Ambrosia and Nectar
Ambrosia and nectar are the substances that sustain the Olympian gods in Greek mythology and mark the boundary between divine and mortal bodies.
Sections on this page
In Practice
Ambrosia is generally treated as the gods' food and nectar as their drink, though several sources reverse the pairing or use the two words almost interchangeably, and Homer is not fully consistent about which is which. What both agree on is function: neither is ordinary sustenance, and consuming either is bound up with immortality and with a body that does not age or decay. Homer uses ambrosia for more than eating. Horses are rubbed and fed with it, wounds and bodies are anointed with it to keep them undecayed, and Hera bathes in it before dressing to seduce Zeus, treating it as something closer to a divine cosmetic than a meal. Nectar, meanwhile, is regularly poured at the gods' feasts, and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter shows what happens when a mortal is offered it: Demeter, in disguise, attempts to make the infant Demophon immortal by anointing him with ambrosia and holding him in the fire by night, and the attempt is interrupted and fails only because his mother walks in and screams in fear. The episode captures the danger the ancient sources attach to the substances: they are not simply a reward, they are genuinely transformative, and administering them to a mortal without full ritual completion, or without the gods' sanction, is treated as a serious act with real consequences rather than an innocent gift. Pindar tells a harsher version of the same danger from the opposite direction: Tantalus, a mortal permitted to dine at the gods' own table, stole nectar and ambrosia from it to share with other mortals, and this theft - taking what belonged strictly to Olympian company outside that company - is the offense Pindar names for the eternal punishment Tantalus suffers in the underworld. Between Demophon's failed elevation and Tantalus's theft, the two best-known ambrosia stories both turn on the same rule: the substances are permitted to cross the line between mortal and divine only under the gods' own control, never a mortal's.
What is the difference between ambrosia and nectar?
The standard division is that ambrosia is the food of the gods and nectar their drink, but Homer does not apply this consistently - in places nectar is anointed on skin the way ambrosia usually is, and some later authors reverse which one is eaten and which is drunk. The two terms function together as a pair marking divine sustenance more than as two sharply distinguished substances.
Homer, Iliad 19.38
Could a mortal become immortal by eating ambrosia?
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter treats this as a real possibility rather than a metaphor: Demeter, disguised as a nurse, tries to make the infant Demophon immortal by anointing him with ambrosia by day and secretly holding him in the hearth fire at night to burn away his mortality. The attempt fails only because his mother interrupts it in fear, which the hymn treats as the mother's mistake rather than proof the method would not have worked.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 235-241
How did the gods get their ambrosia and nectar?
Homer's Odyssey describes doves carrying ambrosia to Zeus, implying it is gathered rather than simply always present on Olympus, and the god Ganymede is later given the role of cupbearer pouring nectar at the gods' feasts, a role the earlier tradition assigns to Hebe. The supply is depicted as an ongoing part of Olympian court life, served and poured at feasts the way wine is served among mortals.
Homer, Odyssey 12.62-63
Was it forbidden to give ambrosia to mortals?
The Demophon episode in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter suggests that the transformation had to be completed properly and, implicitly, with the mother's knowledge and consent - interrupting it partway leaves the child mortal but marked with permanent honor rather than either fully mortal or fully divine. Later tradition treats offering divine food to mortals without sanction as a serious transgression more broadly, in keeping with how strictly Greek myth polices the line between the two conditions.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter 260-274
Did ambrosia and nectar have blood instead of flowing through the gods?
Homer describes the gods as having a substance called ichor instead of blood, explicitly because they eat no bread and drink no wine, living instead on ambrosia and nectar. This is stated directly when the god Aphrodite is wounded in the Iliad and ichor, not blood, flows from the injury, which the poet ties directly to her diet rather than treating it as an unrelated detail.
Homer, Iliad 5.339-342
Where Accounts Differ
- which is food and which is drink
- Homer does not consistently separate ambrosia as food and nectar as drink; some passages anoint skin with nectar or otherwise blur the pairing that later summaries present as fixed.
Where This Appears
Sources
- Homer, Iliad 5.339-342
- Homeric Hymn to Demeter 235-241
- Pindar, Olympian Ode 1