Attic red-figure kylix showing Selene riding the chariot of the moon, drawn by two winged horses. Zeus slept with the human queen Alcmene, of which encounter Heracles was born. Was the Griffin a Bird from Greek Mythology? [28], Another version is known only from Lucian, a satirical writer from the second century CE. Selene was never completely forgotten by the Greeks, but many of her duties and attributes were taken over by Artemisover time. Selene's Roman name was Lunar. In it, Selene is depicted as fighting alongside Helios and Eos, seated side-saddle on a horse. 527532; Shear, pp. Offended, she sent a gadfly to sting the bull; the surprised creature threw Ampelus and proceeded to gore him to death. Goddess Selene is often portrayed in art and in myths generally, riding a chariot across the sky. Greek mythology, body of stories concerning the gods, heroes, and rituals of the ancient Greeks. [59] Though the moon chariot is often described as being silver,[60] for Pindar it was golden. Upon the head of Selene was normally found a crown that was representative of the spherical moon. The pair could also have been the parents of the beautiful and vain Narcissus, for whom the Narcissus flower is named, according to Nonnus, the Greek epic poet of the Roman era. Indeed, it reflects the fascinating way the Greeks observed the . Selene could still see her sleeping love whenever she pleased, but the pressures of time and mortality were taken off her. Hurwit, Jeffery M. (2017), "Helios Rising: The Sun, the Moon, and the Sea in the Sculptures of the Parthenon", Jones, Prudence H., "A Goddess Arrives: Nineteenth Century Sources of the New Age Triple Moon Goddess" in. [95], Anaxagoras also reports that the Nemean lion was said to have fallen from the moon. [1], Selene was often identified with other goddesses, including Men (also spelled Mene), the divine personification of the lunar month; Bendis, a goddess of Thracian origin; Hecate, a goddess of witchcraft; and (especially in later antiquity) Artemis, the goddess of hunting and wild things. Both Theocritus in his second Idyll and Pindar write about how young women would pray to or invoke spells in the name of the moon goddess for help with their love lives. [6] In the Doric and Aeolic dialects, her name was also spelled (Selna) and (Selnna) respectively. [63][66], Selene is best known for her affair with the beautiful mortal Endymion. Obbink, Dirk (2002), "'All Gods are True' in Epicurus" in, Obbink, Dirk (2011) "56. The goddess took offense, and sent a gadfly to sting Ampelus' bull. Two winged steeds pulled her across the sky each night. At that time, he did not wish for the sun to rise for three days and sent instructions to Selene via Hermes so it should be so. [37] Other accounts give still other parents for Selene: Euripides has Selene as the daughter of Helios (rather than sister),[38] while an Aeschylus fragment possibly has Selene as the daughter of Leto,[39] as does a scholium on Euripides's play The Phoenician Women which adds Zeus as the father. Several lovers are attributed to her in various myths, including Zeus, Pan, and the mortal Endymion. According to the Homeric Hymn 32, Selene and Zeus together had a daughter named Pandia. Selene goddess of the moon, Athenian red-figure kylix C5th B.C., Antikensammlung Berlin. Whenever the moon could not be seen in the night sky, it was because Selene had paused to take in Endymions beauty once again. Altes Museum, Berlin, Germany. Her list of powers are unmatched, as far as lunar goddesses go. Hyperions role is not fully known today, but given that he was the god of heavenly light in all its forms, it may be assumed that his children, powerful as they were in their individual capacities, only held a fraction of the might of their Titan father. [33] The Homeric Hymn to Helios follows this tradition: "Hyperion wedded glorious Euryphassa, his own sister, who bare him lovely children, rosy-armed Eos and rich-tressed Selene and tireless Helios",[34] with Euryphassa ("widely shining") probably being an epithet of Theia. The idea that Selene would also give easy labours to women paved way for identification with Hera and the Roman Juno and Lucina, three other childbirth goddesses; Plutarch calls Selene "Hera in material form. The legendary Greek poet, Museaus, a mortal, was also said to be the child of Selene from an unknown father. After all, mythology is storytelling at its finest. In this case, the story of Selene embracing Endymion, or Moon embraces Diver, refers to the sun setting and the moon rising. Her brother Helios shone as the sun, while her sister Eos was the goddess of the dawn. Hesiod, Theogony 371ff; Apollodorus, Library 1.2.2; etc. Selene was not the only goddess the Greeks associated with the moon. The talkative Myia would sit with Endymion as he slept his eternal sleep, chattering endlesslyso much so that Endymion eventually woke up. When Gaia heard of a prophecy that a mortal would help the gods to defeat the giants, she sought to find a herb that would make them undefeatable. [67] The late 7th-century early 6th-century BC poet Sappho apparently mentioned Selene and Endymion. Her lunar sphere or crescent was either a crown set upon her head or the fold of a raised, shining cloak. Her brother is Helios, the Sun and her sister is Eos, the Dawn. [32], The usual account of Selene's origin is given by Hesiod in his Theogony, where the sun-god Hyperion espoused his sister Theia, who gave birth to "great Helios and clear Selene and Eos who shines upon all that are on earth and upon the deathless Gods who live in the wide heaven". Epimenides, in the theogony that was ascribed to him, also calls her lovely haired, perhaps due to the Homeric Hymns themselves. . [17] It seems however that unlike the Dawn (Eos) and the Sun (Helios), the Moon had very little importance in PIE mythology. She was worshipped at the new and full moons. [34] She also had a sacred statue (which stood alongside one of her brother Helios) in the public market of Elis.[35]. If youve ever wondered what role the moon played in ancient life, here is your chance to learn about how the Greeks viewed Selene, the personification of the moon. [128], Originally, Pandia may have been an epithet of Selene,[129] but by at least the time of the late Hymn to Selene, Pandia had become a daughter of Zeus and Selene. By the 5th century bc Selene was sometimes identified with Artemis, or Phoebe, the bright one. She was usually represented as a woman with the moon (often in crescent form) on her head and driving a two-horse chariot. Robert S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 2:131819. Hurwit 2017, pp. [45] Selene and Zeus were also said to be the parents of Nemea, the eponymous nymph of Nemea, where Heracles slew the Nemean Lion, and where the Nemean Games were held. All of these qualities bound Selene to the natural phenomena of time and seasons and the rejuvenation of nature as well, even apart from her ability to shed light. [23] She was, however, the subject of one of the thirty-three Homeric Hymns, which gives the following description: And next, sweet voiced Muses, daughters of Zeus, well-skilled in song, tell of the long-winged[24] Moon. [31] Mesomedes of Crete calls her (glauk, "silvery grey"). According to Hesiods Theogony, Selene was born of Hyperion and Theia. 1999, Mark P. O. Morford, Robert J. Lenardon, Classical Mythology, page 43, Balancing Arria is the union of Selene and Endymion. How old is the United States of America? Many of these old communities followed the lunar calendar and that made the moon a center of their faith and worship in many ways. Selene. Mythopedia, 7 Dec. 2022. https://mythopedia.com/topics/selene. Everything We Know About the Greek Goddess of Agriculture, Aphrodite Facts: Awesome Facts about the Goddess of, Interesting Facts about Athena: Greek Goddess of Knowledge. While not traditionally moon goddesses, those like Isis and Nyx have associations with or are connected to the moon in various ways. Thou wouldst say far off that this was milk indeed, which is a well-spring of white water: if thou draw a little nigher, lo, the stream is fringed as though with ice, for white stone rims it round. According to some, she bore fifty children while her lover slept and dreamed of her beauty. The Greek word Phoebe means bright and the word Cynthia means from Mount Cynthus which was said to be the birthplace of Artemis. Moon gods and goddesses have existed in all ancient pantheistic cultures for a very long time. The first depictions of Selenes moon chariot goes back to the early 5th century BCE. Along with presiding over dangerous sea creatures, Ceto produced her own set of frightening . The name of the moon goddess is surrounded by accounts of the consorts she had and their children. [96] Pseudo-Plutarch's On Rivers has Hera collaborating with Selene, "employing magical incantations" to create the Nemean Lion from a chest filled with foam. Selene featured in few myths, with the most famous ones being the tales that tell of her lovers: Zeus, Pan and the mortal Endymion. Like every celestial goddess , there was a yin to Selene's yang; In this case, there were two yins. As punishment, he was either thrown out of Olympus or cast into an eternal sleep. Selene, like her siblings, was a Titan goddess because of her birth but they were no less important to the Greeks. Her name was spelt differently in the different dialects of the Greeks but the meaning was the same. Same thing happened with Helius and Apollo. Who were Zeus' Lovers? The myth of Selene claims that this goddess had several lovers, both divine and mortal. [144] And, according to a scholium on Theocritus, Pindar wrote that lovesick women would pray to Selene for help, as Euripides apparently had Phaedra, Selene's great-niece, do in his lost play Hippolytus Veiled. The light that humans saw from earth emanate from them, a legacy of their lustrous father. Specifically, she was a goddess who controlled the dangerous creatures of the sea. [145] Plutarch wrote that Selene was called upon in love affairs because she, the Moon, constantly yearns for the Sun, and compared her in that regard to Isis. Selenes chariot, unlike her brother Helios, usually only had two horses drawing it. [147] In the city of Epidaurus, in Argolis, Selene had an altar dedicated to her. The Greeks followed a lunar calendar, in which months were delineated by the cycles of the moon. See esp. Most famous classical poets describe her beauty as so intriguing that gods and mortals alike could not resist her godly charms. Having risen to power in the generation of Zeus, they were universally revered and worshiped. As the most important and visible features in the sky, the people of ancient Greece thought that Selene, goddess of the moon, and her brother Helios, god of the sun, were the ones responsible for the movement of the two celestial bodies across the sky. Their names differed from the other triads of Horae and they were considered to be the personifications of the four seasons itself. The moon was thought to influence people in other ways, as well. There were some witches who people thought could make the moon or the sun disappear from the sky at a specified time, although it is more likely that such people, if they did exist, simply had the ability to predict when an eclipse was going to happen. Selene with sleeping Endymion, fresco in the fourth Pompeian style. The goddess of the moon does not seem to have been the object of much ritual worship in the early Greek period. Hypothesis to the scholia on Pindars Nemean Odes. Nonnus, Dionysiaca 12.1ff (who names Helios as the father of the Horae but does not name the mother). 116, no. She was descended . What are Hades Powers that are Really Scary? According to Hesiods Theogony, her parents were the Titans Hyperion and Theia; her brother was Helios, the sun god (sometimes called her father); her sister was Eos (Dawn). Not only was she the goddess of the moon, but she was considered a personification of the moon itself and that was how she was portrayed by many of the old poets and writers. [97] Hyginus says that Selene had "nourished" the lion in a "two-mouthed cave". These were the fifty daughters who were fathered by Endymion the fifty months represented the four-year cycle of the Olympiads. Some even said that the Nemean Lion, as the offspring of Selene, had originally fallen from the moon.[30]. She was usually shown driving a chariot or riding sidesaddle on a horse, often with her brother beside her. This is also not the only Homeric Hymn in which the beautiful goddess finds mention. The tale of Endymion and Selene is one that has resonated with people for millennia. This is at times accompanied by stars to depict the night sky, but the crescent moon was perhaps the most recognizable of Selenes symbols. [114] From Pausanias, we learn that Selene and Helios also framed the birth of Aphrodite on the base of the Statue of Zeus at Olympia. [76] The Roman playwright Seneca, has Selene abandoned the night sky for Endymion's sake having entrusted her "shining" moon chariot to her brother Helios to drive. One of the most important sources of this myth is in the Greek satirist Lucian of Samosatas Dialogues of the Gods, where Aphrodite and Selene talk about the latters love for Endymion. 80; Acusilaus, FHG 1 frag. "[139] Roman philosopher Cicero connected Selene's Roman counterpart Luna's name to childbirth goddess Lucina's, both deriving from "light" (thus bringing the unborn child into the light). [8], Selene began appearing in the visual arts around the early fifth century BCE. Without Selene giving way to Eos, Helios could not bring the sun back to the world. Eventually, she became identified with Artemis, goddess of the wilderness, who was sometimes associated with the moon. In her later identification with Artemis, Selene came to be called Phoebe or Cynthia. The air, unlit before, glows with the light of her golden crown, and her rays beam clear, whensoever bright Selene having bathed her lovely body in the waters of Ocean, and donned her far-gleaming raiment, and yoked her strong-necked, shining team, drives on her long-maned horses at full speed, at eventime in the mid-month: then her great orbit is full and then her beams shine brightest as she increases. 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