Su ̄ rya, who seems to represent the actual disk of the sun.
Su ̄ rya had the power to drive away darkness, witches, and evil
dreams; he is also a healing god, particularly effective against
jaundice. He is the husband of Dawn and drives a chariot,
sometimes with one and sometimes with seven horses. An-
other name for the sun is Savitr:. Sometimes it is said that
the sun is Savitr: before his rising and Su ̄ rya afterward. Savitr:
“brings all men and animals to rest; men lay down their work
and birds seek their nests.” Among other names given to the
sun in the ancient poems is that of Vis:n:u, because “he strode
across the sky in three giant steps” to ward off demons from
humankind. Vis:n:u, of course, came to be one of the three
great gods of Hinduism, the one especially benevolent to hu-
mankind.
ANCIENT GREECE. In Hesiod’s Birth of the Gods (c. 750 BCE)
Helios is the son of Hyperion, also a sun figure, and is the
brother of the Moon (Selene) and of the Dawn (Eos). He
is not included in the family of Olympians who came into
prominence after Homer and Hesiod (from about 800 BCE),
but belongs to an older, less-well defined group that was
closely connected with natural phenomena. In Homer (c.
800 BCE), Helios reveals to Hephaistos the adultery of his
wife, Aphrodite. In the Demeter myth he reports that Hades
has carried off to the underworld Demeter’s daughter, Per-
sephone. The chariot of the sun is mentioned not in Homer
but in the so-called Homeric Hymns (c. 700 BCE). Demeter
stands before the chariot as she begs for help. According to
the Homeric Hymn to Helios, “as he rides in his chariot, he
shines upon all men and deathless gods, and piercingly he
gazes with his eyes from his golden helmet. He rests upon
the highest point of heaven until he marvelously drives down
again from heaven to the Ocean.” The poet Mimnernus (c.
630 BCE) describes the sun as floating back through the sub-
terranean ocean in a golden bowl made for him by the divine
smith Hephaistos. These descriptions laid the foundations
for the hundreds of depictions of the sun in his chariot in
Greek art, continuing into Roman times.
As in Mesopotamia, the Sun in Greece is involved in
oaths and is a god of vengeance. In Aeschylus, Prometheus,
bound upon his crag, calls upon “the all-seeing circle of the
sun” to witness his woes. In Oedipus of Colonus, by Sopho-
cles, Creon drives his brother-in-law out of the house so that
“the sun may not look upon such a wretch.” Cassandra in
Aeschylus’s Agamemnon calls upon the Sun for vengeance on
her murderers. Medea in Euripides’ play makes Aegeus swear
by earth and sun that he will protect her. In the Argonautica
of Apollonius Rhodius (third century BCE) she swears by the
Sun and Hekate. In the Iliad, 19.196, a boar is sacrificed to
Zeus and the Sun in confirmation of an oath.
There was little direct worship of the sun in ancient
Greece, though there are traces of earlier rites. Plato says the
earlier Greeks made obeisance to the rising and setting sun.
Pausanias in his guidebook to Greece (second century BCE)
mentions several shrines to the sun in remote places. For in-
stance, the people of a little town north of Corinth, when
suffering from a plague were told by the Delphic oracle to
sacrifice a goat to the Sun. When they did, and the plague
stopped, in gratitude they sent a bronze goat to the oracle,
which many people, says Pausanias, thought was the Sun it-
self. Corinth itself was originally sacred to the Sun and, ac-
cording to Pausanias, was called Heliopolis (“city of the
sun”). Later the Sun gave the city to Aphrodite.
The island of Rhodes, however, had a true cult of the
sun, influenced perhaps by the sun worship of the East. In
legend, the island was brought up out of the sea to compen-
sate Helios for his exclusion from the heavenly lottery. It was
on Rhodes that Helios loved the nymph Rhoda and begot
the seven wise men of the ancient world. An impressive festi-
val of the sun, held on Rhodes every four years, included ath-
letic games and a chariot race. Every year the Rhodians threw
into the sea a chariot drawn by four horses. The famous co-
lossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the world,
erected in 284 BCE, was a figure of the sun god. Pliny re-
counts that it was 105 feet high and that one of its fingers
was larger than most statues. It was thrown down by an
earthquake sixty-six years after it was erected.
In addition to being an all-seeing eye and god of ven-
geance, the sun in Greece has a connection with magic.
Among his children were Aeetes, king of Colchis, Circe, the
witch of the Odyssey, and Pasiphae (“all-shining”; perhaps a
reference to the moon), who bewitched her husband, Minos
of Crete. Most famous of the sun’s lineage is Medea, daugh-
ter of Aeetes, whose enchantments form the plot of Euripi-
des’ play.
The Odyssey tells the story of the cattle of the Sun, which
were taboo to mortals. They roamed on the island of Trinac-
ria, seven herds of fifty each, tended by two daughters. Odys-
seus had been warned not to touch the cattle, but his ma-
rooned sailors were starving and killed and ate some. The
flesh on the spits writhed and lowed. The Sun appealed to
Zeus for vengeance and threatened to go down and shine in
the underworld if he were not appeased. Zeus therefore
hurled a thunderbolt, which destroyed the ship and left only
Odysseus alive in the water. These cattle have been interpret-
ed in various ways: Some say that they are the clouds that
gather at sunrise and sunset, and Aristotle thought they stood
for the days of the lunar year.
In ancient Greece, Apollo was a god of prophecy, sick-
ness, healing, and death. He is connected by the historian
Herodotus with the Hyperboreans, people of the north or
east, who sent mysterious offerings to Apollo at Delphi.
From the fifth century BCE on, there are suggestions that link
Apollo to the sun. The best known myth of the sun from
ancient Greece is the story of Phaethon, who begged to drive
the chariot of the sun, lost control of it, and would have
scorched the earth if he had not been killed by a thunderbolt.
In a fragment of Euripides, the mother of Phaethon says that
the true name of the sun is Apollo, meaning “the destroyer,”
since he had destroyed her son. The Orphic poets, as well
as the Cynic philosopher Crates (c. 300 BCE), called the sunSUN 8839