Helios
Helios, the Greek god who personifies the Sun, is invoked in one ancient ritual text with remarkable vividness: "a youth, fair to behold, with fiery hair, clothed in a white tunic and a scarlet cloak and wearing a fiery crown." The same document names him "Helios, lord of heaven and earth, god of gods." That document is the Greek Magical Papyri, a body of ritual texts compiled long after the classical age of Greece.
Athens barely worshipped Helios at all until the Hellenistic period. He was not numbered among the Twelve Olympians. By lineage he was a second-generation Titan, present from near the beginning of the divine order, yet never at its center. His formal worship took root not in Athens but in Corinth, the Peloponnese, and above all the island of Rhodes.
Julian, the last pagan emperor of Rome, eventually made Helios the central deity of his revived Roman religion in the 4th century AD. How did a relatively peripheral god accumulate that authority? And what kind of mythology builds around a figure who is also, quite literally, the Sun?
At sunset, according to Athenaeus, Helios climbed into a great cup of solid gold. This cup carried him from the Hesperides in the farthest west to the land of the Ethiopians, where he rested through the night. An older account preserved in the Titanomachy, an 8th century BCE epic, described a different arrangement. Rather than a cup, Helios slept in a bed crafted by Hephaestus, floating east across the ocean.
The Horae, goddesses of the seasons, yoked his chariot each morning. His sister Eos opened the sky's gates before his departure. The horses bore names derived from fire and light. Ovid, writing in the 1st century BC, named them Pyrois, meaning "the Fiery One," Eous, "He of the Dawn," Aethon, "Blazing," and Phlegon, "Burning." Eumelus of Corinth, writing in the late 7th or early 6th century BC, gave a different list. His male trace horses were named Eous and Aethiops, while the female yoke-bearers were called Bronte, "Thunder," and Sterope, "Lightning."
Zeus ordered Helios not to rise for three consecutive days when he wished to sleep with Alcmene. That extension stretched a single night to three. During the Trojan War, Hera compelled Helios to set earlier than usual, robbing the Trojans of daylight. Athena's birth was so overwhelming that Helios pulled his horses to a halt. He held still in the sky while heaven and earth trembled at the sight of the newborn goddess.
Heracles once turned his bow against Helios directly. Crossing the Libyan desert on his tenth labor, the hero grew so furious at the heat that he aimed at the Sun. Pherecydes wrote that Heracles only drew his bow menacingly; Panyassis recorded that he actually struck and wounded the god. In either telling, Helios found the hero's audacity immensely bold rather than unforgivable. He rewarded it by lending Heracles the golden cup for crossing the western sea.
Pindar's surviving paean on solar eclipses reveals how deeply the Greeks dreaded that darkness. He addressed the sky directly: "Beam of the sun! What have you contrived, observant one, mother of eyes, highest star, in concealing yourself in broad daylight?" He catalogued what an eclipse might foretell: war, ruined crops, floods, or a complete destruction and renewal of the human race. A fragment by the poet Archilochus offered a different explanation. In his account, it was Zeus who had simply blocked Helios from shining.
In Book Eight of the Odyssey, the blind singer Demodocus describes how Helios caught Ares and Aphrodite in an act of adultery. He watched and reported the affair to Aphrodite's husband Hephaestus without delay. Hephaestus forged a net so fine it was nearly invisible, announced a trip to Lemnos, and waited. When the lovers met again, the net closed around them. Helios's testimony had baited a trap that humiliated two gods at once.
Aphrodite did not forgive him. She caused Helios to fall in love with a mortal princess named Leucothoe, abandoning his previous lover, the Oceanid Clytie. To gaze longer at Leucothoe, he stretched the winter days beyond their natural length. He entered her palace disguised as her mother Eurynome, then revealed himself. Clytie, still in love with Helios, told Leucothoe's father Orchamus of the affair. Orchamus buried his daughter alive. Helios poured nectar into the earth over her body and transformed her into a frankincense tree. Clytie herself sat naked on a rock for nine days, refusing all food and drink. She watched the sun cross the sky until she was transformed into the heliotrope, a flower that follows the sun. Ancient scholars suggested the myth explained why frankincense was used in Helios's worship.
As the only witness to Persephone's abduction by Hades, Helios became Demeter's informant. He told the grieving goddess not to waste time and to seek out "the queen of the third world." In the Iliad, Helios was one of three gods named to witness the truce between Greeks and Trojans. The League of Corinth, the treaty between Smyrna and Magnesia, and the alliance among Athens, Cetriporis, Lyppeus, and Grabus all invoked his name. His position as a witness who could not be fooled or bribed made him the guarantor of agreements between states.
Odysseus's crew killed and ate Helios's sacred cattle on the island of Thrinacia. His daughters Phaethusa and Lampetia reported the crime to their father. Helios demanded punishment from Zeus, rejecting the crew's offer to build a new temple in Ithaca as compensation. Zeus destroyed their ship with a thunderbolt. Every man died except Odysseus, who had refused to touch the cattle. In Sophocles's tragedy Ajax, the hero addresses Helios in his final moments. He asks the god to halt his golden reins when he reaches the island of Salamis and carry news of his death to his aged father Telamon.
Euripides wrote a full tragedy about Phaethon, though only twelve fragments survive. In that version, Phaethon's mother Clymene is married to Merops, king of Aethiopia, and has concealed who the boy's real father is. She eventually confesses the truth and urges him to travel east. Long before, Helios had promised her that he would grant their child any wish.
In Ovid's version, the trigger is a public insult. Zeus's son Epaphus mocked Phaethon's claim that Helios was his father. Clymene sent her son to seek confirmation directly from the sun god. Helios, moved to prove his paternity, swore by the river Styx to grant Phaethon any wish he asked. The boy asked for one day at the reins of the chariot.
A surviving fragment from Euripides's play preserves the warning Helios gave his son: "Drive on, but shun the burning Libyan tract; The hot dry air will let thine axle down: Toward the seven Pleiades keep thy steadfast way." Phaethon could not be persuaded otherwise. Helios then followed his son into the sky, riding a spare horse named Sirius. He called out directions during the flight: "Drive there! Turn, turn thy car this way."
The earth burned when the chariot descended too low and froze when it climbed too high. Zeus struck Phaethon with a thunderbolt. In Ovid's account, a grieving Helios at first refused to drive his chariot again. He eventually returned to his duties under pressure from the other gods and threats from Zeus. His grief then turned to fury, and he whipped his horses for causing his son's death.
Phaethon's sisters, the Heliades, wept at the river Eridanus and were transformed into black poplar trees that shed tears of amber. According to Quintus Smyrnaeus, it was Helios who made that transformation, in honor of their grief for his son. In one version of the myth, Helios placed Phaethon's image in the sky as the constellation Auriga. The boy who had nearly set the world alight would burn among the stars instead.
According to Pindar, when the gods first divided the earth among themselves, Helios was absent and received no share. He appealed to Zeus, who offered to redo the division. Helios declined. He had spotted something rising from the sea, a new island rich in soil and good for cattle. He asked Zeus to grant it to him, Zeus agreed, and the Fate Lachesis raised her hands to confirm the oath. Helios named the island Rhodes, after his lover Rhode, daughter of Poseidon and Aphrodite.
With Rhode, Helios sired seven sons known as the Heliadae, meaning "sons of the Sun," who became the island's first rulers. Three of their grandsons founded cities still bearing their names: Ialysos, Camiros, and Lindos. The native people of Rhodes traced their descent from the Heliadae. That lineage made Helios not merely a patron god but the founding ancestor of their civilization. Pindar composed one of his greatest odes as a memorial to Rhodes's devotion to this god. All evidence suggests that Helios was for the Rhodians what Zeus was for Elis or Athena for Athens.
Chares of Lindos built the Colossus as an expression of this reverence. An ancient source described it as "seven times ten cubits in height, the work of Chares the Lindian." That puts its height at approximately 33 meters. The statue stood at the port of Rhodes until an earthquake in 226 BC brought it down, breaking it at the knees. It was counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Rhodians consulted an oracle, which forbade rebuilding, and the shattered statue remained where it had fallen.
Each year during the festival of the Halia, the Rhodians threw chariot teams dedicated to Helios into the sea. A separate ritual drove a four-horse team over a precipice into the waves, reenacting the myth of Phaethon. Annual gymnastic tournaments were also held in his honor. Horse sacrifice was practiced for him across ancient Greece, but only at Rhodes were complete teams of four horses offered. A shrine called the Haleion stood on the island, and a sanctuary to Helios and the nymphs stood at Loryma near Lindos.
Tlepolemus, the island's mythical founding hero, had once been Rhodes's most prominent cult figure. Games originally celebrated for Tlepolemus were transferred to Helios as the sun god's importance grew. His mythology was adjusted to explain Tlepolemus's relative insignificance, and real civic prominence shifted from the local hero to the cosmic patron. That capacity to absorb and reframe older cults would carry Helios far beyond Rhodes in the centuries ahead.
On the 25th of December, 274 AD, the Roman Emperor Aurelian instituted an official state cult to Sol Invictus. That cult was also identified with Helios under the title Helios Megistos, meaning "Great Helios." It drew together imagery associated with Helios and the Roman sun god Sol, along with elements from other deities previously considered distinct.
A century later, the Emperor Julian went further. Julian combined elements of Mithraism with Neoplatonism to produce a theology in which Helios was not merely important but structurally central. For Julian, Helios was a triunity: The One; Helios-Mithras; and the Sun. Because Helios occupied the middle position in this scheme, Julian considered him the mediator of the three realms of being. For Julian, Helios also unified all things. Scholars have described his conception as "practically monotheistic."
The Greek Magical Papyri, compiled across the late antique period, show a Helios vastly expanded from the classical tradition. There he is credited as creator of life, lord of the heavens and cosmos, and god of the sea. He takes the form of twelve animals, one for each hour of the day. That motif connects him to the twelve signs of the zodiac. The Mithras Liturgy, one of the Papyri's most elaborate texts, combines Helios with Mithras. The resulting figure, Helios-Mithras, is said to have revealed the secrets of immortality.
The Papyri described Helios as "seated on a lotus, decorated with rays," linking him to the Egyptian god Harpocrates. In some texts, his nightly journey took place in a boat rather than a chariot. This connected him to the Egyptian sun god Ra, who was said to sail through the underworld each night. He was also identified with Iao, a name drawn from Yahweh, and given Yahweh's titles including Sabaoth and Adonai. The Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus described Helios as a cosmic god containing many divine forms and traits. These were "coiled up" within his being and distributed outward to all things that shared in his nature. That included angels, daemons, souls, animals, herbs, and stones.
One remarkable survival from this period appears in a mosaic found in the Vatican Necropolis, in the mausoleum known as M. It depicts a figure very similar in style to Sol and Helios, crowned with solar rays and driving a solar chariot. Some scholars have interpreted the figure as a depiction of Christ. Clement of Alexandria, they note, described Christ as driving his chariot across the sky. Others doubt the Christian associations. Whether the mosaic depicts a sun god or a savior is still debated. The image is the same either way: a figure crowned with solar rays, driving a chariot across the sky.
Continue browsing
Common questions
Who is Helios in Greek mythology?
Helios is the ancient Greek god who personifies the Sun. He was the son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, brother of Selene, goddess of the Moon, and Eos, goddess of the Dawn. Though relatively minor in Classical Greek religion, he was the patron god and founding ancestor of the island of Rhodes, where he was worshipped more prominently than anywhere else in the ancient Greek world.
What is the story of Phaethon and Helios?
Phaethon was a son of Helios who asked to drive his father's sun chariot for a single day. Helios swore by the river Styx to grant the request, despite warning Phaethon of the dangers. Phaethon lost control, the earth burned and froze in turn, and Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt. His sisters the Heliades wept at the river Eridanus and were transformed into black poplar trees that shed tears of amber.
What was the Colossus of Rhodes and how was it connected to Helios?
The Colossus of Rhodes was a gigantic bronze statue of Helios built at the port of the city of Rhodes by Chares of Lindos. It stood approximately 70 cubits, or 33 meters, tall and was counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. An earthquake in 226 BC brought it down, breaking it at the knees, and an oracle forbade the Rhodians from rebuilding it.
What role did Helios play as a guardian of oaths in ancient Greece?
Helios was frequently invoked as a divine witness to oaths and treaties because his all-seeing nature made him a reliable guarantor of sworn words. He was one of three gods named to witness the truce between Greeks and Trojans in the Iliad. The League of Corinth and treaties between Smyrna and Magnesia, and among Athens, Cetriporis, Lyppeus, and Grabus, all invoked his name.
How did Helios's importance change during late antiquity?
In late antiquity Helios rose from a relatively minor deity to a central figure in Roman state religion. In 274 AD the Emperor Aurelian instituted an official state cult to Sol Invictus, identified with Helios under the title Helios Megistos. A century later the Emperor Julian combined Mithraism and Neoplatonism to produce a theology centered on Helios that scholars have described as practically monotheistic.
What happened when Odysseus's crew ate Helios's sacred cattle in the Odyssey?
Odysseus's crew killed and ate Helios's sacred cattle on the island of Thrinacia, despite prior warnings. Helios's daughters Phaethusa and Lampetia reported the crime to their father, who demanded punishment from Zeus and rejected the crew's offer to build a new temple in Ithaca. Zeus destroyed the ship with a thunderbolt, killing every man except Odysseus, who had refused to touch the cattle.
All sources
385 references cited across the entry
- 6BookHandbook of classical mythologyWilliam F. Hansen — Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO — 2004
- 8BookLimiting the ArbitraryJohn Earl Joseph — John Benjamins — 2000
- 9BookGreek ReligionWalter Burkert — Harvard University Press — 1985
- 10BookIndo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and Proto-Culture. Part I: The Text. Part II: Bibliography, IndexesThomas V. Gamkrelidze et al. — Walter de Gruyter — 2010-12-15
- 11BookEncyclopedia of Indo-European CultureJ. P. Mallory et al. — Taylor & Francis — 1997
- 12BookGreek Heroine CultsJennifer Lynn Larson — Univ of Wisconsin Press — 1995
- 13BookIndo-European Poetry and MythM. L. West — OUP Oxford — 2007-05-24
- 14BookThe Makers of HellasFrank Byron Jevons — C. Griffin, Limited — 1903
- 15BookGreek Myth and Western Art: The Presence of the PastKarl Kilinski — Cambridge University Press — 2013
- 21BookA Manual of Greek AntiquitiesPercy Gardner et al. — Charles Scribner's Sons — 1895
- 22BookA Companion to Greek ReligionDaniel Ogden — John Wiley & Sons — 2010-02-01
- 23Greek Poems to the GodsBarry B. Powell — University of California Press — 2021-04-30
- 24BookProclus' Hymns: Essays, Translations, CommentaryRobbert Maarten van den Berg — BRILL — 2001-12-01
- 25BookAn Ancient Dream Manual: Artemidorus' The Interpretation of DreamsPeter Thonemann — Oxford University Press — 2020-01-16
- 26BookIndo-European Poetry and MythM. L. West — OUP Oxford — 2007-05-24
- 27BookMusic, Text, and Culture in Ancient GreeceTom Phillips et al. — Oxford University Press — 2018-03-02
- 28Book"The Argonautica" of Apollonius RhodiusRhodius Apollonius — London : George Bell — 1889
- 30BookHandbook of the religion and mythology of the Greeks, tr. by R.B. Paul, and ed. by T.K. ArnoldHeinrich Wilhelm Stoll — 1852
- 34BookThe "Homeric Hymn to Hermes": Introduction, Text and CommentaryAthanassios Vergados — Walter de Gruyter — 2012-12-06
- 35ToposText700
- 37BookThe ArgonauticaRhodius Apollonius et al. — London : Heinemann; New York : G.P. Putnam — 1912
- 38BookThe Mythology of Ancient Greece and ItalyThomas Keightley — D. Appleton — 1838
- 41Kirk, Raven, Schofield (1983)Kirk, Raven, Schofield — 1983
- 141Loney, p. 92
- 169Boyle, p. 98
- 181TritopatoresSuidas — Suda On Line — 21 December 2000
- 211Beck, p. 59
- 229Lupu, p. 64
- 231CGRN File 54
- 243BookA dictionary of classical antiquities : mythology, religion, literature & artOskar Seyffert — London : S. Sonnenschein; New York : Macmillan — 1901
- 296Cropp, p.176
- 300BookThe Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 1Emperor of Rome Julian — 2015-04-07
- 301BookThe Churches and Catacombs of Early Christian RomeMatilda Webb — Sussex Academic Press — 2001
- 302BookThe Oxford History of Western ArtMartin Kemp — Oxford University Press — 2000
- 321BookThe Iliad of HomerHomer, William Cullen Bryant — Ashmead — 1809
- 331BookPetrarch's genius: pentimento and prophecyO'Rourke Boyle Marjorie — University of California press — 1991
- 337JournalThe world of the Etruscan mirrorJ.D. Beazley — 1949
- 338BookThe Religion of the EtruscansNancy Thomson de Grummond et al. — University of Texas Press — 2009-04-20
- 345Cook, p. 190
- 346Cook, p. 193
- 349Cook, p. 194
- 351Inman, p. 29
- 375Long, p. 314
- 382Bull, p. 330
- 383Bull, p. 352
- 385Hall, p. 66
- 387Hall, p. 27
- 389Hall, p. 252
- 398HeliosOxford University Press
- 399JournalInaugural Address of Sir William ThomsonWilliam Thomson — August 3, 1871
- 404Deus Ex Walkthrough Ending 2 - Merge with Helios AI15 September 2021