Helios
Helios,the sun. In early Greece Helios was always treated with reverence but received little actual cult. Anaxagoras' announcement that the ‘sun was a red-hot mass’ caused outrage (DL 2. 12, etc.) and it was not uncommon to salute and even pray to the sun at its rising and setting (Plato Symposium 220d, Leges 887e, cf. Hesiod Opera et Dies 339, and for respect Plato Apologia 26c), but Aristophanes can treat the practice of sacrificing to sun and moon as one that distinguishes barbarians from Greeks (Pax 406). Hence evidence for actual cults is scarce and usually cannot be shown to be ancient (L. R. Farnell, Cults 5. 419 f.; but for Athens in the 3rd cent. bc see now Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 33. 115. 12). The exception was Rhodes, where Helios—subject in fact of the original ‘colossus of Rhodes’—was the leading god and...
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