page_title: Castor and Pollux
section_title: Iconography
hierarchical_section_title: Castor and Pollux / Iconography
context_page_description: Castor and Pollux were twin half-brothers in Greek and Roman mythology, known together as the Dioscuri.
  Their mother was Leda, but they had different fathers; Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, while Pollux was the divine son of Zeus, who seduced Leda in the guise of a swan. The pair are thus an example of heteropaternal superfecundation. Though accounts of their birth are varied, they are sometimes said to have been born from an egg, along with their twin sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra.
  In Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini or Castores, as well as the Tyndaridae or Tyndarids. Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together, and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini. The pair were regarded as the patrons of sailors, to whom they appeared as St. Elmo's fire. They were also associated with horsemanship, in keeping with their origin as the Indo-European horse twins.
context_section_description: Castor and Pollux are consistently associated with horses in art and literature. They are widely depicted as helmeted horsemen carrying spears. The Pseudo-Oppian manuscript depicts the brothers hunting, both on horseback and on foot.
  On votive reliefs they are depicted with a variety of symbols representing the concept of twinhood, such as the dokana (δόκανα – two upright pieces of wood connected by two cross-beams), a pair of amphorae, a pair of shields, or a pair of snakes.  They are also often shown wearing felt caps, sometimes with stars above.  They are depicted on metopes from Delphi showing them on the voyage of the Argo (Ἀργώ) and rustling cattle with Idas. Greek vases regularly show them capturing Phoebe and Hilaeira, as Argonauts, as well as in religious ceremonies and at the delivery to Leda of the egg containing Helen. They can be recognized in some vase-paintings by the skull-cap they wear, the pilos (πῖλος), which was already explained in antiquity as the remnants of the egg from which they hatched.
  They were described by Dares Phrygius as "... blond haired, large eyed, fair complexioned, and well-built with trim bodies".
caption: Robert Fagan Castor and Pollux (between 1793 and 1795)
exif: {}