Helios facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Helios
Personification of the Sun
Helios on an antique fresco from Pompeii
Major cult center	Rhodes, Corinthia
Abode	Sky
Planet	Sun
Animals	Horse, rooster, wolf, cattle
Symbol	Sun, chariot, horses, aureole, whip, heliotropium, globe, cornucopia, ripened fruit
Tree	Frankincense, poplar
Day	Sunday (hēméra Hēlíou)
Mount	A chariot driven by four white horses
Gender	Male
Festivals	Haleia
Personal information
Consort	Many including: Clymene, Clytie, Perse, Rhodos, and Leucothea
Children	Achelous, Acheron, Actis, Aeëtes, Aex, Aegiale, Aegle, Aetheria, Aethon, Aloeus, Astris, Augeas, Bisaltes, Candalus, Cercaphus, the Charites, Chrysus, Cheimon, Circe, Clymenus, the Corybantes, Cos, Dioxippe, Dirce, Eiar, Electryone, Helia, Hemera, Ichnaea, Lampetia, Lelex, Macareus, Mausolus, Merope, Ochimus, Pasiphaë, Perses, Phaethon, Phaethusa, Phasis, Phoebe, Phorbas, Phthinoporon, Sterope, Tenages, Theros, Thersanon and Triopas
Parents	Hyperion and Theia
Siblings	Selene and Eos
Equivalents
Roman equivalent	Sol, Sol Invictus
Norse equivalent	Sól
Etruscan equivalent	Usil
Hinduism equivalent	Surya
Canaanite equivalent	Shapash
Mesopotamian equivalent	Utu
Egyptian equivalent	Ra

Helios and Selene, by Johann Rathausky, fountain group statue in Opatija, Croatia.

Helios (Ancient Greek: Ἥλιος, Hēlios; Ἠέλιος in Homeric Greek) is the god of the Sun in Greek mythology. He is often thought to be the personification of the Sun itself.

He is the son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia. He is the brother of Selene, goddess of the Moon, and Eos, goddess of the dawn. During the Hellenistic period, particularly the 3rd Century BCE, he became more and more identified with Apollo, the god of light, music and prophecy. Helios' equivalent in Roman mythology was Sol.

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 the Roman period. The Roman Emperor Julian made Helios the central divinit in the 4th century AD.

In ancient times he was worshipped in several places of ancient Greece, though his major cult centers were the island of Rhodes, of which he was patron god, Corinth and the greater Corinthia region. The Colossus of Rhodes, a gigantic statue of the god, adorned the port of Rhodes until it was destroyed in an earthquake, thereupon it was not built again.

Mythology

God of the Sun

Helios's cup with Heracles in it, Rome, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, n. 205336.

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 travelling around a globe in an orbit; rather he crossed the sky from east to west each morning in a linear direction.

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.

On several instances in mythology the normal solar schedule is disrupted.

In the Iliad Hera who supports the Greeks, makes him set earlier than usual during battle, and later, after her 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. 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. If the other gods wish so, Helios can be hastened on his daily course when they wish it to be night.

While Heracles was travelling to Erytheia to retrieve the cattle of Geryon for his tenth labour, 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; 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. Heracles used this golden cup to reach Erytheia, and after he had taken Geryon's cattle, returned it back to its owner.

Awarding of Rhodes

Silver tetradrachm of Rhodes showing Helios and a rose (205-190 BC, 13.48 g)

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. An alternative version says it was Helios himself who made the island rise from the sea. 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 honoured above all other gods.

Phaethon

Helios' most notable role in Greek mythology is the story of his mortal son Phaethon who asked his father for a favour; Helios agreed, but then Phaethon asked for the privilege to drive his four-horse fiery chariot across the skies for a single day. Although Helios warned his son again and again against this choice, explaining to him the dangers of such a journey that no other god but him was capable to bring about, Phaethon was hard to deter, and thus Helios was forced to hand him the reins. As expected, the ride was disastrous and Zeus struck the youth with one of his lightning bolts to stop him from burning or freezing the earth beyond salvation.

The Watchman

Persephone

Helios saw and stood witness to everything that happened underneath him where his light shone. When Hades abducted Persephone, Helios, was the only one to witness it. Persephone's mother Demeter, looked far and wide in search of her daughter, and came to him, and asked him if he had seen anything. Helios, sympathizing with her grief, told her in detail that it was Hades who, with Zeus' permission, had taken an unwilling Persephone to the Underworld to be his wife and queen.

Leucothoe and Clytie

Helios the rising Sun, painting on a terracotta disk, 480 BC, Agora Museum Athens

Aphrodite made Helios fall for a mortal princess named Leucothoe, forgetting his previous lover nymph Clytie. Helios would watch Leucothoe from above, even making the winter days longer so he could have more time looking at her. Taking the form of her mother Eurynome, Helios entered their palace with no problem and came into the girl's room where he dismissed her servants so he would be left alone with her, using the excuse of wanting to entrust a secret to his "daughter". There he took his real form, revealing himself to the girl.

However, Clytie, still in love with him, informed Leucothoe's father Orchamus of this affair, and he buried Leucothoe alive in the earth. Helios came too late to rescue her, his grief over her death compared to the one he had over Phaethon's fiery end, and could not revive her, so instead he poured nectar into the earth, and turned the dead Leucothoe into a frankincense tree, so that she could still breathe air instead of rotting beneath the soil. Clytie had hoped that this would get Helios back to her, but he wanted nothing to do with her, angered about the role she played in his love's death, and went on his way. Clytie then sat on a rock for nine days, accepting no food or drink, and pining after him; he never looked back at her. Eventually she turned into a purple, sun-gazing flower, the heliotrope, which follows Helios' movement in the sky, still in love with him; her form much changed, her love unchanged.

Clytie's herb has been identified with the purple heliotropium, however people from the Middle Ages onwards have supplanted it with the yellow sunflower in retellings, commentaries and artwork, even though in the story Ovid describes it as purple, or "like a violet". Moreover, sunflowers are native to North America, not Greece or Italy, so it is unlikely ancient writers would have been familiar with it.

Consorts and children

The god Helios is the head of a large family. Traditionally the Oceanid nymph Perse was seen as the sun god's wife by whom he had various children. However he is also stated to have married other women like Rhodos in the Rhodian tradition by whom he had seven sons.

Other functions

Helios is a god who both sees and hears everything, who can spy among gods and mortal men alike. Gods were often called upon by the Greeks when an oath was sworn; Helios is among the three deities (the other two being Zeus and Gaia) to be invoked in the Iliad to witness the truce between Greeks and Trojans. Due to his job as sun in the sky, he was in the position of witnessing everything on earth with his infallible eye, and it is thus fitting that he was widely invoked, along with Zeus, in oath-taking, making sure there was no escape if the oath was violated.

Namesakes

One of the craters of Hyperion, a moon of Saturn, is named after Helios.

The chemical element Helium, a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic gas, first in the noble gas group in the periodic table, was named after Helios by Norman Lockyer and Edward Frankland, as it was first observed in the spectrum of the chromosphere of the Sun. Helium makes up for about 25% of the Sun's mass.

Helius is a genus of crane fly in the family Limoniidae that shares its name with the god.

A pair of probes that were launched into heliocentric orbit by NASA to study solar processes were called Helios A and Helios B after this god.

Images for kids

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  Helios (far right) in a Phaethon sarcophagus, detail, marble, third century AD, Verona, Italy.

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  Helios relief (1830), Stuttgart, Rosenstein Castle.

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  Helios in front of Mithras, fresco from a Mithraeum, Hama museum, Syria.

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  Helios in his chariot, early 4th century BC, Athena's temple, Ilion

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  Hera makes Helios set earlier, Iliad engraving, John Flaxman.

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  Helios and Eos, carried by the morning dew, above them the god of heaven. Relief from the armor of the statue of Augustus in the Vatican, circa 1885.

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  Helios rising in his chariot, red-figure calyx-krater, 430 BC (circa), British Museum.

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  Phaethon meets the Sun, engraving for the Metamorphoses.

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  Helios and Phaethon with Saturn and the Four Seasons, by Nicolas Poussin, oil on canvas

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  Phaethon in the chariot of the Sun, Godfried Maes, ca 1664-1700

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  Head of Helios, middle period, Archaeological Museum of Rhodes

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  Clytie turns into a sunflower as the Sun refuses to look at her, engraving by Abraham van Diepenbeeck.

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  Helios on his chariot fighting a Giant, detail of the Gigantomachy frieze, Pergamon Altar, Pergamon museum, Berlin

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  Phoebus and Boreas, Jean-Baptiste Oudry's cosmic interpretation of La Fontaine's fable, 1729/34

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  Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun, by Nicolas Poussin, 1658, oil on canvas

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  The Fall of Icarus, ancient fresco from Pompeii, ca 40-79 AD

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  Helios and chariot depicted on the dome of the entrance hall of the Széchenyi Bath, Budapest

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  The companions of Odysseus rob the cattle of Helios, fresco by Palazzo Poggi, 1556.

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  Bust of Helios in a clipeus, detail from a strigillated lenos sarcophagus, white marble, early 3rd century CE, Tomb D in Via Belluzzo, Rome.

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  The music of the spheres: the planetary spheres, among others, on an engraving from Renaissance Italy.

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  Limestone relief representing the god Helios, driving the celestial quadriga, Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels, Belgium.

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  Helios rising in his quadriga; above Nyx driving away to the left and Eos to the right, and Heracles offering sacrifice at altar. Sappho painter, Greek, Attic, black-figure, ca. 500 BC

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  Colossus of Rhodes

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  Silver drachma coin from Rhodes island with the head of Helios looking to the right and bearing a diadem of rays, ca. 170-150 BC, University of Tübingen, Berlin.

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  Quadriga of the Sun, sixth century BC, Temple C, Selinunte.

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  The Temple of Garni, late first century, Armenia, dedicated to the solar god Helios-Mihr, from a syncretic Helleno-Armenian cult.

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  An ancient Greek inscription naming King Tiridates the Sun (Helios Tiridates) as the founder of the Garni temple.

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  Magical sphere with Helios and magical symbols from the theatre of Dionysus, Acropolis Museum, Athens.

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  Coin of Roman Emperor Constantine I depicting Sol Invictus/Apollo with the legend SOLI INVICTO COMITI, c. 315 AD.

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  Horse-drawn quadriga of Sol on the Parabiago plate (ca. 2nd–5th centuries AD)

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  Solar Apollo with the radiant halo of Helios in a Roman floor mosaic, El Djem, Tunisia, late 2nd century

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  Bust of Alexander the Great as an eidolon of Helios (Musei Capitolini).

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  Helios as the personification of midday, renaissance painting by Anton Raphael Mengs (c. 1765) showing apollonian traits, such as the lack of a chariot, that were absent in mythology and Hellenic art.

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  Helios on a golden coin from 117 AD.

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  Helios in the Sun chariot accompanied by Phosphorus and Hermes, fresco at Nymphenburg Palace, Munich.

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  Serapis with Moon and Sun, oil lamp, Roman terracotta, British Museum.

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  Helios witnessing the birth of Athena, detail from the pediment (far-left) of the Academy of Athens, by Leonidas Drosis, Greece.

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  Sol in the east side of the Arch of Constantine, Rome.

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  Helios surrounded by the zodiac in a mosaic pavement of a 6th-century synagogue at Beth Alpha, Israel.

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  Helios in the Hammat Tiberias mosaic, Israel.

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  Apollo fountain in the Palace of Versailles, France.

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  Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan, by Diego de Velázquez, oil on canvas.

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  Helios in one of the many stamps issued in 1947-53, celebrating the unification of the Dodecanese with Greece

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  Odysseus' men eat the oxen, as a woman informs Helios, mounted on his chariot, engraving by Theodoor van Thulden, 1632–1633, Rijksmuseum, Netherlands.

See also

In Spanish: Helios para niños