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This article is about Helios in Greek and Roman mythology. For other uses of Helios, see Helios (other meanings).
In earlier Greek mythology, the sun was personified as a deity called Hêlios (Greek for "the sun"), whom Homer equates with the sun titan Hyperion. Other sources say Helios is Hyperion's son by his sister Theia. Helios was seen driving a fiery chariot across the sky. He has two sisters, the moon goddess Selene and the dawn goddess Eos. Many think that Apollo becomes the Olympian "sun god", but this idea is mostly based on speculation and assumption. The equivalent of Helios in Roman mythology is Sol.
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Roman mythology
Coin of Roman Emperor Probus, circa 280 AD, with Sol Invictus riding a quadriga, with legend SOLI INVICTO.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.
A sun-god syncretism of Apollo and Mithras also referred to Sol Invictus was designated the god of the Roman Empire.
Helios and Apollo
Apollo as he appears in Homer, a plague-dealing god with a silver (not golden) bow has no solar features. But by Hellenistic times Apollo had become closely connected with the sun religiously. His epithet Phoebus 'shining' was later applied by Latin poets to the sun-god Sol also, perhaps from such connections as well as from its obvious appropriateness.
The earliest certain reference to Apollo being sometimes identified with the sun god appears in the surviving fragments of Euripides' play Phaethon. The play as a whole seems to have kept Helios separate from Apollo but in a speech near the end (fr 781 N²), Clymene, Phaethon's mother, laments that Helios has destroyed her child, that Helios whom men rightly call Apollo (the name Apollo here understood to mean Apollyon 'Destroyer').
Coin of Roman Emperor Constantine depicting Sol Invictus / Apollo with the legend SOLI INVICTO COMITI, circa 315 AD.The identification became a commonplace in philosophic texts and appears in the writing of Parmenides, Empedocles, Plutarch and Crates of Thebes among other as well as appearing in some Orphic texts. Pseudo-Eratosthenes writes about Orpheus in Catast 24:
- But having gone down into Hades because of his wife and seeing what sort of things were there, he did not continue to worship Dionysus, become of whom he was famous, but he thought Helios to be the greatest of the gods, Helios whom he also addressed as Apollo. Rousing himself up each night toward dawn and climbing the mountain called Pangaion he would await the sun's rising, so that he might see it first. Therefore Dionysus, being angry with him, sent the Bassarides, as Aeschylus the tragedian says; they tore him apart and scattered the limbs.
Dionysus and Asclepius are sometimes also identified with this Apollo Helios.
But in mythological texts Apollo and Helios are almost universally kept distinct. The sun-god, the son of Hyperion, with his sun chariot, though often called Phoebus is not called Apollo except in purposeful non-traditional identifications. Roman poets often referred to the sun god as Titan.
It seems to be a modern meta-myth that 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 Helios.