Helios, also known as The Sun is a Mount Othrys character in Hesiod and Homer's myth. He débuts, with his appearance in around 700 B.C. and usually ends at around the 9th Century.
Helios is the greek titan and personification of the sun in Greek Mythology.
History[]
Helios is a titan, the son of Hyperion and Theia, also the older brother of Selene and Eos. During the titanomachy where the gods fought the titans, Helios was given a choice to which side he was going to be on and fight. Helios, along with Selene (the moon) decided to stay out of this battle.
The best known story involving Helios is that of his son Phaëton, who attempted to drive his father's chariot but lost control and set the earth on fire. Helios was sometimes characterized with the epithet Panoptes ("the all-seeing"). In the story told in the hall of Alcinous in the Odyssey, Aphrodite, the consort of Hephaestus, secretly beds Ares, but all-seeing Helios spies on them and tells Hephaestus, who ensnares the two lovers in nets invisibly fine, to punish them.
In the Odyssey, Odysseus and his surviving crew land on Thrinacia, an island sacred to the sun god, whom Circe names Hyperion rather than Helios. There, the sacred red cattle of the Sun were kept:
You will now come to the Thrinacian island, and here you will see many herds of cattle and flocks of sheep belonging to the sun-god. There will be seven herds of cattle and seven flocks of sheep, with fifty heads in each flock. They do not breed, nor do they become fewer in number, and they are tended by the goddesses Phaethusa and Lampetia, who are children of the sun-god Hyperion by Neaera. Their mother when she had borne them and had done suckling them sent them to the Thrinacian island, which was a long way off, to live there and look after their father's flocks and herds.
Though Odysseus warns his men, when supplies run short they impiously kill and eat some of the cattle of the Sun. The guardians of the island, Helios' daughters, tell their father about this. Helios appeals to Zeus telling them to dispose of Odysseus' men or he will take the Sun and shine it in the Underworld. Zeus destroys the ship with his lightning bolt, killing all the men except for Odysseus.
Family[]
| Chaos | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Theia | Hyperion † | Cronus † | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Helios | Selene | Eos | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Notes:
- Solid lines denote parent-child blood relationships
- Dashed lines denote marriage relationships that result in offspring
- † denotes the deceased
- Helios married Selene.
Trivia[]
Appearances[]
| Greek Mythology Appearances | ||||||||||||
| "Disney's Hercules": | "Clash of the Titans (2010)": | "Wrath of the Titans": | "Once Upon a Time": | "Hercules 2014": | "Immortals": | "Myths": | ||||||
| Appears | Appears | Appears | Appears | Appears | Appears | Appears | ||||||
| "Rain of the Furies": | "Clash of the Titans (1981)": | "For the Love of Zeus": | "PJO & the Lightning Thief": | "PJO & the Sea of Monsters": | "Strange Case": | "More in Heaven and Hell": | "Alternate Realities": | |||||
| Appears | Appears | Appears | Appears | Appears | Will Appear | Will Appear | TBA | |||||
- He may not have appeared in his titan-like form. But as the sun, he did.
About[]
- Helios has the most amount of appearances than any other character. Along with Selene.