Helios

Helios (also Helius) was the Titan of the sun, but faded due to lack of worship by the Romans, after which his duty of driving the Sun Chariot was passed on to Apollo. He was a Titan of the second-generation, born to Hyperion and Theia, and the brother of Selene and Eos, the moon and the dawn. He was married to the goddess Rhode, daughter of Poseidon, and his Roman counterpart is Sol.
==History==
Helios is the son of Hyperion, lord of the east, and his wife Theia, goddess of sight and splendor; he had two siblings, Selene, the moon and Eos, the dawn. 
The best known story involving Helios is that of his son Phaethon, who begged his father to let him drive the sun chariot. Helios agreed, albeit reluctantly, and granted the wish of his son who soon after lost control over the immortal horses and set the earth ablaze, scorching the African plains to desert and freezing the North to snowy areas. Zeus, appalled by the destruction, blasted the youth out of the chariot with one of his lightning bolts. Phaethon's flaming body was hurled from the sky and right into the river Eridanos. His sisters, the Heliades, gathered on the banks of the river to mourn their brother's demise and are transformed into amber-teared poplar trees. After his death, the boy was either placed among the stars as the constellation Auriga ("the charioteer") or he became one of the five gods of the wandering stars (the planet Jupiter or Saturn).
Helios was often referred to as Helios Panoptes ("[Helios] the all-seeing"). As is recounted in Homer's Odyssey (Book VIII. 300 ff), Aphrodite, the wife of Hephaestus, secretly bedded Ares, although the all-seeing Helios took pity on Hephaestus and revealed Aphrodite's promiscuity to the latter, leading the devastated blacksmith god to ensnare the two lovers in a net to punish them.
In Book XII of Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus and his surviving crew land on the island of Thrinacia (considered to be Sicily), which is sacred to Helios and is where his cattle and sheep were kept. Though Odysseus warns his men not to, they impiously kill and eat some of the sun god's cattle. Helios’ daughters, Phaëthusa and Lampetië, who guard the island, tell their father, and Helios then appeals to Zeus, who destroys Odysseus' ship and kills all of the men except for Odysseus.
In one Greek vase painting, Helios appears riding across the sea in the cup of the Delphic tripod, which appears to be a solar reference. At the hour of sunset, Helios climbed into a great golden cup in which he passes from the Hesperides in the farthest west to the land of Aethipoia, with whom he passes the dark hours. When Heracles was traveling to Erytheia to retrieve the cattle of Geryon, he crossed the Libyan desert and was so frustrated by the heat that he shot an arrow at Helios. The sun god was so surprised by the demigod's daring that he gave Hercules the golden cup that he used to sail across the sea every night, from west to east in order to reach Erytheia. Hercules successfully retrieved the cattle and after he returned to Greece, he gave the cup back to Helios.
Helios's primary place of worship was the island of Rhodes, which according to the following myth was his special territory. At the time of the First Titanomachy, when the gods were dividing the world by lot, Helios happened to be absent because of his duties, and consequently received no share. He therefore complained to Zeus, who proposed to have a new allotment, but Helios would not allow this, saying that as he pursued his daily journey, his penetrating eye had beheld a lovely, fertile island lying beneath the waves of the ocean, and that if the immortals would swear to give him the undisturbed possession of this spot, he would be content to accept it as his share of the universe. The gods took the oath, whereupon the island of Rhodes immediately rose above the surface of the waters.
Pindar writes in his Seventh Olympian Ode that Helios took as his wife the goddess Rhode, daughter of Poseidon, and that they sired seven sons, one of whom, Kerkaphos, sired the eponyms of the island’s three main cities, Ialsysos, Kameiros and Lindos. The three cities would come together in 408 BC to find the federal city of Rhodes, and the isle would become home to not only the Halieia festival, but the famed Colossus of Rhodes, a gigantic bronze statue of Helios which was hailed as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Category:Male characters
Category:Titans
Category:Immortals (TOI)
Category:The Dungeon Master's Theogony characters
Category:The Dungeon Master's Odyssey characters