#perseis

[kyleesarthell]

Helios and Perseis with one of their kids

[seleniiium]

Trying out a new design for Selene!

And Perseis, oceanid goddess of solar witchcraft and wife of Helios.

[percabeth4life]

I’m getting so confused about Persies, like she’s Helios’ wife and then Rhode is, she took Rhodes place as Helios’ wife, etc. i trust theoi and I believe what they say (Rhode is the wife, Persies is an affair partner) but idk where all the different versions came from? and most sources say that Perseis was the og wife so like- your thoughts?

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.

I will note, it was not uncommon for rulers to have multiple wives, with one wife being the "head wife", and thus the one in charge. So that would be a possibility if both were specified as Helios' wife.

[angelicxboi]

could you draw Perseis, wife of Helios and mother of Circe, Perses, and Pasiphäe?

hmmm yeah sure (based off a betta fish.)

[astra-and-atlas]

my notes on perseis (and hecate and solar and lunar theoi) part one

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!

id love feedback or other information especially as i start to post more "potential" observations

[chthonicdivinebard]

Although all the literary and ritual allusions show the two Goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, already connected, Their names suggest that this was not always so. Persephonia is a non-Indo-European name whose precise meaning is not agreed upon but which connects Persephone to Perseis and Perses, the Titan grandmother and father of Hekate, and to Perseus, the slayer of Medusa. As Lewis Richard Farnell says, the name must always have had "an ominous ring," would always have suggested an association with death. Persephone must always, even in pre-Greek cult, have been an underworld deity.

Part One: The Ancient Sources of The Long Journey Home: Re-Visioning the Myth of Demeter and Persephone for Our Time, edited by Christine Downing (p 10)