#alektryon

[deathlessathanasia]

I found 2 different translations of Lucian talking about the myth of Ares and Alectryon. One says 'an adolescent boy, beloved of Ares, who kept the god company at drinking parties, overindulged with him, and was his companion in lovemaking' which obviously means that Ares and Alectryon were sleeping together. But the other one says ‘a young man called Alectryon; he was a friend of Ares,— used to join in his revels and junketings, and give him a hand in his love affairs.’ which doesn’t seem to imply anything sexual between the two of them. Do you know which one is correct?

The passage in question (καὶ κοινωνοίη τῶν ἐρωτικῶν) basically says, as far as I can discern, that Alektryon participated in Ares' love matters. I'm not quite sure if this should be interpreted as him actually being a sexual partner of Ares given that immediately after this we are told what Alektryon's role was in such matters, namely guarding the room where Ares was having sex with Aphrodite and waking him up before sunrise. I guess it's possible, but I'd be much more certain of such a reading without the provided context. Of course, he definitely could've been both Ares' boy toy and his helper in his sexual affairs, but one of these things is made clear in the text while the other is, I feel, more a matter of interpretation. I'm unfathomably far from being any sort of expert in Greek though, so maybe there are some nuances I'm missing.

[deathlessathanasia]

Was looking into some alektryon and the wiki says he's described as an adolescent, is this true in all myths? Is this true at all I really don't trust wikipedia that much.

In lucian's "The Rooster", Alektryon is described as νεανίσκος, meaning "youth", "young man", someone in the prime of life. What that means more precisely is up to interpretation I guess. I don't recall another source that references his age.

[deathlessathanasia]

„The rooster is a bird that used to be a man. But when he was a man, he was a spear-bearer for Ares. Ares would entrust him with the bedroom doors when he wronged Hephaestus and his marriage bed; it was his job to knock on the doors just before dawn, so that Ares would not be caught in the act of adultery. And so both of them fell asleep, both the servant and the master, and at daybreak the deed became known. So the soldier was turned into a bird, suffering this as his punishment. And many things reveal the former soldier: the crest, the temperament, the spurs. And in memory of why he suffered this, before the Sun god yokes his chariot he drives away men’s sleep through song.”

- Libanius, Narration 26: On Alectryon