Helios
In earlier Greek Mythology, the sun was personified as a deity called HÃÂêlios (Roman equivalent: Sol), driving a fiery chariot across the sky. HÃÂêlios means 'the sun' in the Greek language.
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2 Roman mythology 3 Helios and Apollo 4 Consorts/Children 5 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle 6 Deus Ex |
Greek mythology
The best known story involving Helios is that of his son Phaeton, who drove the sun chariot to his own disaster.
Helios was sometimes referred to with the epithet Helios Panoptes ("the all-seeing").
The names of the horses were Pyrois, Eos, Aethon and Phlegon.
Helios was worshipped throughout the Peloponnesus, especially on Rhodes (an island he pulled out of the sea), where annual gymnastic tournaments were held in his honor. The Colossus of Rhodes was dedicated to him.
Helios was often depicted as a haloed youth in a chariot, wearing a cloak and with a globe and a whip. Roosters and eagles were associated with him.
In the Odyssey, Odysseus and his surviving crew landed on an island, Thrinacia, sacred to Helios, where he kept sacred cattle. Though Odysseus warned his men not to, they killed and ate some of the cattle. The guardians of the island, Helios' daughters, Lampetia and Phaethusa, told their father. Helios destroyed the ship and all the men save Odysseus.
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 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. Heracles used this golden cup to reach Erytheia.
Helios' Roman equivalent was Sol. On the Quirinalis, he was worshipped as Sol Indiges. The Circus Maximus housed another temple.
Emperor Heliogabalus imported Sol Invictus ("the invincible sun") from Syria. Sol Invictus was designated the god of the Roman Empire.
Apollo as he appears in Homer, a plague-dealing god of inspiration with a silver (not golden) bow has no visible solar features. But by Hellenistic times Apollo had become closely connected with the sun religiously. His ephithet Phoebus shining was later applied by Latin poets to the sun-god Sol also, probably partly because the two were often partly conflated in relgious cult.
But in mythological texts the two are still always distinguished. The sun-god, the son of Hyperion, with his sun chariot, though often called Phoebus is never called Apollo and carefully distinguished from him. Indeed Roman poets often referred to him as Titan.
It seems to be a modern meta-myth the literary references to Phoebus and his car or to Phoebus and his chariot refer to Phoebus Apollo in the role of sun god rather than to the separate mythological sun god who also bore the title Phoebus.
In Deus Ex, Helios is an A.I. that was created when the artifical intelligence Icarus and Dadeulus merged.
Roman mythology
Helios and Apollo
Consorts/Children
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Helios is the name of a solar powered unmanned aerial vehicle tested by NASA. See also:
NASA's Helios Project
Deus Ex
Warning: Plot details follow.