"From Okeanos upsprings Helios in glory, flashing fire far over earth - fire, when beside his radiant chariot-team races the red star Seirios, scatterer of woefullest diseases over men."
Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 8.30
🏛 Roman oil lamp decorated with the image of Helios-Sol, from the cemetery of Fragonisi near #Olympia. 2nd to 3rd century CE.
"Grant, oh, grant that I ride through the air in my father's car; give me the reins, O sire, give me the right to guide your fire-bearing steeds with the flaming reins; then let Corinth [...] be consumed by flames and bring the two seas together."
Seneca, Medea 28
🏛 Helios-Sol, Roman marble decoration, 3rd century CE, Terme di Diocleziano, #Rome
Meet this Roman gold and silver finger ring depicting the sun god Sol-Helios!
The relief shows the face of Helios in silver on a golden background. His seven-spiked sun-ray crown is also golden.
Meet this spectacular statue of #Helios that was part of the ancient marine cargo of a merchant ship that sank during the Late Roman period (400 CE): the statues look as though they were cast yesterday rather than 1,600 years ago!
🏛 Figurine of the sun god #Sol-Helios, found in the port of Caesarea, Israel.
Engraved Stone Ball (Magic Sphere?) with #Helios and magical symbols. Discovered in 1866 at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, near the remains of the Theatre of Dionysos.
🎨 Marble sphere, dated 2nd-3rd centuries CE. Today in the #Athens Acropolis Museum.
"Phaethon [#Helios] laughed, because #Ares in the seafight of [#Dionysos against the Indians] had fled again before the fire of #Hephaistos, as once before he fled from his chains."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 39.403
🎨 Helios (possibly Alexander of Macedon) bronze bust, 1st century CE.
"We came soon enough to the lovely island of #Helios. Here were the fine broad-browed herds, here were the plentiful fat flocks of Hyperion [Helios]."
Homer, Odyssey 12. 261
🎨 Helios and #Odysseus depicted on an oil lamp, Antikensammlung #Munich
This bounded infinite of empty is a source of consternation and possibility. A fathomlessness that breaks all beliefs, beyond all we could ever ask or think. The white whale. A blank page. An eye-level ether. A pale winter. You know the feeling. You sit at your desk. You stare. The blinking cursor glares back at me...
"She [Gaia] prayed to the Titan #Helios with submissive voice: she begged of him one red hot ray, that with its heating fire she might melt the petrified water of Zeus, by pouring his kindred radiance over frozen Typhon."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 2. 543
🎨 Roman silver relief of Sol from Pessinus in Anatolia, dated 3rd century CE. Today in the British Museum.
"Helios, the myth tells us [...] caused the water which had overflowed it [the island of Rhodes] to disappear. But the true explanation is that [...] the island was still like mud and soft, Helios dried up the larger part of its wetness and filled the land with living creatures."
🎨 Red-figure vase painting of #Helios in a chariot drawn by two #Erotes.