Ganymede was just a good-looking teenage boy from Troy tending his sheep on the outskirts of town when Zeus took the form of an eagle, swooped him up, and took him back to Mt Olympus to work as a cupbearer to the gods. This episode is often referred to as ‘The Rape of Ganymede’ because it was understood that a cupbearer would be involved in a pederastic relationship, that is, a sexual relationship between two males, one of them being a minor. Zeus later put Ganymede in the sky as the constellation Aquarius (the water-bearer).
By turning himself into some object or animal, Zeus raped four mortals (Ganymede, Io, Leda, and Danae). Correggio painted each rape, although the paintings are split up all over Europe.