Heliades

"Helia" redirects here. For the noctuoid moth genus, see Helia (moth)

In Greek mythology, the Heliades ("children of the sun") were the daughters of Helios and Clymene the Oceanid.

According to one source, there were three of them: Aegiale, Aegle, and Aetheria. According to another source, there were five: Helia, Merope, Phoebe, Aetheria, and Dioxippe.^[1] Yet other sources^[2]^[3] include on the list Phaethousa and Lampetia, who are otherwise called daughters of Neaera.^[4]

Their brother, Phaëthon, died after attempting to drive his father's chariot (the sun) across the sky. He was unable to control the horses and fell to his death (according to most accounts, Zeus struck his chariot with a thunderbolt to save the Earth from being set afire). The Heliades grieved for four months and the gods turned them into poplar trees and their tears into amber.^[5]^[6] According to some sources, their tears (amber) fell into the river Eridanos, in which Phaethon had fallen.^[7]^[8]^[9]

According to Hyginus, the Heliades were turned to poplar trees because they yoked the chariot for their brother without their father Helios' permission.^[10]

Notes

^ Hyginus Fabulae 154
^ Aeschylus, Heliades (play survived only in brief fragments)
^ Ovid Metamorphoses 2.340
^ Homer Odyssey 12.128
^ Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 23. 2
^ Ovid, Metamorphoses 10. 262 ff
^ Philoxenus of Cythera, Fragment 834
^ Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 4. 1
^ Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 5. 627 ff
^ Hyginus Fabulae 152A

References

Ovid. Metamorphoses II, 340.
Gaius Julius Hyginus. Fabulae CLIV & CLII A
Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Heliadae and Heliads"
Theoi Project - Heliades

This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).