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In Greek mythology, Tithonus ( or ; ) was the lover of Eos, Goddess of the Dawn. He was a prince of Troy, the son of King Laomedon by the Naiad Strymo (Στρυμώ). The mythology reflected by the fifth-century vase-painters of Athens envisaged Tithonus as a rhapsode, as attested by the lyre in his hand, on an oinochoe (wine jug) of the Achilles Painter, circa 470–460 BC.
An asteroid (6998) has been named after Tithonus.
The mytheme of the goddess' mortal lover is an archaic one; when a role for Zeus was inserted, a bitter twist appeared: according to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, when Eos asked Zeus to make Tithonus immortality, she forgot to ask that he be granted eternal youth. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 218–238. Tithonus indeed lived forever,
but when loathsome old age pressed full upon him, and he could not move nor lift his limbs, this seemed to her in her heart the best counsel: she laid him in a room and put to the shining doors. There he babbles endlessly, and no more has strength at all, such as once he had in his supple limbs.
In later tellings, he eventually became a cicada ( tettix),Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, , p. 47.Keightley, p. 63; Suda, s.v "Old Man Tithonus". eternally living, but begging for death to overcome him. In the Olympian gods, the "queenly" and "golden-throned" Eos can no longer grant immortality to her lover as Selene had done, but must ask it of Zeus, as a boon. In the account of Hieronymus of Rhodes from the third century BC, the blame is shifted from Eos onto Tithonus, who asked for immortality but not agelessness from his lover, who was then unable to help him otherwise and turned him into a cicada.Tsagalis and Markantonatos, p. 297 Propertius wrote that Eos did not forsake Tithonus, old and aged as he was, and would still embrace him and hold him in her arms rather than leaving him deserted in his cold chamber, while cursing the gods for his cruel fate.Propertius, Elegies 2.18b
This myth might have been used to explain why cicadas were particularly noisy during the early hours of the morning, when the dawn appears in the sky.Loeb Classical Library, Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer, 2003, p. 177, note 48 Sir James George Frazer notes that among ancient Greeks and several other peoples there was a widespread belief that creatures that can shed their skin renew their youth and live forever.See Frazer's note on Apollodorus 3.12.4 It might also be a reference to the fact that the high-pitched talk of old men was compared to the cicadas' singing, as seen in a passage from the Iliad. In fact the ancient Greeks would use a cicada sitting on a harp as an emblem of music.
Eos bore Tithonus two sons, Memnon and Emathion. According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, Memnon was raised by the Hesperides on the coast of Oceanus.Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy, ii. 495. According to the historian Diodorus Siculus, Tithonus, who had travelled east from Troy into Assyria and founded Susa, was bribed with a golden grapevine to send his son Memnon to fight at Troy against the Greeks.Diodorus Siculus book 4.75, book 2.22.
The Tithonus poem is one of the few nearly complete works of the Greek lyric poet Sappho, having been pieced together from fragments discovered over a period of more than a hundred years.
Eos (as Thesan) and Tithonus (as Tinthu or Tinthun) provided a pictorial motif inscribed or cast in low relief on the backs of Etruscan bronze hand-mirrors.Marilyn Y. Goldberg, "The 'Eos and Kephalos' from Caere: Its Subject and Date", in American Journal of Archaeology vol. 91, part 4, pp. 605–614, fig. 2 (October, 1987).
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