Circe foretold that Odysseus would lose his men and his ship if the herd of Helios came to any harm. The herd belonged to Helios, and the all-seeing god would immediately know if any of them came to harm. Although the men would be tempted by fresh meat, she insisted that they must not attempt to slaughter any of the animals. The island, she said, was home to a large herd of cattle. In addition to advising him on the best way to get past Scylla and Charybdis, Circe wanted him of a less obvious danger he would face on the island of Thrinacia. Before he left her peaceful island, she warned him about the dangers he would face ahead. Odysseus spent a year with the enchantress Circe during his journey. He is one of the hero’s antagonists, and his anger with Odysseus leads to one of the voyage’s greatest tragedies. In the Odyssey, however, his role is much different. Helios is usually shown as a helpful and well-meaning god. When Persephone was abducted, only Helios saw that it was Hades who had taken the goddess away. His most typical role in many myths was as an observer with information about the secrets of the gods.įor example, it was Helios who told Hephaestus that Ares and Aphrodite were having an affair when he saw the god of war sneak into their palace. Helios drove his chariot across the sky each day, lighting up the sky with his radiance.įrom his position in the sky, Helios could see everything that happened both on Earth and on Mount Olympus. One of the younger Titans, he had been welcomed into the pantheon of Mount Olympus along with his sister, the lunar goddess Selene. The favor Helios extends to Hercules is seemingly closely related to the anger he directs toward Odysseus. While this aspect of Helios is seemingly at odds with his characterization in other myths, there are close parallels to another legend of the same era. All of his crew are killed and Odysseus is lost at sea, directly leading to another seven years of delays. To keep Helios from inflicting even greater damage on the world, Zeus agrees to destroy the Greek king’s last ship. In other stories, he rarely shows anger, or even interacts with humans at all, but when Odysseus’s men kill some of his sacred cattle the sun god demands an act of terrible revenge. Rather than being a passive observer or involved only in the affairs of the god, Helios serves as a primary antagonist during one of the hero’s misadventures. While Helios, the Titan god of the sun, plays a role in several stories of Greek mythology, it is rarely similar to the one he plays in Homer’s Odyssey.
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