Myths about Helios: he is the god of the sun and the prototype of the Colossus of Rhodes. Helios (Helium), sun god, son of the Titans Who is Helios

In the mythology of ancient Greece, everything is very ambiguous. Here, different authors often have their own point of view on the same character, often contradicting the opinion of another author. One of these controversial figures in Greek mythology is Helios in the role of the sun god. The reason to consider him a solar deity is indeed strong, since his name is from the ancient Greek language and means the Sun. According to legend, the solar deity is the son of the titan Hyperion and Theia, according to other sources Hyperion and Irifessa. Helios is the brother of the goddesses Eos and Selene.

Before Euripides, Helios was strongly associated with the sun god. However, over time, and primarily thanks to the work of this playwright, the status of the ancient Greek god of the Sun was gradually assigned to Apollo, a character who also combines a soothsayer and a doctor. Helios and Apollo have another common name - Phoebus, universal for each of them.

An exceptional vision of the same mythical hero is characteristic of almost every ancient Greek author. So, for example, Ferecydes of Syria did not hesitate to identify Helios with Zeus, and Theagenes - simultaneously with Apollo, Hephaestus, as well as with the element of “fire”. According to the tales of Dionysius Scytobrachion, Helios was drowned in the waters of Eridanus as a boy.

If we collect all the ancient Greek sources, it turns out that there were at least five Helios: possibly the same character, but clearly from different parents. One of the Helios is the son of Zeus, and accordingly the grandson of Ether. According to the second version, Helios was the son of Hyperion. According to the third, he was the son of Hephaestus and the grandson of Nile, who lived in Heliopolis. The mother of the fourth Helios was the nymph Akanfo, who gave birth to him on the island of Rhodes. According to this version, Helios descends from the heroic Rhodian ancestors. The fifth Helios was born in Colchis and is the father of Kirka and Aeetes.

In the history of mythical heroes, Helios distinguished himself by complaining to Hephaestus that Aphrodite had cheated on him with Ares, after which Aphrodite became an outcast for all of Helios’ offspring. He also revealed to Demeter the secret that it was Hades who stole her daughter Persephone from her. Apparently, it was almost impossible to hide anything from Helios.

According to Homer, Helios had seven herds of sheep and the same number of herds of cows. As for the cows specifically, they grazed in the most picturesque meadow in Sicily, which belonged to Faetis. The shepherds of these cows were the nymphs Lamptia and Faetis. As befits the Sun himself, Helios rose above the earth every morning to admire his grazing herd of never-aging animals; and in the evening he left for the Ocean. Having landed on the shores of the island of Sicily, either through carelessness or ignorance, Odysseus and his crew killed several bulls that belonged to Helios. Having a habit of complaining, the sun god asked Zeus to at least somehow react to the daring of the navigator. Zeus smashed Odysseus's ship with just his lightning. As we already know, only Odysseus managed to survive.

The cult of the sun god in ancient Greek mythology in the person of Helios was especially widespread in Argos, Corinth, Elis, as well as in Rhodes, where, as has already become known, Helios still admires his grazing cattle. By the way, at the entrance to the harbor of this island there once stood the legendary statue of Helios, better known to contemporaries as the Colossus of Rhodes. For the inhabitants of Rhodes, Helios was not only the most revered deity, but also the creator of this island. Both Helios and Apollo, who took over the baton from him, are almost always depicted in the same way, since they are both united by the solar function. The symbolic animals of Helios were a rooster and a white horse.

Phaeton, Greek - the son of the sun god and the oceanid Clymene.

Phaeton was not inferior to the gods in beauty and pride. Epaphus, the son of Zeus, did not like this, and during some dispute he called Phaethon a descendant of an ordinary mortal. Phaeton was deeply offended by these words, but Epaf's confidence aroused his suspicions, and he went to his mother for an explanation.

Klymene assured Phaeton of his divine origin, and if he, they say, does not believe his mother, then he can go straight to Helios, and let him just try to deny his paternity.

So, Phaeton went to the palace of Helios. The sun god rejoiced at his arrival and publicly declared that Phaethon was his son. But these words did not calm Phaeton. he demanded proof. Helios stood up from his throne and swore by the waters of the River Styx (i.e., the most sacred and unbreakable oath) to fulfill any request of his son in order to dispel his doubts. But Phaeton’s request turned out to be unheard of: he asked to borrow for one day the solar chariot in which Helios makes his way across the sky. Helios was horrified and began to dissuade his son: Phaeton would never be able to cope with the winged horses and the fear that would grip him at an incredible height. But Phaeton stood his ground, and Helios fulfilled his request.

Everything happened exactly as Helios foresaw. The proud young man did not rejoice at his trip for long. The horses immediately sensed that they were being ruled by an unsteady, unfamiliar hand, and left the “eternal well-worn path.” At first they flew too high, to the constellations Scorpio and Taurus, but then they were afraid of the Centaur (constellation Centaurus) and descended to the earth itself. From the heat of the solar chariot, the rivers Tanais (Don), Euphrates, Orontes, Ister (Danube), Tiber began to boil, and the Nile, in fright, fled to the very ends of the world and hid its sources there, so since then no one has been able to find them (and indeed, they were found only in the last century). The fire of Helios's low-flying chariot burned the fertile plains of Arabia, Nubia and the Sahara and turned them into a barren desert. He burned the skin of the inhabitants of Africa, and they remained black forever. Due to the unbearable heat, the seas began to dry up, and the earth began to crack, opening the sun's rays for the first time into the underground kingdom of Hades. Finally, mother earth Gaia turned her face to the sky and menacingly called out to the supreme god Zeus: how long can you delay, the world is about to burn, the heavens will collapse and everything will turn into the original Chaos! The Supreme God intervened and struck Phaeton with Perun, “taming the flame with a furious flame.”

Phaeton's path across the sky was interrupted, otherwise life on earth would have ceased. Of course, he did a lot of trouble, but people could not help but admire his courage. The nymphs, who found the burned ashes of Phaethon on the shore of Eridanus, wrote on his tombstone the words that can be read on monuments to heroes: “Having dared to do great things, he fell.”

This is how Ovid talks about Phaethon in the second book of his Metamorphoses. Only fragments have survived from Euripides' tragedy "Phaethon". The fall of PHAETON is depicted on several antique vases and gems, but best of all on Roman sarcophagi.

Among the works of European artists, the works of Michelangelo, Romano, Tintoretto, Carracci, Rubens, Tiepolo, Poussin, Moreau, Picasso (in the cycle of illustrations for “Metamorphoses”) deserve attention. Solis's series of graphic sheets (c. 1580) served as a model for numerous frescoes in palaces and castles of the 17th and 18th centuries. (for example, in the Wallenstein Palace in Prague - frescoes by Bianco, 1625-1630). The Moravian Gallery in Brno houses the painting “The Fall of Phaeton” by Bruegel and Van Balen, and Solimena’s “Phaethon” is kept in the Prague National Gallery.

Poets and playwrights only in rare cases see in Phaeton an ambitious person who is ready to burn the whole world for his own glory; most see in him a symbol of a person’s desire for high goals.

The opera “Phaeton” was written by Lully, A. Scarlatti, Jommelli, and the symphonic poem “Phaeton” by Saint-Saëns.

The decision of Zeus to strike Phaethon from the sky was also taken into account by modern astronomers in their own way. They named a hypothetical planet between Mars and Jupiter after him; They explain the anomalies in the orbits of asteroids by the death of this planet as a result of an explosion.

Also phaeton is a type of carriage and a type of car body.

The head of lighting and heating among the Greeks was the sun god Helios. He heads the family enterprise, since his two sisters, Selena and Eos, work with him in this field.

Kalimera

Helios himself is a handsome man, with beautiful shining eyes, surrounded by magical light and hair fluttering in the wind.

He usually moves across the sky in a chariot drawn by four dazzling white horses. The skilled Hephaestus forged his chariot. At night, the sun god swims across the Ocean on a golden boat, so that in the morning he will again reveal himself to the world. He also has a luxurious palace, where everything sparkles and shimmers, and in the main hall there is a throne made of semi-precious stones. He is also the proud owner of seven herds of cows and seven herds of sheep. Not for personal gain, but for aesthetic pleasure. Helios begins his working day admiring these herds, which are looked after by two pretty nymphs, and ends it the same way - he likes to watch the beautiful animals graze in the lush meadows of Sicily. Therefore, when Odysseus and his team on occasion ate several individuals from the Helios herds, the sun god ensured that the impudent people were punished. As a result, only Odysseus survived, the rest of the gourmets were burned by lightning along with the ship.

Love affairs

Like other gods of Greece, Helios led a completely hedonistic lifestyle, plucking flowers of innocence here and there. Sometimes his adventures ended sadly. So he became interested in a certain Leucothea, and found nothing better than to dishonor her by taking the form of her own mother. Strange idea. Somehow, Klytia, her sister, who was herself interested in Helios, found out about this. Having become jealous, Clytia handed her sister over to her father. He, shocked by what had happened, buried Leucothea alive in the ground. Clytia, apparently tormented by remorse, died of hunger. The gods brightened up this story a little by turning Leucothea into a branch with incense (aromatic resin), and Clytia into a heliotrope flower. But still, some wild story came out.

Another Helios novel ended no less tragically. He had a lover named Arga, the daughter of Zeus and Hera himself. But this did not help her much when she hurt the pride of the radiant Helios. In the excitement of the hunt, she once exclaimed that even if a deer runs faster than the sun itself, she will still catch up with him. Helios heard, his ego suffered, love died instantly, and he turned Arga into a dog.

Children of the Sun

It must be said that the children of Helios were distinguished by their impudent disposition. So Phaeton, his son, decided that he could handle his father’s transport quite well, and, like many teenagers in the universe, while his father was not at home, he took him for a ride. However, four divine horsepower in the hands of an amateur is a terrible weapon. The phaeton lost control, and the flaming chariot rushed to the ground. The burned Gaia prayed for help to Zeus, who threw his lightning and burned Phaethon (there is also an opinion that Zeus had to arrange a flood to cope with the fire, but this is already someone pouring sweet water into the mill of Zeus’s reputation). The sisters who loved Phaeton, who foolishly harnessed horses for their unlucky brother, grieved so much that they turned into poplars at the site of their brother’s death, and their tears turned into amber.

In general, the children of Helios, called Heliades, lived in Rhodes. They were very gifted; they made a lot of discoveries and useful calculations during their lives. For example, it was they who demarcated time into hours. The most gifted of them was Tenag. Unfortunately, some of the brothers were jealous of his talents and killed him. Because of this, they had to flee the island, while the rest of the brothers remained to live in Rhodes.

Gigantomania and greed

It was not by chance that the children of the sun god settled in Rhodes - it was a place of special worship of Helios. The famous Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of Helios, cast with great skill and considerable labor by a student of Lissipus named Chares. The huge height of the statue at that time, 36 meters, amazed the imagination of the island’s guests. It was visible from afar, because the colossus was installed at the entrance to the harbor of the island's capital. He appeared because the Rhodians believed that Helios actually created Rhodes, carried him out of the depths of the sea in his own hands (of course, for selfish purposes, he needed a place where he would be properly worshiped). Plus, the statue was erected in gratitude to God for helping the local residents when they were attacked by one of the heirs of Alexander the Great.

True, the Colossus stood for less than a century and fell as a result of an earthquake. But it was not the elements that finished off the statue, but the Arabs’ passion for trade. When they captured the island, they did not preserve the statue that had been lying on the shore for more than a thousand years, and sold Helios for metal. However, this happened at a time when Helios no longer had power, and the lightning of retribution did not fly at anyone.

Calispera

Helios' sister, Selene, is the goddess of the moon. She is very loved by poets and lovers. Winged, wearing a golden crown, she moves across the sky, spilling soft light over the land and sea. She also has her own dramatic love story. Once upon a time there lived a strange young man who received the right to choose how to live his life. Endymion, that was his name, preferred immortality and eternal youth, but in return he was doomed to sleep in a distant grotto for the rest of his eternity. It was this sleeping handsome man that Selena fell in love with. Every night she went down to the cave where he slept. The most interesting thing is that her lover’s dream did not prevent Selena from having a huge number of children from him - fifty (according to the number of lunar months of the Olympic cycle) and about five more - according to the phases of the moon identified by the Greeks.

Divine nymphomania

Eos, also the sister of Helios. She is married to Astraeus, the god of the starry sky. They had children - the winds Boreas, Noth, Zephyr and Eurus and the stars. Eos worked at dawn, like Helios, she emerged from the ocean on her chariot and preceded the sun. Poets also loved her very much, competing in tender epithets; in particular, they nicknamed the goddess of the dawn “rosy-fingered,” that is, pink-fingered. Like, at dawn, gently pink stripes of light spread across the sky, as if someone pretty had spread his fingers. This is such poetry.

Eos, as it turned out, was promiscuous in relationships with mortal men. This property is a kind of revenge of Aphrodite for the fact that Eos often had fun with Ares, the sworn lover of the goddess of tender passion. The result is crowds of seduced men, even kidnapped if they persist, the gentle morning blush of Eos (either from embarrassment or pleasure) and the fact that all men, without exception, can thank her for the surge of sensuality in the morning. She does something with them, this goddess with pink fingers.

One day Eos fell in love with a shepherd named Typhon. Out of habit, she kidnapped him, and was so carried away by him that she gave birth to sons from him and even asked Zeus for eternal life for her lover. Only, in my girlish memory, I forgot to ask for eternal youth. Poor Typhon grew old and decayed, and only his voice remained. Eos hid her mistake in the back room, where she keeps it, without particularly introducing the guests to it.

Kalinichta

The daughter of Chaos Nikta is responsible for the dark night. She is older than Helios and his sisters and does not need protection. It may, in general, be one of those energies from which everything that exists came into being. And everything - from her came Death, Sleep, Murder, the goddesses of fate, Ether - the mountain air, Revenge and Old Age. With such children you can feel calm and confident in any situation. Nikta lives in Tartarus, a dark abyss where people are actually exiled, and do not settle there voluntarily.

Despite her gloomy image and habits, Nikta is much more favorable to people than her children or other gods. She brought peace and bliss to people, extinguishing passions and quarrels. You could also ask her for advice and divination in Delphi and Megara. She knew much of what is hidden from mortals, and it seems that she led a decent lifestyle.

- (Greek Helyos). 1) sun. 2) the god of the sun among the Greeks. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910. HELIOS, the god of the sun among the ancients. Greek. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Pavlenkov F., 1907 ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

- (Ελιος, Sol). The God of the Sun, brother of the Moon and Dawn, is usually identified with Apollo, and therefore the epithet Phoebus, i.e. brilliant, is often attached to Apollo. (Source: “A Brief Dictionary of Mythology and Antiquities.” M. Korsh. St. Petersburg, edition A. S ... Encyclopedia of Mythology

- (Helium) in the myths of the ancient Greeks, the god of the sun. He lived in a magnificent palace, surrounded by the four seasons, on a throne made of precious stones. On the mythical island of Trinacria, fat herds of snow-white bulls of Helios grazed. During the day, Helios raced along... ... Historical Dictionary

Helios- Helios. Marble. Ser. 2nd century BC. Archaeological Museum. Rhodes. HELIOS (Helium), in Greek mythology, the god of the sun. ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

Sun, sun god Dictionary of Russian synonyms. helios noun, number of synonyms: 3 god (375) sun ... Synonym dictionary

- (Helium) in Greek mythology, the god of the Sun. It corresponds to the Roman Sol... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

- (Roman Sol) solar deity, son of the titan Hyperion, brother of Selene and Eos. Since the time of Euripides, Helios, as the all-seeing god of the sun, began to be identified with Apollo, the all-knowing god of the soothsayer; hence another name for Helios is Phoebus. The cult of G. was especially... ... Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron

HELIOS- see Middle Early. Forms a harvest from sowing to harvesting in 30 days. The root vegetable is round, yellow in color, the pulp is juicy, delicate taste... Encyclopedia of seeds. Vegetables

A; m. [from Greek. Helios the sun]. [capitalized] In ancient Greek mythology: god of the Sun; the personification of sunlight and the fertilizing power of solar heat. * * * Helios (Helium), in Greek mythology, the god of the Sun. It corresponds to the Roman... encyclopedic Dictionary

Helios- a, m. In Greek mythology: the sun god, the son of the titans Hyperion and Theia. Etymology: Greek Hēlios ‘Sun’. Encyclopedic commentary: Helios is the most ancient pre-Olympic deity, with his elemental power he bestows life and punishes with blindness... ... Popular dictionary of the Russian language

Books

• Helios. Life after us, Roman Bubnov. 2142 After forty-three years of fruitless interstellar drift, Espyer's crew members finally got lucky. Exhausted mentally and physically, they managed to reach the boundaries of the constellation Cetus. On the…
• Helios Life after us, Bubnov R.. Novel “Helios. Life After Us" is a science-fiction thriller written in the genre of planetary science fiction. It talks about space exploration in the 22nd century and man’s encounter with the unknown on…

Helios, or sometimes Helium, is the god of the Sun in Greek mythology. Son of the titans Hyperion and Theia according to Hesiod and Appolodorus, brother of Selene and Eos. Refers to the most ancient pre-Olympic gods. Since Helios is above everyone, high in the sky, he sees all the deeds of people and gods. For crimes he can be punished with blindness, he is called upon as a witness and avenger. He tells Demeter that Persephone was kidnapped by Hades. When Odysseus's companions encroached on his snow-white cows (in the traditional translation - bulls) grazing on the mythical island of Trinacria, at the request of Helios, Zeus smashed the ship with lightning.

Helios and Phaethon with Saturn and the seasons, 1635,
State Museum, Berlin, Nicolas Poussin

According to Ovid, Helios lives in a magnificent palace surrounded by the four seasons, sitting on a throne of precious stones. Helios rose with the crow of a rooster, considered his sacred bird, and, accompanied by his daughter Eos, the goddess of the dawn, sat in a fiery chariot. Every day he traveled from his magnificent palace in the east to his no less magnificent palace in the west. His chariot was harnessed to four snow-white fire-breathing horses - Light, Shine, Thunder, Lightning. At the end of the day, Helios unharnessed them and released them to graze on the Isles of the Blessed. Then at night, along Stesichorus, he swam across the stream of the Ocean in a golden cup made by Hephaestus to the eastern dwelling.

However, Helios was not always able to comply with this strict routine. Once, by order of Zeus, he did not leave his palace for three days and the sun did not rise above the earth for three days. This is how long the wedding night of Zeus and Alcmene lasted, on which Hercules was conceived. Another time, halfway across the sky, Helios was ordered by Zeus to turn back his chariot to help Atreus ascend the throne at Mycenae. Helios was usually depicted riding in a chariot with the rays of the sun overhead. In Homer's hymns, Helios appears in a dazzling radiance, with burning terrible eyes in a golden helmet. Being high in the sky, every day he saw everything that happened on earth, knew all the affairs of people and gods. He was often called as a witness not only by mortals, but also by gods. So Demeter and Hecate called him to testify that Persephone was kidnapped by Hades.

Sometimes Helios himself told the gods about the unseemly actions of others. He reported to Hephaestus about his wife Aphrodite’s betrayal with Ares, which turned into an unpleasant embarrassment for the lovers; informed Artemis that King Oeneus did not include her among the gods - she, in her hearts, sent a huge Calydonian boar to his kingdom. On the mythical o. Trinacria was grazed by fat herds of snow-white bulls belonging to Helios. Each herd had 350 heads, however, according to Homer (zip, 127) he had 7 herds of cows and 7 herds of sheep, each with 50 heads. Moreover, the bulls of Helios did not breed, but they never died. The daughters of the sun god, Faetus and Lampetia, tended these flocks. In Homer (zip, 340) the hungry companions of Odysseus dared to encroach on these bulls. Lampetia immediately reported this to her father, and he demanded punishment from Zeus for the wicked, threatening otherwise to hide in Hades. The Thunderer granted the request of the sun god and smashed Odysseus' ship with lightning. One day, Hercules, trying to get to the island where the magnificent cows of Geryon were grazing, found himself in the desert, where he suffered greatly from the scorching rays of the sun. Unable to bear it, he pointed his bow at Helios, but came to his senses in time, lowered his weapon and apologized to God. Helios appreciated the hero's politeness and even lent him his golden shuttle, on which Hercules was able to reach the island of Erithia.

Helios had numerous offspring. From Girmina - Actor and Augeias; from Clymene - Phoebe, Helia, Etheria, Lampetia and Phaethon; from Neera - Lampetius and Phaetus; from Perseid - Eet, Pers, Kirk and Pasiphae; from Rhoda - seven sons, who became famous as great astrologers. Pausanias reports that Helios was the father of the Charites from his connection with Egla. He was worshiped in many places, in Corinth, Argos, Elis, Rhodes. In Roman mythology it corresponds to Salt (lat. Sol). Since the time of Euripides, Helios, as the all-seeing god of the Sun, began to be identified with Apollo, the all-knowing god-soothsayer; hence another name for Helios - Phoebus. The cult of Helios was especially widespread in Corinth, Argos, Elis and the island of Rhodes, where a colossal image of him stood at the entrance to the harbor. Of the animals, the rooster and white horses were dedicated to him. Helios is depicted in almost the same way as Apollo.