Helios- Greek GodDeity"The Sun God"

The All-Seeing Sun

Helios is the sun itself. Each day he rises from his golden palace beyond the eastern edge of Oceanus and mounts a gleaming chariot drawn by four immortal horses: Pyrois and Aethon, whose names mean fire and blazing. He drives across the vault of heaven from east to west. At evening he descends into the western ocean, where his horses drink from the waters at the world's edge, and he sails back east through the stream of Oceanus in a great golden cup forged by Hephaestus, ready for the next day's journey.

Divine Origins

Hyperion and Theia bore him alongside two siblings: Eos, goddess of the dawn, and Selene, goddess of the moon. Each morning Eos drove ahead in her rose-colored chariot, painting the sky before Helios followed with the full blaze of day. When Zeus overthrew the Titans, Helios was not among the combatants. He kept his position and his honors. The sun still rose.

The Witness of the Gods

Because Helios sees all from above, he was the one to reveal what other gods kept hidden. When Aphrodite took Ares to her husband Hephaestus's own bed, Helios saw them and told the smith god. Hephaestus forged an unbreakable golden net and caught the lovers in their embrace, then summoned the gods to witness their humiliation. Aphrodite never forgave the sun for it. Her curse on his bloodline, visited on generation after generation, was the price he paid for telling the truth.

When Hades seized Persephone and dragged her to the underworld, Demeter wandered the earth for nine days without rest, but no god or mortal would tell her what had happened. On the tenth day, Helios spoke. He had watched the abduction from above: Zeus himself had given the girl to his brother. He called Hades a worthy husband. It was no comfort.

The Tragedy of Phaethon

Phaethon was the son of Helios and the Oceanid Clymene. He grew up hearing that his father was the sun god, but his companions mocked him, calling it a story to hide the shame of his true birth. Determined to prove his heritage, Phaethon journeyed to Helios's golden palace in the east.

Helios received his son with joy and, to prove his paternity beyond doubt, rashly swore by the River Styx to grant any wish the boy asked. Phaethon demanded to drive the sun chariot for a single day. Helios begged him to choose anything else. The horses were too powerful, the path too dangerous. Even Zeus could not hold their reins. But an oath sworn by Styx was unbreakable, even for gods.

The boy mounted the chariot. The immortal horses, sensing an unfamiliar hand on the reins, bolted from their course. Phaethon flew too close to earth, scorching forests and boiling rivers dry. Then he swung too high, and the earth froze. Gaia cried out to Zeus for help. Zeus hurled a thunderbolt. It struck Phaethon from the chariot, and he fell blazing like a meteor into the River Eridanus. His sisters, the Heliades, wept so long that they turned into poplar trees, and their tears became drops of amber. His friend Cycnus dived into the river again and again to find the body, until he was changed into a swan.

The Cattle of the Sun

Helios kept sacred cattle on the island of Thrinacia: seven herds of cattle and seven flocks of sheep, each numbering fifty head. These animals were immortal, never born and never dying. His daughters Phaethusa and Lampetia tended them, and they were forbidden to mortals.

When Odysseus and his crew landed on Thrinacia, Odysseus warned his men to leave the cattle untouched, remembering Tiresias's prophecy and Circe's warning. But contrary winds trapped them on the island, provisions ran out, and while Odysseus slept, his starving men slaughtered the sacred animals. The hides crawled on the ground and the meat on the spits lowed as if still alive. Lampetia reported the sacrilege to her father. Helios demanded vengeance from Zeus: "If they do not pay me full recompense, I will go down to Hades and shine among the dead."

Zeus complied. When the ship left the island, he struck it with a thunderbolt. Every one of Odysseus's remaining companions drowned. Odysseus alone survived, clinging to wreckage for nine days before washing ashore on Calypso's island.

The Cursed Bloodline

Aphrodite's curse on Helios for revealing her affair did not strike the sun god himself. It struck his children. His daughter Pasiphae married King Minos of Crete and was seized by desire for a white bull, a passion beyond any mortal's power to resist. She bore the Minotaur. His granddaughter Medea helped Jason steal the Golden Fleece from her father Aeetes in Colchis. Years later, when Jason abandoned her for a Corinthian princess, she killed their children and escaped in a dragon-drawn chariot sent by Helios.

Rhodes and the Colossus

When the gods divided the world after the defeat of the Titans, Helios was absent, driving his chariot as always, and received no share. But from the sky he had seen a new island rising from the sea. He claimed it: Rhodes. He married the nymph Rhode, and their descendants became the island's rulers.

The Rhodians honored Helios above all other gods. Each year they drove a chariot and four horses off a cliff into the sea, replacing the team that had carried the sun god through the heavens. The Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders, was a bronze statue of Helios over thirty meters tall. An earthquake toppled it after only fifty-six years, but the fallen Colossus remained a wonder for centuries. Visitors marveled that few people could wrap their arms around its thumb.