Asteria (Titaness)

For other uses, see Asteria (mythology).

Asteria
Goddess of Delos
Asteria seated on a rock with a lyre and laurel wreath at her side
Abode	Delos
Genealogy
Parents	Coeus and Phoebe
Siblings	Leto
Consort	Perses
Children	Hecate

In Greek mythology, Asteria or Asterie (/əˈstɪəriə/ as-TEAR-ee-ə; Ancient Greek: Ἀστερία or Ἀστερίη, romanized: Astería, Asteríē, lit. 'of the stars, starry one') is a daughter of the Titans Coeus (Polus) and Phoebe and the sister of Leto. According to Hesiod, by the Titan Perses she had a single child, a daughter named Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. Other authors made Asteria the mother of the fourth Heracles and Hecate by Zeus.

Asteria is notable for her pursuit by the amorous god Zeus, who desired her. In order to escape him and his advances, she transformed herself into a bird and then a wandering island. When her sister Leto, impregnated by Zeus, went into labour, Asteria was the only place on earth willing to receive her, defying Hera's orders that forbade Leto any shelter. After Apollo and Artemis were born on her, the island received the name of Delos, and Apollo fixed it in place, making it his sacred land.

Etymology

The goddess's name "Asteria" (Ancient Greek Ἀστερία, translit. Astería) is derived from the Greek word ἀστήρ (astḗr) meaning "star". Ἀστήρ itself is inherited from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₂ster- (“star”), from *h₂eh₁s-, "to burn". Asteria's name shares an etymology with the names of Astraeus, Asteria's first cousin, and his daughter Astraea.

Family

All surviving sources make Asteria the daughter of the original Titans Phoebe and Coeus, and the younger sister of Leto. Before Cronus was dethroned and cast down by his six children, Asteria married Perses, one of her first cousins, and gave birth to their only child Hecate. In one account attributed to Musaeus, Asteria is the mother of Hecate not by Perses but by Zeus. In this version Zeus kept Asteria as his paramour for some time before handing her over to Perses.

Mythology

Zeus and Delos

Asteria pursued by Zeus in the form of an eagle by Marco Liberi

Asteria was an inhabitant of Olympus following the Titanomachy in which the Olympians prevailed over the Titans, and like her sister Leto before her she was beloved by Zeus. After Zeus had impregnated Leto, his attention was next captured by her sister Asteria. Asteria rejected the enamoured Zeus, but he pursued her nonetheless. In order to escape the amorous advances of the god, who in the form of an eagle chased her down her, she transformed herself into a quail (Ancient Greek: ὄρτυξ, ortux) and flung herself into the Aegean Sea. It was there that Asteria metamorphosed into the island Asteria (the island which had fallen from heaven like a star), or the "quail island" Ortygia. The island was described in ancient sources as both floating or hidden under the sea.

This then became identified with the island of Delos, which was the only place on earth to give refuge to the fugitive Leto when, pregnant with Zeus's children, she was pursued by vengeful Hera, the wife of Zeus. Hera had forbidden all places on earth to allow Leto to give birth on them, and sent Ares and Iris to enforce her command, but Delos defied Hera and invited Leto in. According to Hyginus, Leto was borne by the north wind Boreas at the command of Zeus to the floating island, at the time when Python was pursuing her, and there clinging to an olive, she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis. Delos was named so because after the birth of Apollo it became visible and apparent to the world, as before it was hidden beneath the waves, and fixed to the sea bed, so it was no longer floating. Cynthus and Cynthia, two common epithets for the twin gods in antiquity, were derived from Mt Cynthus, a mountain on the island.

Hera, despite being enraged that Asteria had defied her and allowed Leto to give birth to the products of Zeus' liaison, did no harm to Asteria, out of respect for her for not sleeping with Zeus when he chased her, and instead preferring the sea over him, thus not further defiling Hera's marriage. Asteria's power to withstand Hera's threats seems to stem from her parentage as the daughter of two Titans.

Other myths

Asteria and Phoebe on the Pergamon Altar, Berlin.

A different version was added by the poet Nonnus who recounted that, after Asteria was pursued by Zeus but turned herself into a quail and leapt into the sea, Poseidon instead took up the chase. In the madness of his passion, he hunted the chaste goddess to and fro in the sea, riding restless before the changing wind and thus she transformed herself into the desert island of Delos with the help of her nephew Apollo who rooted her in the waves immovable. The narrative with Poseidon only appears in Nonnus's work, and was likely invented by him.

Asteria evidently joined the other gods during the Gigantomachy, as evidenced in the Gigantomachy frieze on the Pergamon Altar, where Asteria is seen fighting against the Giants next to her mother Phoebe.

In a rare and non-standard account, Asteria was made the mother of Heracles by Zeus, to whom the Phoenicians sacrificed quails because when he went into Libya and was killed by Typhon, Iolaus brought a quail to him, and having put it close to him, he smelt it and came to life again.

Origins

Family and connections

Zeus and Asteria in an 1707 engraving by Bernard Picart, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

The goddess Asteria is attested as early as the eighth century BC, appearing in Hesiod's Theogony, a work documenting the genealogical lines of the gods, where she is listed in relation to her parents, sister and daughter. However Hesiod makes no mention of Asteria becoming Delos; in fact Hesiod does not seem to have known about the tale of Hera pursuing Leto at all, as he lists Leto's liaison with Zeus before his marriage to Hera. Asteria as the origin of Delos seems to have been introduced by Pindar, who in one of his fragmentary paians writes that Zeus pursued Asteria, presumably for amorous purposes (although this is unverifiable due to the missing text), and she was flung into the sea, becoming the floating island Ortygia which Pindar in other hymns identifies as Delos. Confusingly, elsewhere he calls Ortygia the sister of Delos, and in that case he might have meant the nearby islet Rhenia as Ortygia.

Later the Hellenistic poet Callimachus used Pindar as his source for the more coherent Hymn to Delos, in which focus is shifted from Apollo to the island itself and the story of how Asteria threw herself into the sea in order to avoid mating with Zeus. A major difference is the level of agency the two poets give Asteria; in Pindar she is passively flung, perhaps even as a punishment, while Callimachus has her actively choose the sea over Zeus, and then later to ignore Hera's orders; on the other hand, neither Pindar nor Callimachus mention the quail metamorphosis, which is first alluded to later still. The earlier work Homeric Hymn to Apollo meanwhile, which relates the story of Leto's troubled travels and Apollo's birth, predates both Pindar and Callimachus, but nothing in the conversation between Leto and Delos in it indicates such a past for the island, let alone that they are sisters. Additionally, the Hymn does not explicitly make Hera the reason why Leto is having so much trouble finding a suitable place to give birth, an element which is more pronounced in later versions. Like the Hymn, however, Callimachus also does not allude to the kinship between Leto and Asteria either, in contrast to Hesiod, who recorded that they are sisters but did not make Asteria the origin of Delos.

In Greek mythology, while transformation into a rock is usually a barren fate, a pattern emerges in which the heroines who were transformed into islands are lovers of the gods; samewise, islands like cities were usually personified as minor goddesses or heroes.

Delos and Ortygia

Although the island in which the twins were born after Asteria was transformed into it is mostly treated as a single place, variously referred to as Delos or Ortygia, several traditions make a distinction between the two islands, having Delos as the birthplace of Apollo and Ortygia of Artemis. Ortygia was a title of Artemis, signifying her connection to quails. Traditionally, it was said that Ortygia eventually was renamed to Delos after Apollo was born on it in order to connect two names to the same place. When not conflated with Delos as it was most common in later times, Ortygia can be variably identified with the small island off Sicily, or the one next to Asia Minor, or Rhenia next to Delos.

Genealogy

Asteria's family tree
Uranus Gaia Pontus Oceanus Tethys Hyperion Theia Crius Eurybia The Rivers The Oceanids Helios Selene Eos Astraeus Pallas Perses Cronus Rhea Coeus Phoebe Hestia Hera Poseidon Zeus Leto ASTERIA Demeter Hades Apollo Artemis Hecate Iapetus Clymene (or Asia) Themis (Zeus) Mnemosyne Atlas Menoetius Prometheus Epimetheus The Horae The Muses

See also

• Nemesis
• Astraeus
• Calliste
• Aea
• Pitys
• Daphne

References

Primary sources

• Athenaeus of Naucratis, The Deipnosophists or Banquet of the Learned. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1854. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Athenaeus of Naucratis, Deipnosophistae. Kaibel. In Aedibus B.G. Teubneri. Lipsiae. 1887. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Callimachus, Callimachus and Lycophron with an English translation by A. W. Mair; Aratus, with an English translation by G. R. Mair, London: W. Heinemann, New York: G. P. Putnam 1921. Internet Archive
• Callimachus, Works. A.W. Mair. London: William Heinemann; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1921. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Hesiod, Theogony from The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Marcus Tullius Cicero, Nature of the Gods from the Treatises of M.T. Cicero translated by Charles Duke Yonge (1812-1891), Bohn edition of 1878. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Natura Deorum. O. Plasberg. Leipzig. Teubner. 1917. Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Maurus Servius Honoratus, In Vergilii carmina comentarii. Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii; recensuerunt Georgius Thilo et Hermannus Hagen. Georgius Thilo. Leipzig. B. G. Teubner. 1881. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca translated by William Henry Denham Rouse (1863-1950), from the Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1940. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Nonnus of Panopolis, Dionysiaca. 3 Vols. W.H.D. Rouse. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1940-1942. Greek text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Pseudo-Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
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External links

• ASTERIA from The Theoi Project
• ASTERIA from Mythopedia
• ASTERIA from greekmythology.com