Helios

This article is about Greek mythology. For other uses of Helios, see Helios (disambiguation).

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In earlier Greek mythology, the sun was personified as a deity called Hêlios (Roman equivalent: Sol), driving a fiery chariot across the sky. Hêlios means 'the sun' in the Greek language.

Table of contents

1 Greek mythology 2 Roman mythology 3 Helios and Apollo 4 Consorts/Children 5 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle 6 Deus Ex

Greek mythology

The best known story involving Helios is that of his son Phaeton, who drove the sun chariot to his own disaster.

Helios was sometimes referred to with the epithet Helios Panoptes ("the all-seeing").

The names of the horses were Pyrois, Eos, Aethon and Phlegon.

Helios was worshipped throughout the Peloponnesus, especially on Rhodes (an island he pulled out of the sea), where annual gymnastic tournaments were held in his honor. The Colossus of Rhodes was dedicated to him.

Helios was often depicted as a haloed youth in a chariot, wearing a cloak and with a globe and a whip. Roosters and eagles were associated with him.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus and his surviving crew landed on an island, Thrinacia, sacred to Helios, where he kept sacred cattle. Though Odysseus warned his men not to, they killed and ate some of the cattle. The guardians of the island, Helios' daughters, Lampetia and Phaethusa, told their father. Helios destroyed the ship and all the men save Odysseus.

While Heracles traveled to Erytheia to retrieve the cattle of Geryon, he crossed the Libyan desert and was so frustrated at the heat that he shot an arrow at Helios, the sun. Helios begged him to stop and Heracles demanded the golden cup which Helios used to sail across the sea every night, from the west to the east. Heracles used this golden cup to reach Erytheia.

Roman mythology

Helios' Roman equivalent was Sol. On the Quirinalis, he was worshipped as Sol Indiges. The Circus Maximus housed another temple.

Emperor Heliogabalus imported Sol Invictus ("the invincible sun") from Syria. Sol Invictus was designated the god of the Roman Empire.

Helios and Apollo

Apollo as he appears in Homer, a plague-dealing god with a silver (not golden) bow has no solar features. But by Hellenistic times Apollo had become closely connected with the sun religiously. His epithet Phoebus 'shining' was later applied by Latin poets to the sun-god Sol also, perhaps from such connections as well as from its obvious appropriateness.

The earliest certain reference to Apollo being sometimes identified with the sun god appears in the surviving fragments of Euripides' play Phaethon. The play as a whole seems to have kept Helios separate from Apollo but in a speech near the end (fr 781 N²), Clymene, Phaethon's mother, laments that Helios has destroyed her child, that Helios whom men rightly call Apollo (the name Apollo here understood to mean Apollyon 'Destroyer').

The identification became a commonplace in philosophic texts and appears in the writing of Parmenides, Empedocles, Plutarch and Crates of Thebes among other as well as appearing in some Orphic texts. Pseudo-Eratosthenes writes about Orpheus in Catast 24:

But having gone down into Hades because of his wife and seeing what sort of things were there, he did not continue to worship Dionysus, become of whom he was famous, but he thought Helios to be the greatest of the gods, Helios whom he also addressed as Apollo. Rousing himself up each night toward dawn and climbing the mountain called Pangaion he would await the sun's rising, so that he might see it first. Therefore Dionysus, being angry with him, sent the Bassarides, as Aeschylus the tragedian says; they tore him apart and scattered the limbs.

Dionysus and Asclepius are sometimes also identified with this Apollo Helios.

But in mythological texts Apollo and Helios are almost universally kept distinct. The sun-god, the son of Hyperion, with his sun chariot, though often called Phoebus is not called Apollo except in purposeful non-traditional identifications. Roman poets often referred to the sun god as Titan.

It seems to be a modern meta-myth that literary references to Phoebus and his car or to Phoebus and his chariot refer to Phoebus Apollo in the role of sun god rather than to Helios/Sol.

Consorts/Children

1. Aegle
   1. Charites
      1. Aglaea
      2. Euphrosyne
      3. Thalia
2. Clymene
   1. Heliades
      1. Aegiale
      2. Aegle
      3. Aetheria
      4. Helia
      5. Merope
      6. Phoebe
      7. Dioxippe
   2. Phaeton
3. Merope
   1. Phaeton
4. Neaera
   1. Phaethusa
   2. Lampetia
5. Rhodus
   1. Elektryo
   2. Heliadae
      1. Ochimus
      2. Cercaphus
      3. Macareus
      4. Actis
      5. Tenages
      6. Triopas
      7. Candalus
6. Perse
   1. Aegea
   2. Aeetes
   3. Calypso
   4. Circe
   5. Pasiphae
   6. Perses

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Helios is the name of a solar powered unmanned aerial vehicle tested by NASA. See also: Helios (vehicle)

Deus Ex

Warning: Plot details follow.

In the Deus Ex computer game, Helios is an A.I. that was created when the artificial intelligences Icarus and Daedalus merged. Bob Page knew the merge would happen, and planned to himself merge with the AI, becoming a biological component of it. However, he was unable to control Helios, who himself wanted to control the world as a benevolent dictator. Helios enlisted JC Denton to help with the task, and to eventually merge with. The player of Deus Ex could choose to help Helios, or choose one of the other two endings of the game.