Sun

The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System and one of more than a hundred billion stars in our galaxy. To the Greeks it was also a god: Helios, son of the Titan Hyperion, who drove a chariot across the sky each day and saw everything that happened on earth.

The Sun’s mass accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Its effect on life on Earth has been recognised since prehistoric times, and many cultures have regarded it as a deity. The Greeks called the god of the Sun Helios, the Romans called him Sol.

Helios

Parents and Family

Helios was one of the children of the Titans Hyperion and Thea. Hesiod (Theogony 371–374) says that Thea, joined in love with Hyperion, bore great Helios, bright Selene (the Moon) and Eos (the Dawn). The Homeric Hymn to Helios (31) gives his mother’s name as Euryphaessa, Hyperion’s own sister. His sister Selene is the goddess of the Moon, and the story of the two is told on the page on the Moon.

Helios became the father of several well-known figures. With Perseis (Perse), a daughter of Ocean, he had Circe and Aeetes (Hesiod, Theogony 956–958; Homer, Odyssey 10.135–139); Aeetes, in turn, married Idyia, a daughter of Ocean, and was the father of Medea (Theogony 958–962). Apollodorus adds Pasiphae, the wife of Minos and mother of the Minotaur, as a third child of Helios and Perseis (Library 1.9.1). In the Odyssey the nymphs Phaethusa and Lampetia, who keep his herds, are his daughters by Neaera (12.131–133). Phaethon and the Heliades were his children by Clymene (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.750–779). Apollodorus (1.9.16) lists Augeas, “son of the Sun”, among the Argonauts.

Aeetes ruled Colchis, where the Golden Fleece hung in a grove of Ares (Apollodorus 1.9.1), and Circe lived on the island of Aeaea, where Odysseus met her. Medea, his granddaughter, escaped from Corinth in a chariot drawn by winged dragons that Helios gave her (Apollodorus 1.9.28; Euripides, Medea 1321–1322).

Apollonius of Rhodes adds that Hephaestus built wonders for Aeetes – four ever-flowing fountains of milk, wine, oil and water, bronze-footed fire-breathing bulls and an adamant plough – in thanks to Helios, who had carried the god off in his chariot when he was faint from the battle at Phlegra (Argonautica 3.215–234). Aeetes recalls riding in his father’s chariot when Helios carried Circe to the Tyrrhenian coast of the west, where she still lived (Argonautica 3.309–313), and the horses of his own chariot were a gift of Helios, swift as the wind (Argonautica 4.220–223).

The Chariot of the Sun

The Homeric Hymn to Helios (31) shows the god riding in his golden-yoked chariot, drawn by stallions, gazing piercingly from under a golden helmet while bright rays beam from him and a fine-spun garment flutters about him. He shines on gods and men alike. He halts his horses at the highest point of heaven, and then drives them down again through the sky to Ocean. Later poets elaborated the picture, but the basic idea, that the Sun crosses the sky in a chariot, is already there in the hymn.

The God Who Sees Everything

Because he sees the whole earth, Helios is the one who reports what he has witnessed. In the Odyssey (8.267–271) he sees Aphrodite and Ares lying together and goes to tell Hephaestus. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (62–89), Hecate brings the searching goddess to Helios, “watchman of both gods and men”, and they stand before his horses; he tells Demeter that Zeus gave Persephone to Hades.

The Cattle of Helios

The best-known story about the god in Homer is the one about his cattle, told in Odyssey 12. On the island of Thrinacia Helios kept herds of cattle and sheep that were immortal. Odysseus, warned by Teiresias and by Circe, wanted to sail past, but his men, who were hungry, killed some of the cattle while he slept. Lampetia brought the news to Helios, who demanded of Zeus that the men be punished, saying that unless they paid for what they had done he would go down to Hades and shine among the dead (Odyssey 12.374–383). Zeus struck the ship with a thunderbolt, and all of the men were lost except for Odysseus.

After the wreck, Odysseus drifted alone until he reached Ogygia, the island of Calypso (Odyssey 12.447–450). In the story, Helios is a god who must be satisfied, and even Zeus answers his complaint.

Phaethon

Ovid tells in the Metamorphoses (1.750–2.400) how Phaethon, the son of the sun god, came to the palace of his father and asked to drive the chariot for a day. His father, who had sworn to give him whatever he asked, warned him of the dangers of the road but could not refuse. Phaethon lost control of the horses, scorched the earth and the sky, and was struck down by Jupiter’s thunderbolt, falling into the river Eridanus. His sisters, the Heliades, wept for him, and were turned into poplar trees. Ovid calls the sun god Phoebus, which shows how closely Helios and Apollo had become identified among the Romans.

Rhodes and the Worship of the Sun

The island of Rhodes belonged to Helios. In Pindar’s seventh Olympian ode (54ff) the gods were dividing the earth by lot and Helios was not present; when he returned he asked for no share, because he had seen an island rising from the sea, and Zeus and Lachesis swore that the island would be his. There Helios lay with the nymph Rhodos, who bore him seven sons, the Heliadae (Olympian 7.71–76). The island’s great bronze statue of the god, the Colossus of Rhodes, was described by Pliny the Elder (Natural History 34.18) as seventy cubits high and already thrown down by an earthquake in his day.

Helios and Apollo

Helios and Apollo were different gods in early Greek tradition. Later writers more and more often identified them, and Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods 2.68) reports the view that Apollo is the Sun and Diana the Moon; Ovid simply calls the sun god Phoebus. The Romans called the god Sol.

See Also: Moon, Selene, Hyperion, Thea, Eos, Phaethon, Heliades, Aeetes