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, defyingHera's orders that forbade Leto any shelter. AfterApollo andArtemis were born on her, the island received the name ofDelos, and Apollo fixed it in place, making it his sacred land.
The goddess's name "Asteria" (Ancient GreekἈστερία, translit. Astería) is derived from the Greek wordἀστήρ (astḗr) meaning "star".[1]Ἀστήρ itself is inherited from theProto-Indo-European root*h₂ster- ("star"), from*h₂eh₁s-, "to burn".[2] Asteria's name shares an etymology with the names ofAstraeus, Asteria's first cousin, and his daughterAstraea.
All surviving sources make Asteria the daughter of the original TitansPhoebe andCoeus, and the younger sister ofLeto.[3][4] BeforeCronus was dethroned and cast down by his six children, Asteria marriedPerses, one of her first cousins, and gave birth to their only child, a daughter namedHecate.[5][6] In one account attributed toMusaeus, Asteria is the mother of Hecate not by Perses but byZeus.[7][8][9] In this version Zeus kept Asteria as his paramour for some time before handing her over to Perses.[8][10][11]
Asteria pursued by Zeus in the form of an eagle byMarco Liberi
Asteria was an inhabitant of Olympus following theTitanomachy in which the Olympians prevailed over the Titans, and like her sister Leto before her she was beloved by Zeus.[12] After Zeus had impregnated Leto, his attention was next captured by her sister Asteria.[13] Asteria rejected the enamoured Zeus, but he pursued her nonetheless.[14] In order to escape the amorous advances of the god, who in the form of an eagle chased her down,[15] she transformed herself into a quail (Ancient Greek:ὄρτυξ,órtux) and flung herself into theAegean Sea.[16] It was there that Asteria metamorphosed into the island Asteria (the island which had fallen from heaven like a star),[17][18] or the "quail island"Ortygia.[19][6] The island was described in ancient sources as both floating or hidden under the sea.[12][16][20] It was small and barren.[21]
This then became identified with the island ofDelos, which was the only place on earth to give refuge to the fugitive Leto when, pregnant with Zeus's children, she was pursued by vengefulHera, the wife of Zeus.[22] Hera had forbidden all places on earth to allow Leto to give birth on them, and sentAres andIris to enforce her command, but Delos defied Hera and invited Leto in.[23][24] According to Hyginus, Leto was borne by the north windBoreas 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 toApollo andArtemis.[6][14][25]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,[12] and fixed to the sea bed, so it was no longer floating.[20] Cynthus and Cynthia, two common epithets for the twin gods in antiquity, were derived fromMt Cynthus, a mountain on the island.[26]
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.[27] Asteria's power to withstand Hera's threats seems to stem from her parentage as the daughter of two Titans.[28]
A different version was added by the fifth-century poetNonnus 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.[29] The narrative with Poseidon only appears in Nonnus's work, and was likely invented by him.
Asteria evidently joined the other gods during theGigantomachy, as evidenced in the Gigantomachy frieze on thePergamon Altar, where Asteria is seen fighting against the Giants next to her mother Phoebe.[30][31]
In a rare and non-standard account, Asteria was made the mother ofHeracles by Zeus,[17] to whom the Phoenicians sacrificed quails because when he went intoLibya and was killed byTyphon,Iolaus brought a quail to him, and having put it close to him, he smelt it and came to life again.[32]
Zeus and Asteria in an 1707 engraving byBernard Picart, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
The goddess Asteria is attested as early as the eighth century BC, appearing in Hesiod'sTheogony, a work documenting the genealogical lines of the gods, where she is listed in relation to her parents, sister and daughter.[9] However Hesiod makes no mention of Asteria becoming Delos;[28] 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 byPindar,[23] who in one of his fragmentarypaeans 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.[33][34] Confusingly, elsewhere he calls Ortygia thesister of Delos, and in that case he might have meant a nearby islet calledRhenia to be Ortygia.[35][36]
Later the Hellenistic poetCallimachus used Pindar as his source for the more coherentHymn 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.[37] A major difference is the level of agency the two poets give Asteria; in Pindar she is passivelyflung, 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.[37][38]
The earlier workHomeric 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.[28][39] Additionally, theHymn 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.[23] Like theHymn, 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.[38]
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.[40]
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,[41] having Delos as the birthplace of Apollo and Ortygia of Artemis.[12][42] Ortygia was a title of Artemis, signifying her connection to quails.[42] 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.[43] When not conflated with Delos as it was most common in later times,[44] Ortygia could be variably identified with the small island offSicily, or the one next toAsia Minor, or Rhenia next to Delos.[12][36]
^Although usually the daughter of Hyperion and Theia, as inHesiod,Theogony371–374, in theHomeric Hymn to Hermes (4),99–100, Selene is instead made the daughter of Pallas the son of Megamedes.
^According toHesiod,Theogony507–511, Clymene, one of theOceanids, the daughters ofOceanus and Tethys, atHesiod,Theogony351, was the mother by Iapetus of Atlas, Menoetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, while according toApollodorus,1.2.3, another Oceanid, Asia was their mother by Iapetus.
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
The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Homeric Hymns. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
Nonnus,Dionysiaca; translated byRouse, W H D, volume II Books XVI-XXXV.Loeb Classical Library No. 345, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1940.Internet Archive
Nonnus,Dionysiaca; translated byRouse, W H D, volume III Books XXXVI-XLVIII.Loeb Classical Library No. 346, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1940.Internet Archive.
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