Myth & LegendGreek → English
Helios
/ˈhiːliɒs/noun
The Greek sun god, who drives a chariot of fire across the sky each day.
The Greek roots
ἥλιος
hḗlios
sun
Literally: “sun”
Follow a root:ἥλιος14 words
The story of the word
He is the one who sees everything, which is why the gods call him as a witness and why he is the first to notice Aphrodite in bed with Ares. His son Phaethon begged for the chariot, lost control of it and scorched the earth. The Colossus of Rhodes was Helios, and the element helium is named for him because Janssen and Lockyer found its spectral line in the sun during the eclipse of 1868, twenty-seven years before anyone found it on earth.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
heliumheliotropeaphelionheliocentric
In a sentence
In the hymn, Helios rises from Ocean and turns his horses west at noon.
The temple faced east so the first light of Helios struck the statue.