Clytie

Clytie was the name of more than one figure in Greek mythology. The best known is the nymph in Ovid’s Metamorphoses who loved the Sun god, Helios, was abandoned by him, and was changed into a flower that turns toward the Sun. Hesiod names a Clytie among the Oceanids, the daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys (Theogony 352).

Clytie and the Sun

Ovid calls Clytie a nymph but does not name her parents. In his story the Sun was the first to see the love affair of Venus and Mars and revealed it to Venus’ husband (Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.171–174); Venus took vengeance on the Sun by making him fall in love in turn (Metamorphoses 4.190–196). His passion for Leucothoe made him forget Clymene, Rhodos, the mother of Circe, and Clytie, who still sought his embrace although he had turned from her (Metamorphoses 4.204–208). Leucothoe was the beautiful daughter of Orchamus, king of the Persian cities, and of Eurynome (Metamorphoses 4.209–213). The Sun came to her in the shape of her mother, sent her maids away and revealed himself; she was frightened, but yielded (Metamorphoses 4.218–233).

Clytie was jealous. Stirred by anger at her rival, she spread the story of the affair and told Leucothoe’s father. Orchamus, fierce and unyielding, buried his daughter alive in deep earth with a mound of sand over her, although she stretched out her hands to the Sun and said that she had been taken by force (Metamorphoses 4.234–240). The Sun scattered the mound with his rays, but it was too late, and he sprinkled her body with nectar so that it became a frankincense tree (Metamorphoses 4.241–255).

The Sun did not go to Clytie again after that. In Ovid she wasted away in her grief. She sat on the bare ground under the open sky, her hair undone, and for nine days she took no food or water, living on dew and her own tears. She did not move from the spot, but only looked at the face of the god as he passed and turned her own face toward him. Her limbs, Ovid says, clung to the ground; pallor turned part of her colour to bloodless leaves, and part was red, and a flower very like a violet covered her face. Though held by its root, it turns to the Sun and keeps its love though it has changed (Metamorphoses 4.256–270).

Other Figures Named Clytie

The name Clytie (Greek Klytie) is also given to one of the daughters of Pandareus, who in Homer were carried off by storm winds or Harpies and given to the Furies (Homer, Odyssey 20.66–78). The painter Polygnotus showed the sisters, crowned with flowers and playing with dice, and named them Cameiro and Clytie (Pausanias 10.30.2).

Clytie Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 352; Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.171–270; Homer, Odyssey 20.66–78; Pausanias 10.30.2.

See Also: Oceanus, Tethys, Helios, Circe, Aphrodite, Ares