suggests a bright celestial, though this has no obvious relevance to the story
that she mated with a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur. In the Odyssey
there is Circe, who lives close by the house and dancing-place of Dawn and
the risings of the sun (12. 3 f.), and also the two nymphs who herd Helios’
calendrical cattle, Phaethousa and Lampetie –– lucent names again, and
although they live on earth, they are able to go and visit their father (12. 132,
374 f.). Then there are those Heliad maidens mentioned earlier, who actually
ride out in a chariot from the gates of the sunrise in company with a kouros––
Parmenides –– if not with a Dioskouros.^112 Another group of Heliades
appeared as the chorus in Aeschylus’ tragedy of that name: its subject was
Phaethon, and they were his sisters who lamented his fiery death. Hyginus
(Fab. 154. 4) serves up a list of their names, and it is interesting that one of
them is Helie, which stands in the same relationship to Helios as Su ̄rya ̄ to
Su ̄rya.
But if we ask who is the divine paragon of female beauty most intimately
connected with the Dioskouroi, those Greek counterparts of the As ́vins and
the Baltic Sons of God, there can only be one answer: Helen. She is not called
the daughter of the Sun, except in one late and supremely disreputable source
(Ptolemy Hephaestion ap. Phot. Bibl. 149a31): she is the daughter of Zeus
(∆ι: θυγα ́ τηρ,Od. 4. 227), as the Vedic Us
̇
as is of Dyaus (Divó duhita ̄ ́), the
Lithuanian Sun-goddess of Dievas, and St Brigit of the Dagda. She is thus the
sister of the Dioskouroi, and it follows that they cannot appear as her suitors.
But she is much sought after in marriage, and although her suitors gather at
the house of her mortal ‘father’ Tyndareos to bid for her, it is the Dioskouroi,
not Tyndareos, who organize the event (‘Hes.’ frs. 196–9).
In the epic tradition Helen appears as a mortal queen at Sparta who by
eloping with Paris caused a huge and disastrous war. But in Laconia she was
worshipped as a goddess, and so she was on Rhodes, where Helios too was a
major deity.^113 The cults can hardly have grown out of the epic myth; rather
Helen was a goddess from the start. By blaming her for the Trojan War the
poet Stesichorus, according to legend, offended her and she struck him blind,
later restoring his sight after he had composed a palinode. In a variant of the
story (Horace, Epod. 17. 42) it was the Dioskouroi who blinded and then
healed him. In either case it is noteworthy that restoring sight to the blind is a
typical accomplishment of the As ́vins.^114
(^112) Parmenides B 1. 24 p κο ρ, qθανα ́ τοισι συνα ́ ορο ]νιο ́ χοισιν.
(^113) The Rhodian Helios had a daughter A ̄lektro ̄na ̄, who died unmarried and was venerated as
a heroine (SIG 338; Diod. 5. 56. 5).
(^114) RV 1. 112. 8; 116. 14, 16; 117. 17 f.; 8. 5. 23; 10. 39. 3; MBh. 3. 121–5. The parallel was
noted by Pisani (1969), 346.
230 5. Sun and Daughter