Greek mythology A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities of de ...

Leucothoe ( Ancient Greek: , from , "white", and , "quick, swift") was a Babylonian princess. The daughter of Orchamus, a king of

Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

, Leucothoe was either a lover of the

sun god A solar deity or sun deity is a deity who represents the Sun, or an aspect of it. Such deities are usually associated with power and strength. Solar deities and Sun worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms. The ...

Helios In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Helios (; grc, , , Sun; Homeric Greek: ) is the deity, god and personification of the Sun (Solar deity). His name is also Latinized as Helius, and he is often given the epithets Hyper ...

or a victim of rape. A

nymph A nymph ( grc, νύμφη, nýmphē, el, script=Latn, nímfi, label=Modern Greek; , ) in ancient Greek folklore is a minor female nature deity. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are typ ...

or Leucothoe's own sister named Clytie, who loved Helios and was jealous of Leucothoe, informed Leucothoe's father that Leucothoe, despite being unmarried, was no longer a virgin, whereupon Orchamus buried his daughter alive in punishment. Helios then transformed Leucothoe's dead body into a

frankincense Frankincense (also known as olibanum) is an aromatic resin used in incense and perfumes, obtained from trees of the genus ''Boswellia'' in the family Burseraceae. The word is from Old French ('high-quality incense'). There are several specie ...

tree. The tale is best known from the Augustan poet

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the t ...

's narrative poem ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the w ...

'', in which the fullest account of it survives, although references and allusions to Leucothoe's story survive in other sources as well.

Mythology

Ovid

As punishment for informing her husband

Hephaestus Hephaestus (; eight spellings; grc-gre, Ἥφαιστος, Hḗphaistos) is the Greek god of blacksmiths, metalworking, carpenters, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metallurgy, fire (compare, however, with Hestia), and volcanoes.Walter B ...

of her affair with

Ares Ares (; grc, Ἄρης, ''Árēs'' ) is the Greek god of war and courage. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and Hera. The Greeks were ambivalent towards him. He embodies the physical valor necessary for success in war b ...

Aphrodite Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols include ...

cursed Helios to fall in love with Leucothoe. Helios, utterly enamored with her, lingered in the sky by rising earlier and setting later just to spend more time watching her, making the winter days longer. He forgot about all of his previous lovers, including

Rhodos In Greek mythology, Rhodos/Rhodus () or Rhode (), was the goddess and personification of the island of Rhodes and a wife of the sun god Helios. Parentage Various parents were given for Rhodos. Pindar makes her a daughter of Aphrodite with no ...

, Clymene, Perse, and Clytie, who, having been loved and abandoned by him, felt betrayed. Eventually, Helios disguised himself as her mother,

Eurynome Eurynomê (; Ancient Greek: Εὐρυνόμη, from , ''eurys'', "broad" and , ''nomos'', "pasture" or "law") is a name that refers to the following characters in Greek mythology: * Eurynome, pre-Olympian queen and wife of Ophion *Eurynome (Ocea ...

, to gain entrance to her chambers, and once he got there he dismissed her servants and revealed himself to Leucothoe. He confessed his love to her, and she, "conquered, suffered his force" according to Ovid, or he made love to her in others. But Clytie, still in love with him and consumed with jealousy, reported Leucothoe's affair to her father Orchamus, who punished his defiled daughter by burying her alive, as she pleaded with him in despair. Leucothoe died before Helios could save her. Overcome with grief, Helios shone his rays upon her but could not revive her. So he sprinkled her body with "fragrant nectar" and turned her into a

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated Plant stem, stem, or trunk (botany), trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondar ...

so that she would still breathe air, after a fashion, instead of staying buried beneath the earth. Clytie meanwhile, scorned by Helios for her involvement in Leucothoe's death, sat on the ground pining away, neither eating nor drinking, constantly turning her face toward the Sun, until finally she became the heliotrope, whose purple flowers follow the Sun every day on his diurnal journey across the sky.Hard
p. 45
/ref>Forbes Irving, p. 266

Other versions

According to

Lactantius Placidus Lactantius Placidus (c. 350 – c. 400 AD) was the presumed author of a commentary on Statius's poem ''Thebaid''. Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel considered him to be the same person as Luctatius Placidus, the ostensible author of a medieval Latin glo ...

, Ovid got this myth from

Hesiod Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet i ...

, ''Argumenta'
4.5
/ref> although some scholars doubt this particular attribution. His abridged version largely follows Ovid's own, but contains certain differences. Like Ovid, Lactantius does not not make it clear how Clytie knew about Helios and Leucothoe, or how Helios knew it was Clytie who had informed the king. In another narrative, after Helios had intercourse with Leucothoe, the girl who caused Leucothoe's doom is identified as her (unnamed) sister, and their father name is Orchomenus instead, which is also the name of a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an or ...

in Beotia, suggesting in this version the myth took place there and not in Babylon. The anonymous author mentions by name the plants the two sisters turned into, contrasting the vagueness of Ovid's telling.Paradoxographers anonymous, p
222
/ref>

Hyginus Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Grammati ...

might have known a very different version of this myth, for he names one of the

Argonauts The Argonauts (; Ancient Greek: ) were a band of heroes in Greek mythology, who in the years before the Trojan War (around 1300 BC) accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece. Their name comes from their ship, ''Argo'' ...

, Thersanon, as the son of Helios and Leucothoe, and places her in

Andros Andros ( el, Άνδρος, ) is the northernmost island of the Greek Cyclades archipelago, about southeast of Euboea, and about north of Tinos. It is nearly long, and its greatest breadth is . It is for the most part mountainous, with many ...

rather than Persia, implying a version where Leucothoe survives (at least for as long as it took to produce a child), though he could simply refer to a different Leucothoe. Some scholars have suggested that the stories of Leucothoe and Clytie were originally two distinct ones that were combined along with a third story, that of Helios discovering Ares and Aphrodite's affair and then informing Hephaestus, into a single tale either by Ovid himself or Ovid's source. Fontenrose, Joseph. ''The Gods Invoked in Epic Oaths:

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the ...

, XII, 175-215.'' The American Journal of Philology 89, no. 1 (1968): p
20–38

Culture

It's been suggested that this myth was used to explain the use of frankincense in the god's worship, similar to the story of the nymph

Daphne Daphne (; ; el, Δάφνη, , ), a minor figure in Greek mythology, is a naiad, a variety of female nymph associated with fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks and other bodies of freshwater. There are several versions of the myth in whi ...

who transformed into a laurel tree; Leucothoe's death by burial at the hands of her male guardian, not unlike

Antigone In Greek mythology, Antigone ( ; Ancient Greek: Ἀντιγόνη) is the daughter of Oedipus and either his mother Jocasta or, in another variation of the myth, Euryganeia. She is a sister of Polynices, Eteocles, and Ismene.Roman, L., & Rom ...

's fate, might denote archaic cult practices involving human sacrifice in tree-related worship.

Footnotes

Notes

References

* Anderson, William S., ''

, Books 1-5'',

University of Oklahoma Press The University of Oklahoma Press (OU Press) is the publishing arm of the University of Oklahoma. Founded in 1929 by the fifth president of the University of Oklahoma, William Bennett Bizzell, it was the first university press to be established i ...

, 1997. . * Cameron, Alan, ''Greek Mythography in the Roman World'',

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 2004,
Google books
* * Gantz, Timothy, ''Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources'', Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2). * Grimal, Pierre, ''The Dictionary of Classical Mythology'', Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. . * Hard, Robin, ''The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology"'', Psychology Press, 2004,
Google Books
*

, ''

Theogony The ''Theogony'' (, , , i.e. "the genealogy or birth of the gods") is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains ...

, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White'', Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914
Online text available at Perseus.tufts
* ''Lateinische Mythographen:

, Argumente der Metamorphosen Ovids'', erstes heft, Dr. B. Bunte,

Bremen Bremen ( Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state con ...

, 1852, J. Kühtmann & Comp. *

, ''

: The New, Annotated Edition'', translated by Rolfe Humphries, annotated by J. D. Reed,

Indiana University Press Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher founded in 1950 at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes 140 ...

, 2018, . *

, ''

'', translation by Anthony S. Kline, 2000
text available at Poetry In Translation
*

. ''

, Volume I: Books 1-8''. Translated by Frank Justus Miller. Revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library No. 42. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1977, first published 1916.
Online version at Harvard University Press
* Parada, Carlos, ''Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology'', Jonsered, Paul Åströms Förlag, 1993. . * Paradoxographoe, by Anton Westermann,

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

Library, 1839, London. *

Publius Ovidius Naso Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

, ''Metamorphoses'' translated by Brookes More (1859-1942). Boston, Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
*Publius Ovidius Naso, ''Metamorphoses.'' Hugo Magnus. Gotha (Germany). Friedr. Andr. Perthes. 1892
Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library
* Smith, William, ''

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology The ''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'' (1849, originally published 1844 under a slightly different title) is an encyclopedia/ biographical dictionary. Edited by William Smith, the dictionary spans three volumes and 3,700 ...

'', London (1873)
Online version at the Perseus Digital Library
* Tripp, Edward, ''Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology'', Thomas Y. Crowell Co; First edition (June 1970). . *

External links

* {{Authority control Metamorphoses characters Metamorphoses into trees in Greek mythology Princesses in Greek mythology Women of Helios Helios in mythology Deeds of Aphrodite Boeotian mythology Asia in Greek mythology

Mythology

Ovid

Other versions

Culture

See also

Footnotes

Notes

References

External links