Heliades

In Greek mythology, the Heliades (Greek: Ἡλιάδες, "children of the sun") were the daughters of Helios and Clymene the Oceanid.

According to one version recorded by Hyginus, there were three of them: Aegiale, Aegle, and Aetheria. According to another version, there were five: Helia, Merope, Phoebe, Aetheria, and Dioxippe.^[1] Aeschylus's fragmentary "Heliades" ^[2][3] names Phaethousa and Lampetia, who are otherwise called daughters of Neaera.^[4]

Their brother, Phaëthon, died after attempting to drive his father's chariot (the sun) across the sky. He was unable to control the horses and fell to his death (according to most accounts, Zeus struck his chariot with a thunderbolt to save the Earth from being set afire). The Heliades grieved for four months and the gods turned them into poplar trees and their tears into amber.^[5][6] According to some sources, their tears (amber) fell into the river Eridanos, in which Phaethon had fallen.^[7][8][9]

According to Hyginus, the Heliades were turned to poplar trees because they yoked the chariot for their brother without their father Helios' permission.^[10]

Notes

1. Hyginus Fabulae 154
2. Aeschylus, Heliades (play survived only in brief fragments)
3. Ovid Metamorphoses 2.340
4. Homer Odyssey 12.128
5. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 23. 2
6. Ovid, Metamorphoses 10. 262 ff
7. Philoxenus of Cythera, Fragment 834
8. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 4. 1
9. Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 5. 627 ff
10. Hyginus Fabulae 152A

References

• Ovid. Metamorphoses II, 340.
• Gaius Julius Hyginus. Fabulae CLIV & CLII A
• Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Heliadae and Heliads"
• Theoi Project - Heliades
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "^{article name needed}". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.