Euphrosyne

In Greek mythology, Euphrosyne was one of the three Charites, or Graces, with her sisters Aglaea and Thalia. In Hesiod they are daughters of Zeus and the Oceanid Eurynome. The name Euphrosyne means “good cheer” or “merriment”, and Pindar calls her a lover of song and dance.

Parentage and Sisters

Hesiod says that Eurynome, the daughter of Oceanus, bore to Zeus three fair-cheeked Charites, Aglaea, Euphrosyne and lovely Thalia, and adds that love that unnerves the limbs flowed from their glancing eyes, and that their glance was beautiful beneath their brows (Hesiod, Theogony 907–911). Apollodorus gives the same parents and names, writing Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia (Apollodorus, Library 1.3.1). Pausanias reports Hesiod’s account and says that the poem of Onomacritus agreed with it; another poet, Antimachus, made them daughters of Aegle and the Sun, and Hermesianax added Persuasion as a fourth Grace (Pausanias 9.35.5).

Role

Pindar says that even the gods arrange no dances or feasts without the Graces, who oversee everything that is done in heaven; they sit beside Pythian Apollo and worship the everlasting honour of Zeus, the Olympian father. He calls on “Lady Aglaia, and Euphrosyne, lover of dance and song, daughters of the strongest god”, and on Thalia, to look kindly on a victory procession at Orchomenus, the city that honoured the Graces (Pindar, Olympian 14.1–20).

The Graces were companions of Aphrodite. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite they bathe the goddess and anoint her with ambrosial oil at Paphos (Homeric Hymn 5, to Aphrodite 61–63). In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, on Olympus, while the Muses sing, the lovely-haired Graces, the cheerful Seasons, Harmonia, Hebe and Aphrodite dance with their hands on each other’s wrists (Homeric Hymn 3, to Apollo 194–196). In Hesiod the Graces and Desire have their homes beside the Muses on Olympus, in festivity, while the Muses sing of the laws and ways of the gods (Hesiod, Theogony 64–67). At Elis there was a sanctuary of the Graces with wooden images, one holding a rose, the middle one a die and the third a sprig of myrtle; Pausanias explains that the rose and the myrtle belong to Aphrodite, and that the Graces are “of all deities the nearest related to Aphrodite”; an image of Love (Eros) stood on the same pedestal to their right (Pausanias 6.24.6–7).

Worship and Images

The Boeotians said that Eteocles of Orchomenus was the first to sacrifice to the Graces and to fix their number at three; the Lacedaemonians said there were two, Cleta and Phaenna, and the Athenians worshipped two, Auxo and Hegemone (Pausanias 9.35.1–3). At Athens, before the entrance to the Acropolis, there stood three Graces, and beside them mysteries that were not to be told to many (Pausanias 9.35.3). Pausanias says that the earlier sculptors and painters made the Graces draped, and that later artists represent them naked (Pausanias 9.35.6–7).

Euphrosyne has no myth of her own in the surviving texts; she appears only together with her two sisters.

Euphrosyne Sources

Ancient sources: Hesiod, Theogony 64–67, 907–911; Homeric Hymn 3, to Apollo 194–196; Homeric Hymn 5, to Aphrodite 61–63; Pindar, Olympian 14.1–20; Apollodorus, Library 1.3.1; Pausanias 6.24.6–7, 9.35.1–7.

See Also: Charites, Thalia, Aglaea, Zeus, Eurynome, Aphrodite, Eros, Muses