![]() On the Quirinalis, he was worshipped as Sol Indiges. Heracles used this golden cup to reach Erytheia. Helios begged him to stop and Heracles demanded the golden cup which Helios used to sail across the sea every night, from the west to the east. While Heracles traveled to Erytheia to retrieve the cattle of Geryon, he crossed the Libyan desert and was so frustrated at the heat that he shot an arrow at Helios, the sun. Helios destroyed the ship and all the men save Odysseus. The guardians of the island, Helios' daughters, told their father. Though Odysseus warned his men not to, they impiously killed and ate some of the cattle. There were kept the sacred red Cattle of the Sun. 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 Phaethusa and Lampetia, who are children of the sun-god Hyperion by Neaera. "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- seven herds of cattle and seven flocks of sheep, with fifty head in each flock. In the Odyssey (book XII), Odysseus and his surviving crew landed on an island, Thrinacia, sacred to the sun god, whom Circe names Hyperion rather than Helios: Roosters and eagles were associated with him. Helios was often depicted as a haloed youth in a chariot, wearing a cloak and with a globe and a whip. The Colossus of Rhodes was dedicated to him. Helios was worshipped throughout the Peloponnesus, and especially on Rhodes (an island he pulled out of the sea), where annual gymnastic tournaments were held in his honor. The names of the horses were Pyrois, Eos, Aethon and Phlegon. ![]() Helios was sometimes referred to with the epithet Helios Panoptes ("the all-seeing"). The best known story involving Helios is that of his son Phaeton, who drove the sun chariot to his own disaster. The etymology of Helios, unlike most of the major figures in Greek myth is Indo-European (Burkert p 17) The equivalent of Helios in Roman mythology is Sol. Many think that Apollo becomes the Olympian "sun god", but this idea is mostly based on speculation and assumption. He has two sisters, the moon goddess Selene and the dawn goddess Eos. Helios was seen driving a fiery chariot across the sky. Other sources say Helios is Hyperion's son by his sister Theia. In earlier Greek mythology, the sun was personified as a deity called Hêlios ( Ήλιος, Greek for "the sun"), whom Homer equates with the sun titan Hyperion. Helios in his Chariot (Tetrippon), image from a 435 BC krater, British Museum, London
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