#perseis

Trying out a new design for Selene!

OKAY OKAY So no source actually lists Perseis as the wife of Helios. She is Specifically the Mother of his children-

Sources:

Homer, Odyssey 10. 139 ff (trans. Shewring) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) : "We came to the island of Aiaia (Aeaea); here Kirke (Circe) dwelt, a goddess with braided hair, with human speech and with strange powers; the magician Aeetes was her brother, and both were were the radiant sun-god's [Helios'] children; their mother was Perse, Okeanos' (Oceanus') daughter." Hesiod, Theogony 955 ff : "To Helios, the unwearied Sun, the glorious daughter of Okeanos (Oceanus), Perseis, bore Kirke (Circe) and the King Aeetes." Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 156 : "Children of Sol (the Sun) [Helios]. Circe by Persis, daughter of Oceanus, and Pasiphae."

Now, this obviously happened a lot with Gods, and was not really considered an affair by the standards of the time. I've spoken some on this before so check my tag for more information.

Rhodes, however, IS called his wife.

Sources:

Pindar, Olympian Ode 7. 13 ff (trans. Conway) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.) : "Praise the sea maid, daughter of Aphrodite, bride of Helios (the Sun), this isle of Rhodes." Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 28 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) : "Poseidon married Amphitrite, and had as children Triton and Rhode, whom Helios (the Sun) made his wife."

(There are more sources discussing them, but these are the ones explicitly using the word wife).

While Perseis has the older sources mentioning her with Helios, Rhodes has the specificity of being his wife. So in this situation, Rhodes would be his wife and Perseis a mother of his children.

hmmm yeah sure (based off a betta fish.)

this came about because @adri-le-chat was nice to me and now i want to share my research. none of this is fact, they're all just observations i've made and a lot of them are a pretty far conclusion to jump to.

i started my research on perseis because i saw a lot of posts about hekate, artemis, and selene and their relation to each other (im still not sure how i feel about this, it would be a whole other discussion, but in this post i do talk about it a bit. it's very clear they're all separate theoi, though).

the first thing i read was an article on jstor called "the hesoidic hecate" by george c. w. warr. which focuses on the genealogy of the titans. he comes to two conclusions about hecate: 1) there was a perseis, a sun related goddess in corinthian mytholog, and 2) hecate perseis, who was separate from perseis in poetry but less so in older traditions. he then goes on to explain less of the mythology and more of the historical aspect of the development of these theoi. he makes the claim that there was a sun god "perseus, or perses" who was replaced by helios as helios' cult grew. perseis was the corresponding name of the moon as a daughter of the sun, with hecate as an epithet, and when the moon was personified as selene, hecate became an individual goddess with her own following. she owed her individuality to her chthonic aspects, according to warr. he also makes the point that hecate is a designation of artemis by some of the orphic poets (although this isn't the most stable fact)

i think what i'm going to do is make a series of posts on this just so i can try to organize it in my mind!