Amalthea's Horn

Amalthea’s Horn, better known as the cornucopia or horn of plenty, was the horn of the goat (or, in some versions, the nymph) Amalthea, who nursed the infant Zeus in Crete. According to the ancient sources, the horn was broken off and then filled with fruit, and later it came to mean a source of unending food and drink.

The Infant Zeus in Crete

When Rhea gave birth to Zeus, she hid him in Crete so that his father Cronus would not find and swallow him as he had his other children. Hesiod says that Rhea brought the child by night to Lyctus and hid him in a steep cave on wooded Mount Aegaeon (Theogony 477–484). Apollodorus puts the birth in a cave on Dicte and says that Rhea gave the baby to the Curetes and to the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus. The nymphs fed him on the milk of Amalthea, while the Curetes in arms clashed their spears on their shields so that Cronus could not hear the child’s voice (Apollodorus, Library 1.1.6–7). The ancient writers disagreed about the place: Apollodorus names a cave on Dicte, Hesiod Mount Aegaeon, and Diodorus Mount Ida, where the Curetes took the child to a cave and gave him to the nymphs (Library of History 5.70.2–4).

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Who Was Amalthea?

Most writers make Amalthea a goat. Callimachus says that Zeus was laid in a golden cradle, and that he sucked the rich teat of the she-goat Amaltheia and ate honeycomb (Hymn 1.46–50). Diodorus says that the nymphs fed him on honey and milk from the goat Amaltheia, and that Zeus later gave the goat a place of honor and took the surname Aegiochus from it (Library of History 5.70.3–6).

In other versions Amalthea is a nymph. Ovid calls her a Naiad nymph who hid Zeus in the woods of Crete and kept a goat with beautiful horns, which gave milk for the god (Fasti 5.115–120). Hyginus reports the poet Musaeus as saying that Zeus was nursed by Themis and the nymph Amalthea, who kept a pet goat, while another writer, Parmeniscus, makes Amalthea the goat herself, given to the daughters of Melisseus (Astronomica 2.13).

The Broken Horn

Ovid tells how the horn was broken. The goat had curved horns arching back over her back. She gave milk to the god, but one of her horns broke against a tree. The nymph picked up the broken horn, wrapped it in fresh herbs, filled it with fruit, and carried it to Zeus. When Zeus had taken power in heaven, he made both his nurse and her fertile horn into stars, and the horn still bears its mistress’s name (Ovid, Fasti 5.111–128). Ovid also says that Zeus made the nurse a star, the Olenian goat Capella, as reward for her milk (Fasti 5.111–114).

The Hide and the Aegis

Hyginus tells that, when Zeus prepared for war against the Titans, an oracle told him to fight covered with the skin of a goat and the head of the Gorgon, which the Greeks called the aegis. After he won the kingdom, he covered the goat’s remaining bones with a goat skin, gave them life and set them among the stars (Hyginus, Astronomica 2.13). In Homer the aegis is carried by Athena, with the Gorgon’s head on it, and it is called the sign of Zeus the aegis-bearer (Iliad 5.738–742).

The Horn of Achelous

Another story identifies the horn of plenty with the horn of the river-god Achelous. When Heracles fought Achelous for Deianira, the god changed into a bull and Heracles broke off one of his horns (Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.80–86). The Naiads filled it with fruit and fragrant flowers and consecrated it, and it became the horn of Plenty (Metamorphoses 9.87–88). In Apollodorus, Achelous recovered his horn by giving Heracles the horn of Amalthea, a daughter of Haemonius, which had a bull’s horn that, according to Pherecydes, supplied food and drink in abundance (Library 2.7.5). Diodorus gives a rationalized account in which the horn stands for a river channel dug by Heracles that made the Aetolian land fertile (Library of History 4.35.3–4).