Eos: Titan Goddess of the Dawn

The Story of Eos

Eos was the goddess of the dawn, a daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia and the sister of Helios and Selene. Homer called her rosy fingered Dawn, for the pink light she spread across the morning sky. Every day she rose from the edge of the ocean and opened the gates of heaven so her brother could bring out the sun.

With the Titan Astraeus, Eos became the mother of the four winds, Boreas, Zephyrus, Notus and Eurus, and of the stars, including the morning star. Yet her own love life was stormy. In some tellings, after she had an affair with Ares, an angry Aphrodite cursed her to fall in love again and again with mortal men.

Eos carried off many handsome young men, including the hunters Orion and Cephalus. Her most famous love was the Trojan prince Tithonus. She asked Zeus to make him immortal, but she forgot to ask that he stay young as well, and so he lived forever while growing older and weaker.

In the end, Eos shut the shriveled Tithonus away in a room, where only his voice could be heard, and in some tellings he turned into a cicada. With Tithonus she had a son, Memnon, king of the Ethiopians. Memnon fought for Troy and was killed by Achilles, and the grieving goddess asked Zeus to grant him immortality.

The Greeks said the morning dew was the tears Eos still sheds for her son. Painters and poets loved to show her as a winged goddess in a saffron robe, scattering flowers or driving a chariot of bright horses. The Romans called her Aurora, the name still used for the glowing lights of the far north and south.