In Greek mythology, Tithonus or Tithonos (Ancient Greek:
Τιθωνός) was the lover of Eos, Titan of the dawn, who was known
in Roman mythology as Aurora. Tithonus was a Trojan by birth,
the son of King Laomedon of Troy by a water nymph named Strymo
(Στρυμώ). The mythology reflected by the fifth-century vase-
painters of Athens envisaged Tithonus as a rhapsode, as the lyre
in his hand, on an oinochoe of the Achilles Painter, ca. 470
BC–460 BCE (illustration) attests. Competitive singing, as in
the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, is also depicted vividly in the
Homeric Hymn to Apollo and mentioned in the two Hymns to
Aphrodite. Eos kidnapped Ganymede and Tithonus, both from the
royal house of Troy, to be her lovers. The mytheme of the
goddess's mortal lover is an archaic one; when a role for Zeus
was inserted, a bitter new twist appeared: according to the
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, when Eos asked Zeus to make Tithonus
immortal, she forgot to ask for eternal youth (218-38). Tithonus
indeed lived forever - "but when loa