AMALTHEA, in pagan mythology, the daughter of Melissus, king of Crete, and the nurse of Jupiter, whom she fed with goat's milk and honey. According to others, Amalthea was a goat, which Jupiter translated into the sky, with her two kids, and gave one of her horns to the daughters of Melissus, as a reward for the pains they had taken in attending him. This horn had the peculiar property of furnishing them with whatever they wished for; and was thence called the cornucopia, or horn of plenty.