Selene’s Family Tree

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Family

• Hyperion(parent),Theia(parent),Eos(sibling),Helios(sibling)— Marriage

  Hyperion and Theia, Titans of heavenly light, were parents of Helios the sun, Selene the moon, and Eos the dawn.

• Zeus(spouse),Ersa(child),Pandia(child)— Consort

  Zeus lay with Selene and she bore him Pandia, exceedingly lovely among the immortals, and Ersa, the goddess of morning dew whose moisture gathers on the earth as her mother's moonlight fades.

• Endymion(spouse)— Consort

  Selene loved the mortal shepherd Endymion so deeply that she bore him fifty daughters, the Menae who personify the lunar months, visiting his eternal sleep on Mount Latmus each night.

  ⚠ The fifty daughters (Menae) are attested in Pausanias (5.1.4), while other traditions give Endymion mortal wives and different children. The eternal sleep tradition (Apollonius, Apollodorus) and the genealogical tradition (Pausanias) may represent independent strands.

• Pan(spouse)— Consort

  Pan seduced the moon goddess Selene by disguising himself in a white fleece, luring her into the Arcadian woods with the gleam of wool under moonlight.

Has aspect

• Artemis

  Selene the moon goddess was gradually absorbed into Artemis in later Greek religion, just as Helios was absorbed into Apollo. Artemis gained Selene's lunar attributes and crescent-crown iconography.

Equivalent to

• Luna(Roman)

  Selene and Luna are the Greek and Roman moon goddesses. Both drive a chariot across the night sky and share the same mythological role as the personification of the moon.

Associated with

• Artemis,Hecate

  Later Greek theology identified Hecate, Selene, and Artemis as a triple goddess of the moon — Selene the full moon, Artemis the crescent, and Hecate the dark moon and the crossroads between worlds.

• Endymion

  Selene fell in love with the shepherd Endymion on Mount Latmus and asked Zeus to grant him eternal sleep so she could visit him every night without watching him age or die.

• Hypnos

  According to Licymnius and other poets, Selene asked Hypnos to keep Endymion's eyes open in eternal sleep so she could forever gaze upon his beauty. Hypnos granted this unique form of slumber.

• Nemean Lion

  Selene dropped the Nemean Lion from the moon to the earth, giving Hera's monstrous beast an alternate celestial origin before Heracles strangled it as his first labor.

  ⚠ Aelian's account of the lion's lunar origin contradicts the more widely attested parentage from Typhon and Echidna (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.5.1) or Orthrus and Chimera (Hesiod, Theogony 326-332).