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In the ancient Greek mythology, ambrosia (, ) is the food or drink of the Greek gods, and is often depicted as conferring longevity or immortality upon whoever consumed it. It was brought to the gods in Mount Olympus by doves and served either by Hebe or by Ganymede at the heavenly feast.Homer, Odyssey xii.62
Ancient art sometimes depicted ambrosia as distributed by the nymph named Ambrosia, a nurse of Dionysus. Ruth E. Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity: Functions and Meanings of Silver Plate in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries (Ashgate, 2004), p. 133; Christine Kondoleon, Domestic and Divine: Roman Mosaics in the House of Dionysos (Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 246; Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 136, 142, 276–277.
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.Pindar, Olympian Odes 1. 50. ff. Those who consume ambrosia typically have ichor, not blood, in their veins.Homer, Iliad v. 340, 416.
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."Homer, Odyssey iv.444–446 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 term in contexts of cookery,In Athenaeus, a sauce of oil, water and fruit juice. medicine,In Paulus, a medicinal draught. and botany.Dioscurides remarked its Latin name was ros marinus, "sea-dew", or rosemary; these uses were noted by Wright 1917:6. Pliny used the term in connection with different plants, as did early herbalists."Ambrosia" in Chambers's Encyclopædia. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 315.
Additionally, some modern Ethnomycology, such as Danny Staples, identify ambrosia with the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria: "it was the food of the gods, their ambrosia, and nectar was the pressed sap of its juices", Staples asserts.Carl A. P. Ruck and Danny Staples, The World of Classical Myth 1994:26.
W. H. Roscher thinks that both nectar and ambrosia were kinds of honey, in which case their power of conferring immortality would be due to the supposed healing and cleansing powers of honey, and because fermented honey (mead) preceded wine as an entheogen in the Aegean world; on some Minoan seals, goddesses were represented with bee faces (compare Merope and Melissa).
Etymology
The concept of an immortality drink is attested in at least two ancient Indo-European languages: Greek and Sanskrit. The Greek ἀμβροσία ( ambrosia) is semantically linked to the Sanskrit अमृत ( amṛta) as both words denote a drink or food that gods use to achieve immortality. The two words appear to be derived from the same Indo-European form * ṇ-mṛ-tós, "un-dying" Mallory also connects to this root an Avestan word, and notes that the root is "dialectally restricted to the IE southeast". ( n-: negative prefix from which the prefix a- in both Greek and Sanskrit are derived; mṛ: Ablaut of * mer-, "to die"; and -to-: adjectival suffix). A semantically similar etymology exists for nectar, the beverage of the gods (Greek: νέκταρ néktar) presumed to be a compound of the PIE roots *nek-, "death", and -*tar, "overcoming".
Other examples in mythology
Ambrosia (nymph)
Lycurgus, king of Thrace, forbade the cult of Dionysus, whom he drove from Thrace, and attacked the gods' entourage when they celebrated the god. Among them was Ambrosia, who turned herself into a grapevine to hide from his wrath. Dionysus, enraged by the king's actions, drove him mad. In his fit of insanity he killed his son, whom he mistook for a stock of ivy, and then himself.
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