Endymion's moon and Jupiter's plural moons
To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon
Endymion is the beautiful mortal loved by the Moon. In the account transmitted under Apollodorus's name, Zeus grants him a choice and he chooses an everlasting, ageless sleep (Library 1.7.5; inspected English witness: J. G. Frazer's 1921 translation). Apollodorus, Library, Book I. Chesterton turns that supernatural love story into an image for the strangeness of ordinary sexual love. His next clause switches from the personified Moon to the astronomical moons of Jupiter, making the planet into a polygamous household. The joke depends on that change of register: the existence of love should, in his argument, overwhelm resentment at having only one partner. The myth identifies the imaginative example; it does not itself establish Chesterton's case for monogamy.
Sources
Revision 1 of 1 · 2026-11-07 · Suggest an edit