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Achelous and Hercules: Amalthea

There is another account of the origin of the Cornucopia. Jupiter at his birth was committed by his mother Rhea to the care of the daughters of Melisseus, a Cretan king. They fed the infant deity with the milk of the goat Amalthea. Jupiter broke off one of the horns of the goat and gave it to his nurses, and endowed it with the wonderful power of becoming filled with whatever the possessor might wish.

The name of Amalthea is also given by some writers to the mother of Bacchus. It is thus used by Milton, "Paradise Lost," Book IV.: "... That Nyseian isle, Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham, Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Libyan Jove, Hid Amalthea and her florid son, Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye."