Antiquities Exhibits

Leda and the Swan is a story and subject in art from Greek mythology in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces or rapes Leda on the same night she slept with her husband King Tyndareus of Sparta. She subsequently bears two children from Zeus, Helen (who later becomes Helen of Troy) and Polydeuces (Pollux, one of the Dioscuri) and two children from Tyndareus, Castor (the other Dioscuri) and Clytemnestra. Castor, being the son of a human male, was mortal while Pollux, being a son of Zeus, was immortal.  But Pollux asked to share his immortality with his half brother so each spent half their time in Hades while the other communed with gods on Olympus. Their unusual conception was just one of several Greek myths in which Zeus seduced or abducted favored mortals while in the form of an animal.  These other tales included Europa and the bull and Ganymede and the eagle.   Various classical writers recorded that bestiality was common in "other" cultures. Herodotu...

These bronze handles have the distinctive shape associated with a type of krater made in Vulci and exported to Etruscan settlements as far away as Spina in Northern Italy. The youths wearing winged boots and holding the bridles of their horses are almost certainly the twin gods, Castur and Pultuce (Roman: Castor and Pollux), the sons of Zeus. The two are known in Etruscan as Tinas Cliniar and as the Roman Dioscuri although in Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini (literally "twins") or Castores, as well as the Tyndaridae or Tyndarid. In Homer's Iliad, Castor, the horse breaker, and Polydeuces, the boxer, are brothers to Helen of Troy and are both mortals who have died. ("... there are two commanders I do not see, / Castor the horse breaker and the boxer / Polydeuces, my brothers ...") – Helen, Iliad 3.253–255 But, as described by Pindar, the two, born of the same mother, were only half-brothers, however. Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king ...