person
Phaethon
Son of the Sun ('the Charioteer') who lost control of the solar car; his mourning sisters, the Heliades, wept amber.
Reading notes
- The Loves §3.12 Charioteer
Phaethon, son of the Sun, whose mourning sisters wept the amber that drips from poplars.
- The Festivals §4.21 Phaethon
The boy who scorched the world driving the Sun's chariot; cited for the world-fire tradition.
- Ibis §14 drove the horses he had wrongly begged for
Phaethon, who begged to drive the Sun's chariot, lost control, and was struck down by Jove's bolt.
- Metamorphoses §1.12 Phaethon
Son of the Sun and Clymene, who, taunted by Epaphus, sets out to prove his divine father — the next book's tale.
- Sorrows §1.1 Phaethon
The youth who lost control of the Sun's chariot and was blasted by Jove's bolt; Ovid's recurring emblem of fatal over-reaching and of the lightning of imperial anger.