Tithonus- Greek FigureMortal"Prince of Troy"
Also known as: Tithonos, Tithōnos, and Τιθωνός
Titles & Epithets
Symbols
Description
Eos, goddess of the dawn, loved him so fiercely she begged Zeus to make him immortal — but forgot to ask for eternal youth. Tithonus aged without end, his body withering to nothing while death refused to come, until only a cicada's dry chirp remained.
Mythology & Lore
Beloved of the Dawn
Tithonus was a prince of Troy, son of King Laomedon and brother of Priam. Eos, the rosy-fingered goddess of the dawn, carried him away to her golden palace at the edges of the world. Deeply in love, she implored Zeus to grant him immortality so they might remain together forever. Zeus granted the request. But Eos, in her haste, forgot to ask for eternal youth.
At first, the omission went unnoticed. Tithonus lived on at the rim of the world where Eos rose each morning. But as the years passed, age began to claim him even as death could not. His hair whitened and his body withered. He could not die. Eos shut him away in a chamber, where his voice babbled endlessly but his body had shrunk to almost nothing.
The Cicada
In later traditions, the gods transformed Tithonus into a cicada — an insect the Greeks associated with immortality because of its ceaseless chirping and its capacity to shed its skin. The cicada's endless song echoed Tithonus's babbling voice; its dry, shriveled body mirrored his withered form. The metamorphosis was not a rescue but a final diminishment: Tithonus persisted as a creature of pure sound, stripped of everything that had once made him human.
In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, Aphrodite tells Anchises she will not ask Zeus for his immortality — she has seen what it did to Tithonus. Sappho recalled him in her own old age: even the rosy-armed Dawn could not keep her beloved from withering.