Magic sphere showing the God Helios, a lion, a dragon, and magic symbols, from Acropolis, Athens, Greece (2nd-3rd century CE). (771k)
From the Helios entry in Wikipedia:
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Helios is the god and personification of the Sun (Solar deity). His name is also Latinized as Helius, and he is often given the epithets Hyperion ("the one above") and Phaethon ("the shining"). Helios is often depicted in art with a radiant crown and driving a horse-drawn chariot through the sky. He was a guardian of oaths and also the god of sight. Though Helios was a relatively minor deity in Classical Greece, his worship grew more prominent in late antiquity thanks to his identification with several major solar divinities of the Roman period, particularly Apollo and Sol. The Roman Emperor Julian made Helios the central divinity of his short-lived revival of traditional Roman religious practices in the 4th century CE.
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Personification of the Sun
Helios was envisioned as a god driving his chariot from east to west each day, pulled by four white horses. In the ancient world people were not too troubled over how his chariot flew through the sky, as they did not envision the Earth as a spherical object, so Helios would not be traveling around a globe in an orbit; rather he crossed the sky from east to west each morning in a linear direction. The chariot and his horses are mentioned by neither Homer nor Hesiod, the earliest work in which they are attested being the Homeric Hymn to Helios. Although the chariot is usually said to be the work of Hephaestus, Hyginus states that it was Helios himself who built it. In one Greek vase painting, Helios appears riding across the sea in the cup of the Delphic tripod which appears to be a solar reference. His chariot is described as golden or pink in color. The Horae, goddesses of the seasons, are part of his retinue and help him yoke his chariot. His sister Eos is said to have not only opened the gates for Helios, but would often accompany him as well in his daily swing across the skies. Every day he rose from the Ocean, the great earth-encircling river, carried by his horses:
In Homer, he is said to go under the earth at sunset, but it is not clear whether that means he travels through Tartarus. Athenaeus in his Deipnosophistae relates that, at the hour of sunset, Helios climbs into a great cup of solid gold in which he passes from the Hesperides in the farthest west to the land of the Ethiops, with whom he passes the dark hours. According to Athenaeus, Mimnermus said that in the night Helios travels eastwards with the use of a bed (also created by Hephaestus) in which he sleeps, rather than a cup, and writes that "Helios gained a portion of toil for all his days", as there is no rest for either him or his horses. Just like his chariot and horses, the cup is attested in neither Hesiod nor Homer, first appearing in the Titanomachy, an 8th-century BCE epic poem attributed to Eumelus of Corinth. Tragedian Aeschylus in his lost play Prometheus Unbound (a sequel to Prometheus Bound) describes the sunset as such:
In the extreme east and west lived people who tended to his horses in their stalls, people for whom summer and heat were perpetual and ripeful. The sun god is described as being "tireless in his journeys" as he repeats the same process day after day for an eternity. Palladas sarcastically wrote that "The Sun to men is the god of light, but if he too were insolent to them in his shining, they would not desire even light."
On several instances in mythology the normal solar schedule is disrupted; he was ordered not to rise for three days during the conception of Heracles, and made the winter days longer in order to look upon Leucothoe, Athena's birth was a sight so impressive that Helios halted his steeds and stayed still in the sky for a long while, as heaven and earth both trembling at the newborn goddess' sight. In the Iliad Hera who supports the Greeks, makes him set earlier than usual against his will during battle, and later still during the same war, after his sister Eos's son Memnon was killed, she made him downcast, causing his light to fade, so she could be able to freely steal her son's body undetected by the armies, as he consoled his sister in her grief over Memnon's death. It was said that summer days are longer due to Helios often stopping his chariot mid-air to watch from above nymphs dancing during the summer, and sometimes he is late to rise because he lingers with his consort. If the other gods wish so, Helios can be hastened on his daily course when they wish it to be night.
When Zeus desired to sleep with Alcmene, he made one night last threefold, hiding the light of the Sun, by ordering Helios not to rise for those three days. Satirical author Lucian of Samosata dramatized this myth in one of his Dialogues of the Gods, where the messenger of the gods Hermes goes to Helios on Zeus' orders to tell him not to rise for three days so Zeus can spend much time with Alcmene and sire Heracles. Although Helios reluctantly agrees and wishes best luck, he complains about this decision of the king of gods, finding the reason too weak for humanity to be deprived of sunlight and stay in the dark for so long, and negatively compares Zeus to his father, claiming Cronus never abandoned his marital bed and Rhea for the love of some mortal woman. From the union of Zeus and Alcmene, Heracles was born.
While Heracles was traveling to Erytheia to retrieve the cattle of Geryon for his tenth labor, he crossed the Libyan desert and was so frustrated at the heat that he shot an arrow at Helios, the Sun. Almost immediately, Heracles realized his mistake and apologized profusely (Pherecydes wrote that Heracles stretched his arrow at him menacingly, but Helios ordered him to stop, and Heracles in fear desisted); In turn and equally courteous, Helios granted Heracles the golden cup which he used to sail across the sea every night, from the west to the east because he found Heracles' actions immensely bold. In the versions delivered by Apollodorus and Pherecydes, Heracles was only about to shoot Helios, but according to Panyassis, he did shot and wounded the god. Heracles used this golden cup to reach Erytheia, and after he had taken Geryon's cattle, returned it back to its owner. A late sixth century or early fifth century BCE lekythos depicts Heracles offering a sacrifice on one side, and Helios rising on the other, suggesting that Heracles is sacrificing to the god seeking help from him in order to reach the three-bodied Geryon. On the vase, Helios is rising in his chariot between Eos and Nyx (the Night), represented as swirls of mist, while Heracles is roasting the sacrificial meat next to a lurking dog, identified as Cerberus, guiding the entrance to the Underworld; from this one can infer that the vase depicts the place in the Ocean where the earth, the sky and the sea meet, as the light of Helios is juxtaposed with the darkness of the Underworld, separated by a barrier of mist.
When the brothers Thyestes and Atreus fought over which would get to rule Mycenae, following the death of the previous king, Eurystheus, Atreus suggested that whoever possessed of a splendid golden ram would be declared king. Unbeknownst to Atreus, his unfaithful wife Aerope had given Thyestes the ram, and thus Thyestes became king. Zeus sent Hermes to Atreus, telling Atreus to get Thyestes to agree that should the Sun rise in the west and set in the east, the kingship would be given to Atreus. Thyestes agreed, and Helios indeed rose where he usually set, and set where he usually rose, not standing the unfairness of Thyestes' actions. The Mycenaeans then bowed to the man who had accomplished such a achievement and reversed the course of the Sun. According to Plato, Helios at first used to rise in the west and set in the east, and only changed that after the incident of the golden ram, as did the other celestial bodies which followed suit.
Solar eclipses were phenomena of fear as well as wonder in Ancient Greece, and were seen as the Sun abandoning humanity. According to a fragment of Archilochus, it is Zeus who blocks Helios and makes him disappear from the sky; "Zeus the Olympian veiled the light to make it night at midday even as sun was shining: so dread fear has overtaken men" he writes and in one of his paeans, the lyric poet Pindar describes a solar eclipse as the Sun's light being hidden from the world, a bad omen of destruction and doom:
Plutarch in his Moralia writes that it is "through love of the sun that the moon herself makes her circuit, and has her meetings with him to receive from him all fertility". Aristophanes describes a solar eclipse in his play Nephelae that was observed in Athens in 425 BCE.
Some lists, cited by Hyginus, of the names of horses that pulled Helios' chariot, are as follows. Scholarship acknowledges that, despite differences between the lists, the names of the horses always seem to refer to fire, flame, light and other luminous qualities.
Hyginus writes that according to Homer, the horses' names are Abraxas and Therbeeo; but Homer makes no mention of horses or chariot.
Alexander of Aetolia, cited in Athenaeus, related that the magical herb grew on the island Thrinacia, which was sacred to Helios, and served as a remedy against fatigue for the sun god's horses. Aeschrion of Samos informed that it was known as the "dog's-tooth" and was believed to have been sown by Cronus.
According to Pindar, when the gods divided the earth among them, Helios was absent, and thus he got no lot of land. He complained to Zeus about it, who offered to do the division of portions again, but Helios refused the offer, for he had seen a new land emerging from the deep of the sea; a rich, productive land for humans and good for cattle too. Helios asked for this island to be given to him, and Zeus agreed to it, with Lachesis (one of the three Fates) raising her hands to confirm the oath. Alternatively in another tradition, it was Helios himself who made the island rise from the sea when he caused the water which had overflowed it to disappear. He named it Rhodes, after his lover Rhode (the daughter of Poseidon and Aphrodite or Amphitrite), and it became the god's sacred island, where he was honored above all other gods. With Rhode Helios sired seven sons, known as the Heliadae ("sons of the Sun"), who became the first rulers of the island, as well as one daughter, Electryone. Three of their grandsons founded the cities Ialysos, Camiros and Lindos on the island, named after themselves; thus Rhodes came to belong to him and his line, with the autochthonous peoples of Rhodes claiming descend from the Heliadae.
Once Athena was born from Zeus' head, Helios enjoined his children and the rest of the Rhodians to immediately build an altar for the goddess quickly, in order to win her favor (and apparently he disclosed the same to the Atticans too); they did as he told them, however they forgot to bring fire with them to properly do the sacrifice. Zeus, however, sent a golden cloud and rained gold on them, and Athena still graced them with unmatched skill in every art. For this reason, Athena was worshiped in Rhodes with flameless sacrifices; the victim would be slain on the altar of burn offering, but the fire was not set on the altar.
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