Of the Adriatic headland and the water of Eridanos, He borrows the chariot of Helios for a day driving too near the earth, he sets it afire, Zeus then strikes him dead with his thunderbolt, and Phaethon falls from the sky.īy the banks of this river Eridanos, the Daughters of the Sun mourn for the fallen Phaethon: At his mother’s behest, Phaethon travels to Aithiopia, the abode of Helios, in a quest to prove that the Sun is truly his father. His real father, however, is not the mortal Merops but the sun-god Helios. Phaethon, the story goes, was raised as the son of Merops and Klymene. In this passage, Phaeton’s mother is Klymene. He also quotes a passage from Euripides about the sisters. Nagy in his book Greek Mythology & Poetics writes in Chapter 9 about Phaeton and his sisters. If they do not square accounts with me about my cows, I will go down to Hadēs and shine there among the dead.’ Meanwhile Lampetie of the light robes went straight off to the sun and told him we had been killing his cows, whereon he flew into a great rage, and said to the immortals, ‘Father Zeus, and all you other gods who live in everlasting bliss, I must have vengeance on the crew of Laertes’ son Odysseus’ ship: they have had the insolence to kill my cows, which were the one thing I loved to look upon, whether I was going up the sky or down again. If you leave these flocks unharmed, and think of nothing but getting home, you may yet after much hardship reach Ithaca but if you harm them, then I forewarn you of the destruction both of your ship and of your comrades… 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. They do not breed, nor do they become fewer in number, and they are tended by the goddesses with sweet hair, Phaethousa and Lampetie, who are children of the sun-god Hyperion by Neaira. 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, Helios-seven herds of cattle and seven flocks of sheep, with fifty head in each flock. In the Odyssey we learn about the two sisters. However, the story of Phaeton’s sisters, Phaethousa ‘radiance,’ and Lempetia ‘shining,’ the daughters of the sun-god Helios, starts with Homer. The painter Claude Lorrain got his inspiration from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Different versions may be found about who they are and who is their mother. The painting represents the sisters of Phaeton lamenting for their brother after his tragic death. I often go to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts but I did not notice this painting until last month. Claude Lorrain, The Daughters of Helios Searching for their Brother Phaeton (1658) Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
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