#and if anyone's thinking about being unpleasant about Zeus and Ganymede on this post

[littlesparklight]

Is Ganymede's age ever said in any of the ancient texts? I've heard people say he's 12-13 without any sources to back that up

Generally, not really.

In most Greek sources where he's mentioned, it's usually his name and "son" (of whoever he's imagined to be son of, as this varies, but usually and in the oldest sources, Tros). At best you're sometimes gonna get the "youth" designation; meirakion/ephebe, or even a more general "spring-tide/flowering time".

Even if "child", that is, pais, is used, it doesn't really mean Ganymede would be imagined to be pre-pubescent.

Pais can be used as an endearment for a teenager, or even a general descriptor of someone who's not considered an adult (that is ~21 and older) yet. The meirakion "age-bracket" was somewhere between mid-teens to 20/21. In the Aeneid, when at one point a scene with him on a cloak is described, "puer" is used. Generally translated as "boy" (but, male slaves would be called this their whole lives, because they are not considered to be real/adult men at any point), the word-tool/dictionary attached to Perseus tells me the word applies to (citizen) boys generally up to seventeen.

The thing is, of course, that Ganymede is considered the ~exemplary~ youth and eromenos in Greek myth and cultural thought.

A youth was suitable to be an eromenos as long as he hadn't gotten facial hair (the first down of it marked the beginning of the downfall, so to speak, but there's a lot of lyricism to that whole moment). In reality, facial hair can be real slow to appear, but generally, again, what the Greek sensibility for this was that things stopped being proper at around 20-21 at most (with citizen youths, I have to point out. Slaves are free game whether boys or men). The poet Strato/n, somewhere in the early centuries post-0, has a poem where the end point is seventeen ("it is not mine to seek, but rather Zeus'"), and that anyone looking for a youth older than this is looking for someone who can take his turn in fucking, basically. The lower age of what's "acceptable" is, however, floating, and probably very much depended on whether the individual was free or slave, etc.

Visual art has Ganymede depicted what's probably meant to indicate somewhere between younger teens to older teenager. Though even when he's as tall as Zeus, he's usually portrayed more slender than athletic youths of equivalent age.

As for absolutely anything that implies a younger Ganymede in text, Lucian's Dialogue of the Gods has a conversation between Zeus and Ganymede where Ganymede is very clearly 12-13 at most. Probably even younger, by the way he talks.

Lucian, however, is a satirist. Most of his stuff must definitely be looked at with that in mind. On the other hand, in Roman times it seems like it was acceptable to use slave boys that young and even much younger. And the Warren Cup as what's been called a "Greek" side and a "Roman" side. The Greek side has a young man who's very clearly upper teens at the very least having sex with an older, bearded man. The Roman side has what's equally clearly a rather young boy in the arms of a clean-shaven older man.

Anyway, my personal opinion is if you use Lucian's Dialogue (cited or uncited as these people do) as your only jumping-off point on insisting that Ganymede is absolutely and only ever intended to be 12-13, you're wrong.

Not that you can't say he is that young, if that's the shock value you want to go for. And not like, if your interpretation of Zeus and Ganymede's relationship is nothing but sexual assault, that it would be "better" even if Ganymede was imagined to be 17-20.

But mostly the point is that no, there's no solid age for Ganymede set anywhere. More a sliding scale of possibility, that probably leans more towards the mid-older teens than younger, in general.