Phaethon
mythological figure · 5 works · 7 mentions · 7 anchored passages
a younger charioteer, a mortal son of the Sun · mighty-minded hero · strong Phaethon · that high-spirited youth · the boy · the impetuous horses of the Sun
in the texts
Orations
Mythical figure who disastrously drove the chariot of the sun beyond his capacity.
but whoever transgresses and dishonours Him who entrusted him with this gift, or gave it, gains nothing from all his power and authority except just this — to become manifest to all his contemporaries and to those after him as base and dissolute, fulfilling the fabled doom of Phaethon, in that he mounted a mighty and divine chariot against fate, being no fit charioteer.
And the Greeks, remembering this experience once, they say, attribute it to Phaethon, not being able to blame the charioteering of Zeus, and not willing to censure the courses of the Sun.
And a horse-race too was set up, and Phaethon won with the single horse, Neleus with the four-horse chariot.
Stromata
Mythological figure whose fall while driving the sun's chariot illustrates the unruly, irrational soul.
By which the myth too hints that Phaethon fell through the unruliness of the colts.
Theogony
A youth, son of Eos and Cephalus, seized by Aphrodite and made a divine shrine-keeper.
And to Cephalus she bore a splendid son, strong Phaethon, a man like the gods, whom, when he was a young boy in the tender flower of glorious youth with childish thoughts, laughter-loving Aphrodite seized and caught up and made a keeper of her shrine by night, a divine spirit.
De Rerum Natura
The mythological figure who drove the chariot of the Sun and was struck down by Jupiter's thunderbolt.
Those horses to the earth.
Did hurl the mighty-minded hero off
But the omnipotent Father in keen wrath
On Providence
The unnamed 'high-spirited youth' who insists on driving the sun's chariot despite his father's warnings of peril, an allusion to the myth of Phaethon.
When that high-spirited youth had heard this, he said: