, as did early herbalists.[18]