# Helios (Ἥλιος)
**Helios** (Ἥλιος) is the god and personification of the sun in [Greek mythology](https://www.edgepedia.org/greek-mythology), whose name is simply the Greek word for "sun" and who drives the sun's chariot across the sky each day.[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) He is the son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia and the brother of [Selene](https://www.edgepedia.org/selene), goddess of the moon, and Eos, goddess of the dawn.[2](https://www.mythopedia.com/topics/helios/) Although treated with reverence throughout Greece, he received little organized worship in most of the Greek world; his one great cult center was Rhodes, where he was the leading god, the subject of the [Colossus of Rhodes](https://www.edgepedia.org/colossus-of-rhodes), and the patron deity of the unified Rhodian state.[3](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61673/chapter-abstract/548936949)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Identity | Greek god and personification of the sun; the name Ἥλιος is the ordinary Greek word for "sun"[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) |
| Family | Son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia; brother of Selene (moon) and Eos (dawn); other sources name his mother Euryphaessa, Aethra, or Basileia[2](https://www.mythopedia.com/topics/helios/) |
| Cult status | Treated with reverence but with little actual cult in early Greece; the exception was Rhodes, where he was the leading god with the Halieia festival[3](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61673/chapter-abstract/548936949) |
| Colossus of Rhodes | Bronze statue of Helios about 33 m high, built 304–280 BCE, toppled by an earthquake in either 228 or 226 BCE; one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) |
| Roman form | Worshiped as Sol; a priesthood, the pontifices Solis, managed the sun cult, important under the 3rd-century CE emperors Elagabalus and Aurelian[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) |
| Relation to Apollo | Apollo was linked with the sun from the 5th century BCE, and the two became almost synonymous from the Hellenistic period[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) |
## Character and family
The ancient sources present Helios both as the physical sun and as a god who travels with it. Homer describes him giving light to gods and men, rising from the stream of Oceanus in the east, reaching the highest point of heaven at noon, and descending at evening into the western ocean.[4](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0104%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DH%3Aentry+group%3D6) In Homer he is also invoked and receives an offering as witness to an oath, and his all-seeing, all-nurturing power is often stressed in poetry.[3](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61673/chapter-abstract/548936949) Later poets fill the night leg of the journey, making him sail in a golden boat around the edge of the earth to return to his eastern starting point.[5](https://www.theoi.com/Titan/Helios.html)
According to Hesiod, Helios was the son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, making him brother to Selene and Eos.[2](https://www.mythopedia.com/topics/helios/) From his father he bears the patronymic Hyperionides, and the Homeric hymn on Helios instead names his mother Euryphaessa; other sources give Aethra and Basileia as alternative mothers.[4](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0104%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DH%3Aentry+group%3D6) • [2](https://www.mythopedia.com/topics/helios/) In the Dorian dialect of Rhodes his name was spelled Halios (Ἁλιος).[6](https://www.theoi.com/Cult/HeliosCult.html)
His children connect him to many of the best-known myths: by Perseis he fathered the enchantress Circe, the king Aeetes of Colchis, and Pasiphae of Crete; by Clymene he fathered Phaethon and the Heliades; and by the nymph Rhodos he fathered the seven Heliadai of Rhodes.[7](https://www.theoi.com/Titan/HeliosFamily.html) The Phaethon story, told in Ovid's *Metamorphoses*, has the boy ask his father to drive the blazing chariot for one day; unable to control the horses, he veers toward the earth, scorching crops and drying rivers before he is struck down.[8](https://time.com/6140064/greek-myths-covid-19-pandemic/)
## Cult and worship
**A god honored but rarely worshiped.** Robert Parker's Oxford Classical Dictionary entry states that in early Greece Helios was always treated with reverence but received little actual cult.[3](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61673/chapter-abstract/548936949) People commonly saluted and prayed to the sun at its rising and setting, and Plato reports that Socrates did so, but [Aristophanes](https://www.edgepedia.org/aristophanes) treats the formal sacrificing to sun and moon as a practice that distinguished barbarians from Greeks.[3](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61673/chapter-abstract/548936949) • [1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) The natural philosopher [Anaxagoras](https://www.edgepedia.org/anaxagoras) caused outrage by announcing that the sun was a red-hot mass rather than a god.[3](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61673/chapter-abstract/548936949) Evidence for actual cults is scarce, and where cult sites existed they often cannot be shown to be ancient.[3](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61673/chapter-abstract/548936949)
The exception was Rhodes. When the three old cities of the island, Lindos, Ialysos, and Camirus, were unified into the new city of Rhodes around 408 BCE, the Rhodians chose Helios, rather than Zeus Atabyrios or [Athena](https://www.edgepedia.org/athena), as patron deity of the unified state, giving the sun god an unusually prominent civic position for the late classical Greek world.[9](https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191998867.003.0004) • [10](https://research-bulletin.chs.harvard.edu/2015/08/03/local-pantheons-hellenistic-rhodes/) Rhodian religion was thenceforth dominated by two gods, Helios and Athena.[9](https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191998867.003.0004) Helios's face appeared on the obverse of the city's silver coinage, with the rose (*rhodos*) on the reverse, from the late fifth century BCE, and the priesthood of his cult was the culmination of the Rhodian priestly career.[10](https://research-bulletin.chs.harvard.edu/2015/08/03/local-pantheons-hellenistic-rhodes/) Much about his cult nonetheless remains uncertain, including the precise location of his sanctuary and how he was worshiped.[9](https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191998867.003.0004)
The island's honors were public and spectacular. Panhellenic games called the Halieia were held every five years, and each year a chariot and four horses were thrown into the sea as an offering to the god.[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) In founding myth the island's name derives from the nymph Rhodos, who bore seven sons to Helios, and three of his grandsons gave their names to the three principal cities.[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/)
**Sacrifice and scattered altars.** White horses were the traditional sacrifice to the sun god: Pausanias records horse sacrifice to Helios at a peak of Taygetos in Laconia and notes that the Persians offered the same sacrifice.[6](https://www.theoi.com/Cult/HeliosCult.html) The two main cult centers were Rhodes and Corinth, where the citadel of Acrocorinth was said to have been assigned to Helios in his boundary dispute with Poseidon.[6](https://www.theoi.com/Cult/HeliosCult.html) Smaller traces survive elsewhere, including an altar near Mycenae, altars to Helios Eleutherios at Troezen, and a goat sacrifice to the rising sun at Cleonae during a plague.[6](https://www.theoi.com/Cult/HeliosCult.html) [Herodotus](https://www.edgepedia.org/herodotus) describes a flock sacred to Helios at Apollonia in Illyria, watched in turn by the town's leading men.[6](https://www.theoi.com/Cult/HeliosCult.html)
## The Colossus
The most famous image of the god was the Colossus of Rhodes, a bronze standing figure about 33 meters high that dominated the harbor of the city.[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) Ancient writers counted it among the Seven Wonders of the World; Strabo quotes its height as seventy cubits and names the sculptor as Chares of Lindos, and Pseudo-Hyginus gives 90 feet.[6](https://www.theoi.com/Cult/HeliosCult.html) It was built between 304 and 280 BCE and toppled by an earthquake in either 228 or 226 BCE; after an oracle, the Rhodians did not raise it again.[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) • [6](https://www.theoi.com/Cult/HeliosCult.html) Modern scholarship on the statue suggests seeing it primarily as a religious offering.[9](https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191998867.003.0004)
## Helios and Apollo
The relationship between Helios and Apollo is a recurring problem in Greek religion. Apollo, god of prophecy, music, healing, and archery, was linked with the sun from the 5th century BCE, and the association strengthened through the [Hellenistic period](https://www.edgepedia.org/hellenistic-period) under the influence of philosophers who gave more importance to celestial bodies, until [Apollo](https://www.edgepedia.org/apollo) and Helios became almost synonymous, much as Hyperion and Helios had been in the Archaic period.[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) Attributes of Helios were transferred not only to Apollo but also to Zeus.[11](https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/sites/default/files/2021-02/stories%20about%20light_compressed.pdf)
Modern scholarship has often read the Apollo-sun identification as a late philosophical allegory of a traditional religious belief. Tomislav Bilić, a scholar at the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, argues from a re-evaluation of the ancient evidence that the identification was present in Greek ethnographic contexts from the earliest period and cannot be reduced to philosophical reinterpretation, though writers interested in natural-philosophical readings of religion were especially prone to use it.[12](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID4114246_code5253347.pdf?abstractid=4114246) A related study of the Athenian, Delphian, and Delian calendars connects Apollo's association with the sun to the solstices as the defining points of annual solar motion.[13](https://www.croris.hr/crosbi/publikacija/prilog-casopis/186575) In Plato's *Laws*, a shared worship of Apollo and Helios is put forward; one scholar interprets this pairing as a fusion of the old with the new, in which Apollo embodies the masses' traditionalism while Helios represents the philosophers' fresh natural religion.[14](https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/73045/1/17.pdf.pdf)
## Roman Sol
The Romans adopted the god as Sol. A temple to Sol and Luna stood at the [Circus Maximus](https://www.edgepedia.org/circus-maximus) from the 3rd century BCE, and the worship of Sol gained importance in the imperial period, especially under the 3rd-century CE emperors [Elagabalus](https://www.edgepedia.org/elagabalus) and Aurelian, the latter the son of a priestess of the Sun.[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/) A dedicated priesthood, the pontifices Solis, managed what had become the most important imperial cult, a position it held until the triumph of Christianity.[1](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/)
## Origins and comparative tradition
The name ἥλιος appears in Homer and Hesiod, and its initial sound eventually underwent aspiration. Like his Vedic counterpart Sūrya, Helios is treated in comparative scholarship as the Greek continuation of the Indo-European solar deity, performing the same function of daily passage across the sky.[15](https://openscholar.uga.edu/nanna/record/8165/files/ivey_aaron_j_201705_ma.pdf) Despite this pedigree, the solar deity under his proper name plays a subordinate part in the religion, mythology, and art of ancient Greece compared with figures such as Zeus and Apollo.[16](https://giffordarchives.org/books/worship-nature/chapter-12-worship-sun-among-aryan-peoples-antiquity) In the philosophical traditions from the fifth century BCE onward, however, Helios, associated with truth, knowledge, and justice, became a favored deity of Greek philosophers who idealized those qualities.[17](https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/24031/02part1.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=3)
## References
1. [Helios, World History Encyclopedia](https://www.worldhistory.org/Helios/)
2. [Helios, Mythopedia](https://www.mythopedia.com/topics/helios/)
3. [Robert Parker, "Helios," Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2015](https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/61673/chapter-abstract/548936949)
4. ["Helios," A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, ed. William Smith, Perseus Digital Library](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0104%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DH%3Aentry+group%3D6)
5. [Helius (Helios), Theoi Project](https://www.theoi.com/Titan/Helios.html)
6. [Helios Cult, Theoi Project](https://www.theoi.com/Cult/HeliosCult.html)
7. [Helius Family, Theoi Project](https://www.theoi.com/Titan/HeliosFamily.html)
8. [What the Greek Myths Can Teach Us About Our Moment of Crisis, TIME](https://time.com/6140064/greek-myths-covid-19-pandemic/)
9. [Juliane Zachhuber, "Gods of the Rhodian State: Helios and Athena," Religious Life in Late Classical and Hellenistic Rhodes, Oxford University Press, 2024](https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191998867.003.0004)
10. [Local Pantheons in Motion: Synoecism and Patron Deities in Hellenistic Rhodes, Harvard CHS Research Bulletin](https://research-bulletin.chs.harvard.edu/2015/08/03/local-pantheons-hellenistic-rhodes/)
11. [Natural Light, Acropolis Museum](https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/sites/default/files/2021-02/stories%20about%20light_compressed.pdf)
12. [Tomislav Bilić, Early Identifications of Apollo with the Physical Sun in Ancient Greece, Mnemosyne 74.5 (2021), SSRN](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID4114246_code5253347.pdf?abstractid=4114246)
13. [Tomislav Bilić, Apollo, Helios, and the Solstices in the Athenian, Delphian, and Delian Calendars, Numen 59 (2012), CROSBI record](https://www.croris.hr/crosbi/publikacija/prilog-casopis/186575)
14. [Greek Popular Religion in Greek Philosophy](https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/73045/1/17.pdf.pdf)
15. [The Sun-God in Archaic Greek and Vedic Tradition, University of Georgia thesis](https://openscholar.uga.edu/nanna/record/8165/files/ivey_aaron_j_201705_ma.pdf)
16. [The Worship of Nature, Chapter 12: The Worship of the Sun Among the Aryan Peoples of Antiquity, Gifford Lectures archive](https://giffordarchives.org/books/worship-nature/chapter-12-worship-sun-among-aryan-peoples-antiquity)
17. [Greek Solar Mythology, University of Pretoria repository](https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/24031/02part1.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=3)
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