From Greek and Roman Mythology & Heroic Legend, by Professor H. Steuding, Translated from the German and Edited by Lionel D. Barnett. The Temple Primers, London: J. M. Dent; 1901; pp. 1-61.
[58]Greek and Roman Mythology & Heroic Legend :
GREEK MYTHOLOGY
Greek Religion from the Beginning of the Homeric Age
Olympian Deities.
VII. Personifications of the Heavenly Bodies and other Nature-Deities. § 100. The deities embodying the sun and moon, Helios and Selene, were daily honoured everywhere on the rising and setting of their planet by prayer and greeting. Yet their peculiar ritual of sacrifice was usually very simple. Helios was held in higher consideration at Corinth, and above all on the island of Rhodes, where a brilliant festival, the Halieia, was held in his honour. Here at the entrance of the harbour was raised to him about 280 B.C., the bronze statue made by Chares of Lindos, which was famous as the ‘Colossus of Rhodes.’ On account of the apparent movement of the sun Helios was thought to ride through the heavens on a glistening car drawn by four swift 59 horses; he himself was portrayed as in the flower of youth, the long tresses of his hair crowned by a coronet of beams. By the sea-goddess Klymene he begets Phaethon (‘Glistener’), who perishes in the attempt to drive for one day the car of the sun in place of his father. His milk-white herds of oxen and sheep, which none may harm, graze in the island of Thrinakia. In the heliotrope which always turns towards the sun men saw his mistress Klytia, who was changed into the flower.
§ 101. Like Helios, Selene plays a quite inferior part in cult. Sometimes she is associated with him; and to her, as to Eos, thanks are chiefly paid for the gift of the nightly dews promoting nature’s growth. In legend her husband or lover is Endymion, probably ‘he who has entered into his cave’ (ἐνδύω), i. e. the sun-god after his setting, with whom the moon-goddess unites in the night of the new moon. According to the conception of the Eleans, she bears to him fifty daughters, who embody the fifty months making up the cycle of the Olympian festival; in Carian legend again the hunter or herdsman Endymion sleeps in a cavern of Mount Latmos, and Selene privily draws near to kiss the beautiful sleeper.
§ 102. Of the stars, but few appear in older times as figures in myth. The morning star, Heosphoros or Phosphoros (‘bringer of dawn’ or ‘of light,’ Latin Lucifer), is represented as a boy bearing a torch, the brilliant constellation Orion as a gigantic hunter with upraised club. The latter is ravished away by Eos and slain by Artemis. His dog is Seirios (‘bright one’), the most brilliant fixed star, on whose early rising begins the hottest season of the year, the ‘dog-days.’ The Bear looks in alarm towards Orion, and the goddesses of rain, the star-cluster of the Pleiädes, flee from his ambush.
Later each group of stars of especial brilliancy was represented, in imitation of the Babylonians, as a picture, and brought into connection with the older figures of myths by stories of transformations.
§ 103. Among the other deities of light the first place is 60 taken by Eos or Dawn (Latin Aurora), the sister of Helios and Selene. As giver of the morning dews she carries pitchers in her hands. To denote the brightness of the break of day she has a saffron-yellow robe, arms and fingers of rosy splendour, and wings of a brilliant white; on account of her speed she is often portrayed as riding on a car. Her spouse is Tithonos, a brother of Priamos; her son Memnon is killed by Achilleus. Like Orion, she carried away Tithonos as a comely stripling, and obtained for him from Zeus immortality but not eternal youth; hence he withers away by her side and lives a wretched life in a decrepit old age until, according to later story, he is changed into a cicada.
The speed with which the rainbow casts its span from heaven to earth makes Iris, who typifies it, the gods’ messenger; to her therefore pertain great wings, a short garment of rainbow hue, and the herald’s staff (κηρύκειον). In the older parts of the Iliad she is the messenger of Zeus; later her place in his service is taken by Hermes, while she herself is henceforth an attendant of Hera. As the rainbow was deemed the harbinger of rain, she was wedded to Zephyros, the rain-wind.
§ 104. The gods of the winds were conceived in the oldest times under the form of horses, like the Harpies described above (§ 21), whom they often pursue as enemies or lovers; later they appear as widely striding bearded men with wings on their shoulders and often also on their feet. Sometimes they are depicted with a double face looking forwards and backwards, which doubtless refers to the change in the direction of the wind. In earlier ages they were distinguished only into Boreas (North wind), Zephyros (West wind), Notos (South wind), and somewhat later Euros (East wind), who are accounted sons of Astraios (‘Starry Heaven’) and Eos (‘Dawn’). Like the Harpies, they are by nature robbers; Boreas in particular ravishes away the lovely Oreithyia, the daughter of Erechtheus, from the banks of the Ilissos — perhaps a picture of the morning mist swept away by the wind. Their lord is Aiolos (‘Swift’), who dwells on a floating island in 61 the far West, and keeps the winds inclosed in a cavern, the ‘Cave of the Winds.’
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Olympian Deities :
VIII. Ares and Aphrodite.