Phaethon

Phaethon was the young man who tried to drive the chariot of the Sun for a day and was struck down by Zeus before he could burn the earth. In the best-known telling, by Ovid, he is the son of the sun god and the nymph Clymene. His fall into the river Eridanus ends with his sisters, the Heliades, turned into poplar trees.

Parents and Family

In the best-known story Phaethon is the son of the Sun and of Clymene. Ovid calls his father “Phoebus” and “the Sun” and calls his mother Clymene, the wife of Merops (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.751–763). Apollonius of Rhodes says plainly that Phaethon fell from “the chariot of Helios” (Argonautica 4.598). Diodorus also calls him the son of Helios (Diodorus 5.23.2). His sisters are the Heliades (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.340–366; Apollonius, Argonautica 4.604).

The name is not unique to this figure. Hesiod mentions another Phaethon, the son of Cephalus and Eos (Dawn), whom Aphrodite carried off while he was a boy and made the keeper of her temple by night (Hesiod, Theogony 986–991); Apollodorus lists a Phaethon as the son of Tithonus (Library 3.14.3). The name means “shining”; Homer uses it as an epithet of the Sun itself, “the shining sun” (Iliad 11.735).

The Challenge and the Journey to the Sun

In Ovid, Phaethon is taunted by Epaphus, believed to be a child of Jupiter, who says that he is a fool who believes his mother and is puffed up by the image of a false father (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.748–754). Phaethon goes to his mother Clymene and asks for a sign of his true parent. She swears by the Sun that he is the Sun’s son and tells him to go to the Sun’s palace and ask for himself (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.762–779). Phaethon crosses the lands of the Ethiopians and the Indians and comes to the place where his father rises (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.778–779); the palace of the Sun is described at the start of Book 2.

The Request

The Sun welcomes him, lays aside his rays, embraces him and says Clymene told the truth. To remove any doubt he tells him to ask any gift (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.31–44). Phaethon asks to drive the chariot of the Sun for one day. Too late, the Sun regrets his promise, which he has sworn by the Styx, and warns his son that the horses are too strong for him; not even Zeus could drive this chariot (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.44–102).

The Disaster

Phaethon takes the reins and the horses, feeling that the chariot is too light, leave their usual course. In Ovid the heavens and the earth burn, and Earth herself appeals to Zeus (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.150–300). Diodorus gives a shorter version of the same tale, saying that the horses scorned the youth, left their course, set the heavens on fire to make what is now the Milky Way, and burned much of the inhabited earth (Diodorus 5.23.2).

The Death of Phaethon

Zeus then called the gods to witness, went up to the highest part of the sky, and hurled a thunderbolt at the driver. It threw Phaethon from the chariot and quenched the fire with fire (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.304–313). His burning hair streaming, Phaethon fell like a star, and the river Eridanus, far from his homeland, received him and washed his smoking face (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.319–324). Apollonius describes the same place: the Argonauts sail into the river Eridanus, where Phaethon, half-burned by the blazing bolt, fell from the chariot of Helios into the lake, which still gives off heavy steam from the smoldering wound (Apollonius, Argonautica 4.596–600, 4.623). Diodorus places the fall at the mouths of the river later called the Padus (Po), once called the Eridanus (Diodorus 5.23.3).

In Hyginus, Phaethon mounts the chariot secretly, is carried too high and falls in fear into the Eridanus. When Jupiter struck him with a thunderbolt everything began to burn, and Jupiter, pretending to put out the fire, let the rivers loose and destroyed the human race, all but Deucalion and Pyrrha (Hyginus, Fabulae 152A). Hyginus also says that the star called Phaethon, the planet of the Sun, was explained as his, and that the Sun carried him among the stars (Hyginus, Astronomica 2.42).

Mourning and the Heliades

In Ovid the Naiads of the west bury his body and set up an epitaph: “Here lies Phaethon, driver of his father’s chariot; he did not hold it, but fell in a great attempt” (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.325–328). The Sun, in grief, hid his face, and it was said that a day passed without sunlight (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.329–332). Clymene, after telling her sorrow, searched the whole world for her son’s bones and found them buried on a foreign bank; she lay over the grave and wept over his name on the marble (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.333–339).

His sisters, the Heliades, mourned at the tomb for four months. Phaethusa was the first to feel her feet turn stiff; Lampetie was held by sudden roots; others felt their arms become branches and bark spread upward over their bodies. Their mother tried to pull them free, and blood dripped from the broken twigs. Their tears hardened in the sun to amber, which the river carried away to be worn by the women of Italy (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.340–366). Apollonius says that the Heliades, changed into poplars, still weep for Phaethon, and their tears drop into the water as amber (Apollonius, Argonautica 4.603–626). Diodorus gives the same transformation to poplars and amber, though he thinks the tale is untrue and says amber really comes from an island in the north (Diodorus 5.23.3–4). Hyginus states that the sisters were changed into poplars because they yoked the horses without their father’s order (Hyginus, Fabulae 152A).

Cycnus

Ovid adds Cycnus, king of the Ligurians and Phaethon’s kinsman through his mother, who left his kingdom to mourn by the Eridanus. His voice thinned, white feathers covered his hair, and he became a swan, a bird that avoids fire and the sky (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.367–380).

Phaethon Sources

Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.747–779 and 2.1–400. Hesiod, Theogony 986–991. Homer, Iliad 11.735. Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 4.596–626. Diodorus Siculus 5.23. Hyginus, Fabulae 152A and Astronomica 2.42. Apollodorus, Library 3.14.3.

See Also: Clymene, Helios, Apollo, Zeus, Heliades, Eridanus, Epaphus, Cycnus