In Greek mythology, Helios (Ancient Greek: Ἡλιος), which is latinized as Helius (HELIVS), was the original sun god and personification of the sun of the Greek pantheon. He resided in a palace in Anatolia, now Turkey (named for 'Ανατολη, meaning "east" or "sunrise"). He is the child of Hyperion and Theia, and is the brother of Selene and Eos.
Family[]
Helios was a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia. His siblings were Selene and Eos. His most famous consort was the nymph Perse, due to their offspring, Circe, Pasiphae, Aeetes, and Perses. With Clymene he had the Heliades and Phaethon were also his children. However, he also has many wives and children.
Description[]
Helios is the son of Hyperion and Theia and the only brother of the goddesses Eos and Selene. If the order of mention in poetry of the three siblings is meant to be taken as their birth order, then out of the four authors that give him and his sisters a birth order, Hesiod and Hyginus make him the oldest child, Pseudo-Apollodorus the middle, and the poet of the Homeric Hymn to Helios the youngest. Helios was not among the regular and more prominent deities, rather he was a more shadowy member of the Olympian circle, despite the fact that he was among the most ancient. From his lineage, Helios might be described as a second generation Titan. He is associated with harmony and order, both literally in the sense of the movement of celestial bodies and metaphorically in the sense of bringing order to society.
Homer within the Odyssey calls him Helios Hyperion (meaning "the Sun up over"), with Hyperion utilized in a patronymic sense to Helios. Within the Odyssey, Theogony and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Helios is once in each work called Ὑπεριονίδης (Hyperionídēs, "the child of Hyperion") and this illustration is taken after by numerous afterward artists, such as Pindar, who recognize between Helios and Hyperion; in afterward writing the two divine beings are unmistakably father and child. In writing, it isn't unprecedented for creators to utilize "Hyperion's bright child" rather than his legitimate title when alluding to the Sun. He is associated with agreement and order, both within the sense of society and the exacting development of the ethereal bodies; in this respect, he takes after Apollo a part, a god he was exceptionally frequently recognized with.
Helios is usually depicted as a handsome young man crowned with the shining aureole of the Sun, which traditionally had twelve rays, symbolising the twelve months of the year. Beyond his Homeric Hymn, not many texts describe his physical appearance; Euripides describes him as χρυσωπός (khrysо̄pós) meaning "golden-eyed/faced" or "beaming like gold", Mesomedes of Crete writes that he has golden hair, and Apollonius Rhodius that he has light-emitting, golden eyes. According to Roman poet Ovid, he dressed in tyrian purple robes and sat on a throne of bright emeralds. In ancient artefacts (such as coins, vases, or reliefs) he is presented as a beautiful, full-faced youth with wavy hair, wearing a crown adorned with the sun's rays.
His sun powered crown customarily had twelve beams, symbolizing the twelve months of the year. He was more often than not spoken to clothed, his confront to some degree full. In the Homeric Hymn to Helios, Helios is said to drive the brilliant chariot drawn by steeds; and Pindar talks of Helios's "fire-darting steeds". Still afterward, the steeds were given fire related names: Pyrois ("The Searing One"), Aeos ("he of the day break"), Aethon ("Bursting"), and Phlegon ("Burning").
As mentioned above, the imagery surrounding a chariot-driving solar deity is likely Indo-European in origin and is common to both early Greek and Near Eastern religions. The most punctual creative representations of the "chariot god" come from the Parthian period (3rd century) in Persia where there is proof of ceremonies being performed for the sun god by Magi, showing a cult of Helios and Mithras.
Helios is seen as both a personification of the Sun and the fundamental creative power behind it, and as a result is often worshiped as a god of life and creation. His literal "light" is often assorted with a metaphorical vitality, and other ancient texts give him the epithet "gracious" (ἱλαρός). The comic playwright Aristophanes in his Nephelae describes Helios as "the horse-guider, who fills the plain of the earth with exceeding bright beams, a mighty deity among gods and mortals." One passage recorded in the Greek Magical Papyri says of Helios, "the earth flourished when you shone forth and made the plants fruitful when you laughed and brought to life the living creatures when you permitted." He is said to have helped create animals out of primeval mud.
Mythology[]
As a god of the sun[]
Helios was imagined as a god driving his chariot from east to west each day, pulled by four white steeds. Within the antiquated world individuals were not as well vexed over how his chariot flew through the sky, as they did not imagine the Earth as a sphere, so Helios would not be voyaging around a globe in an circle; or maybe he crossed the sky from east to west each morning in a straight heading. The chariot and his steeds are specified by not one or the other Homer nor Hesiod, the most punctual work in which they are verified being the Homeric Hymn to Helios. In spite of the fact that the chariot is ordinarily said to be the work of Hephaestus, Hyginus states that it was Helios himself who built it. In one Greek vase portray, Helios shows up riding across the ocean within the glass of the Delphic tripod which shows up to be a sun based reference. His chariot is depicted as gold or pink in colour. The Horae, goddesses of the seasons, are portion of his entourage and offer assistance him burden his chariot.
In Homer, he is said to go beneath the soil at dusk, but it isn't clear whether this means he voyages through Tartarus. Athenaeus in his Deipnosophistae relates that, at the hour of nightfall, Helios climbs into a extraordinary cup of strong gold in which he passes from the Hesperides within the most remote west to the arrive of the Ethiops, with whom he passes the dull hours. Agreeing to Athenaeus, Mimnermus said that within the night Helios voyages eastwards with the utilize of a bed (too made by Hephaestus) in which he rests, instead of a glass, and composes that "Helios picked up a portion of work for all his days", as there's no rest for either him or his horses.
Within the extraordinary east and west lived individuals who tended to his steeds in their slows down, individuals for whom summer and warm were ceaseless and ripeful. The sun god is portrayed as being "energetic in his ventures" as he rehashes the same handle day after day for an eternity. On a few occasions in mythology the ordinary sun powered plan is disturbed; he was requested not to rise for three days amid the conception of Heracles, and made the winter days longer in arrange to see upon Leucothoe, Athena's birth was an event so amazing that Helios ended his steeds and remained still within the sky for a long while, as paradise and earth both trembling at the infant goddess' sight. Within the Iliad Hera who bolsters the Greeks, makes him set prior than regular against his will amid battle, and afterward still amid the same war, after his sister Eos's child Memnon was killed, she made him unhappy, causing his light to blur, so she can be able to openly take her son's body undetected by the army, as his sister mourns for her son. The Ancient Greeks said that the days were longer in the summer, due to Helios watching beautiful nymphs dancing. When the nights were longer in winter, it was said that Helios was spending more time with his current lover.
The Island of Rhodes[]
Concurring to Pindar, when the divine beings separated the soil among them, Helios was missing, and in this way he got no land in his control. He complained to Zeus, who offered to separate the soil again, but Helios denied the offer, for he had seen an unused arrive developing from the profound of the ocean; a wealthy, beneficial arrive for people and great for cattle as well. Helios inquired for this island to be given to him, and Zeus concurred to it, with Lachesis (one of the three Fates) raising her hands to affirm the vow. In another myth, it was Helios himself who made the island rise from the ocean when he caused the water which had flooded it to vanish. He named it Rhodes, after his current consort Rhode (the daughter of Poseidon and Aphrodite or Amphitrite or Halia), and it got to be the god's sacred island, where he was regarded over all other divine beings. With Rhode Helios sired seven children, known as the Heliadae ("children of the Sun"), who got to be the primary rulers of the island, as well as one girl, Electryone.
Colossus of Rhodes[]
The Colossus of Rhodes was a massive statue built around the year 408 B.C. in honor of Helios. It was located in the northern end of the Rhodes island.
Phaethon[]
The foremost well known story around Helios is the one including his child Phaethon. Phaethon was Helios' child by Clymene, or then again Rhode or Prote. In one adaptation of the story, Phaethon is Helios' grandson, instead of child, through his father Clymenus. In Euripides' misplaced play Phaethon, Phaethon is the item of an illegal contact between his mother Clymene (who's hitched to Merops, ruler of Aethiopia) and Helios, in spite of the fact that she claimed that her legal spouse was the spouse of her children. Clymene uncovers the truth to her son, and inclinations her child to travel east to induce affirmation from his father after she advises him that Helios guaranteed to allow their child any wish when he rested with her.
In a surviving part from the play, Helios goes with his child in his ill-fated travel within the skies, attempting to allow him enlightening on how to drive the chariot whereas he rides on a unused horse named Sirius, as somebody, maybe a paedagogus illuminates Clymene of Phaethon's destiny.
In some stories, Ephaphus, a son of Zeus, mocks Phaethon's claim to be a son of the great Helios. Clymene told Phaethon to travel to Helios' palace in the east to receive confirmation as a son of Helios. Helios welcomed his son and sweared on the river Styx to give him any wish of his. Phaethon wished to ride the chariot of Helios for a day. In spite of the fact that Helios cautions his child of how unsafe and deplorable this would be, and keeps asking Phaethon to reexamine his wish, he is all things considered incapable to alter Phaethon's intellect or disavow his guarantee. Phaethon takes the reins in his father's frightfulness, and drives the chariot with disastrous comes about; the soil burns when he voyages too low, and freezes when he takes the chariot too high. Zeus, in arrange to spare the world, strikes Phaethon with a lightning, murdering him. Helios, in his distress and denied of all light out of melancholy, denies to continue his work, but he returns to his assignment and obligation at the offer of the other divine beings, as well as Zeus' dangers. He at that point takes his outrage out on his four steeds, whipping them in anger for causing his son's passing. Some sources say that this is how Apollo began to be the sun god.
Notes[]
- Helios was originally the personification and god of the sun but when the Romans conquered Greece their influence of syncretism made Apollo combine with Helios; however, both of them can be the gods of the sun, just like Oceanus and Poseidon are gods of the sea.
Gallery[]
.jpg "200px-Colosse de Rhodes (Barclay).jpg (20 KB)")
.jpg "220px-0 Alexander-Helios Capitolini (1).jpg (11 KB)")
![Vulcan (Hephaestus) surprises Venus (Aphrodite) and Mars (Ares) by Johann Heiss (1679) [Helios pictured in the top center on a golden chariot pulled by a horse].](/wiki/File:Vulcan_Surprises_Venus_and_Mars.jpeg "Vulcan Surprises Venus and Mars.jpeg (913 KB)")
See also[]
References[]
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| Titans | |
|---|---|
| Parents | Ouranós • Gaîa |
| Elder Titans | Coeus • Crius • Cronus • Hyperion • Iapetus • Oceanus |
| Elder Titanesses | Phoebe • Mnemosyne • Rhea • Theia • Themis • Tethys |
| Coeonides | Asteria • Leto |
| Crionides | Astraeus • Pallas • Perses |
| Hyperionides | Eos • Hḗlios • Selene |
| Iapetonides | Atlas • Epimetheus • Menoetius • Prometheus |
| Oceanides | Oceanids (Clymene • Metis • Styx • Rhode) • Potamoi |
| Third Generation | Hecate • Astraea • Anemoi • Astra Planeta • Kratos • Nike • Bia • Zelus |
| Miscellaneous Titans | Dione • Anytos • Ophion • Eurynome (wife of Ophion) • Lelantos • Melisseus • Titan (brother of Helios) • Olymbros • Syceus • Titanic Muses |
| Topics | Overthrowing of Ouranós • Titanomachy |