Nectar

Nectar (Greek nektar) was the drink of the gods in Greek mythology, the companion of ambrosia, their food. Homer shows the Olympians drinking it from golden cups at their feasts, and in Pindar it is one of the things that make a being immortal. In Homer it keeps the body of a dead hero from decay and a living one from hunger, and in Pindar’s story Tantalus was punished for stealing it.

Nectar in Homer

In the Iliad the gods drink nectar at their meetings on Olympus. Hephaestus pours sweet nectar from a mixing bowl for the other gods, who laugh as he limps through the hall (Homer, Iliad 1.597–600), and Hebe pours it for them as they sit with Zeus looking down on Troy (Iliad 4.1–3). Homer explains why the gods differ from men: they eat no bread and drink no wine, so they have no blood, and what flows in their veins is ichor, and they are called immortals (Iliad 5.339–342). In the Odyssey, Calypso sets before Hermes a table of ambrosia and mixes red nectar for him (Odyssey 5.91–93); later, when she dines with Odysseus, he is given the food and drink of mortal men while her maids set ambrosia and nectar before the goddess (Odyssey 5.195–199).

Nectar and Ambrosia

Poets usually mention the two together, ambrosia as food and nectar as drink, as Calypso’s table shows. Homer once uses the pair as a figure for a wine so fine that it seems a stream of ambrosia and nectar (Odyssey 9.359). The line is not always drawn so sharply: Hesiod says that the Titans’ hundred-handed opponents Cottus, Briareos, and Gyges, whom Zeus had freed, were given nectar and ambrosia, “the things the gods themselves eat” (Hesiod, Theogony 639–642).

What Nectar Does

In the Iliad nectar and ambrosia are used to preserve and sustain. Thetis drops ambrosia and red nectar into the nostrils of the dead Patroclus so that his flesh will not rot (Iliad 19.38–39). When Achilles refuses food before returning to battle, Athena puts nectar and ambrosia into his breast so that hunger will not weaken him (Iliad 19.347–354). In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Themis feeds the newborn god nectar and ambrosia with her immortal hands after his mother Leto has borne him on Delos (Homeric Hymn 3.123–125). Hesiod also says that a god who swears a false oath on the Styx lies breathless for a year and does not come near nectar and ambrosia (Theogony 793–797).

Tantalus and the Theft of Nectar

Pindar tells a version of the story of Tantalus in which the gods took him to Olympus to feast, and he later stole nectar and ambrosia from the gods and gave it to his drinking companions; with these, Pindar says, the gods had made him immortal. As his punishment Zeus hung a huge stone over his head, which he is always longing to throw off (Pindar, Olympian 1.54–64). In the Odyssey, Odysseus sees Tantalus in the underworld standing in a lake with water up to his chin. When he bends to drink, the water vanishes, and the fruit of the trees above him is blown away by the wind whenever he reaches for it (Odyssey 11.582–592). Homer does not give a reason for the punishment there; the theft of nectar and ambrosia, and the stone, are Pindar’s account.