Olympian Gods dining with mortals at the wedding of Thetis and Pelleus by Hendrick van Balen and Jan Brueghal the elder

Ambrosia: the ancient mystery food of the Olympian Gods

Nymphs, immortality and eternal damnation

A Renaissance Writer
7 min readJun 10, 2020

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No pantheon of Gods is arguably as famous as the Olympian Gods. The stories told about them have been passed down to us over millennia and still remain some of the best and most influential pieces of work ever written. But to the people of the time, these Gods were not just stories, but real, living beings that held sway over their everyday lives. Understanding them wasn’t just a matter of history and culture, but of faith. Yet, even amongst the Greeks themselves there were disagreements and alternative versions. One often overlooked example of this; what did the Olympians eat?

The Olympians

The Twelve Olympians

Defining the Olympian Gods is a Herculean task in and of itself. Over the millennia, stories have been changed, words lost in translation and records either displaced or destroyed. Likewise, what we think of as Ancient Greece, drew heavily from Mycenaean Greece, a period of time before the Greek Dark Ages, when many of the stories we associate with Ancient Greece are actually set.

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A Renaissance Writer

I love all things Italian Renaissance, cooking and writing. I can often be found reading, drinking espresso and working on too many things at once