Apollo, Admetus, and the Problem of Pederastic Hierarchy

Thomas K. Hubbard (University of Texas, Austin)

Ever since the publication of Sir Kenneth Dover’s influential Greek Homosexuality in 1978, the study of Greek pederasty has been dominated by a hierarchical model of sexual protocols governing the behavior of the adult erastês and the adolescent erômenos. This model posits the former as invariably the one who pursues intimate relations with the latter, assumes the penetrative position in sexual acts, and offers gifts and authoritative guidance which the latter respectfully and deferentially accepts.

However, we sometimes encounter situations that resist neat categorization in these terms and show the younger partner as the more aggressive one. Such is the case of the affair between Apollo and Admetus, attested as erotic in Callimachus (Hymn 2.47-49) and Rhianus (fr. 10 P). Mythology typically characterizes Apollo as an erastês in his encounters with both sexes, and as a god, he is certainly of higher status than Admetus. Yet this story also characterizes him as Admetus’ vassal, and whereas Apollo is an eternal youth, Admetus becomes a married adult. Based on these and other considerations, the Indo-Europeanist Bernard Sergent proposes that Admetus is actually the erastês and initiator of Apollo. My aim is to contest this view and offer an alternative interpretation of the myth, which I believe can be traced back to the sixth century.

No ephebe, Admetus is already a grownup king who has participated in heroic quests like the Calydonian boar hunt and the Argonautic expedition. On the one hand, Apollo helps Admetus win his wife (marriage representing final integration into adult responsibilities) by giving him the chariot yoked to the boar and lion, parallel to Poseidon’s assistance of his former erômenos Pelops. But the marriage is troubled from the very first night, its consummation hindered by the bridal chamber full of snakes (courtesy of Artemis, Apollo’s feminine double); the chthonian character of snakes is familiar, so this motif may be an adumbration of impending death for at least one of the newlyweds. Apollo’s affection for Admetus continues even after Admetus’ marriage, and Apollo offers to make him immortal, even as Zeus did Ganymede (see Pindar, Olympian 10.102-5). But this reward comes at the price of Admetus finding another human willing to die in his stead, and of course Alcestis is the only one devoted enough to do so. So immortal life with Apollo is possible only with the death of Admetus’ mortal wife. In effect, Apollo’s abiding love for Admetus requires the removal of the wife who is his rival. But Apollo’s plan is foiled when Heracles (who Plutarch, Amat. 761e, tells us was also a former lover of Admetus) brings Alcestis back to him, granting Admetus a more lasting and secure marriage than the one Apollo had initially delivered. The tension between Heracles and Apollo goes back to the myth of their struggle over the Delphic tripod. In the present story, they share the attribute of having been condemned to humiliating service to a master of lower status than themselves. The distinction between Heracles and Apollo as rival former lovers is between the lover who matures into a bearded super-hero and is willing to let his former beloved mature into a married man, and the perpetually young, never-bearded god who can never quite move beyond his attachment to the beloved, first helping him marry but then undermining the gift by effectively taking it back.

If my interpretation of this myth is correct, it must be seen within the framework of the other myths about Apollo’s troubled and largely unsuccessful romances. While the pre-Hellenistic provenance of an erotic connection between Apollo and Admetus cannot be proven, the story’s narrative coherence in these terms is so compelling that one suspects an earlier genesis; also suggestive are its close narrative and geographical connection with the story of Apollo’s unsuccessful love for Coronis (demonstrated in Wilamowitz’ reconstruction of this section of the Hesiodic Catalogue) and its parallelism with the story of Hermes’ tending the flocks of Dryops out of love for his daughter (H. Hymn to Pan 32-35). The topos of love as a form of slavery in late archaic lyric and the multiplication of stories about Apollo’s problematic love life during this period both point to late archaic or early classical origins. Some iconographical evidence also suggests the connection of Apollo and Admetus was erotic long before Callimachus.