| Clytie | |
|---|---|
| Member of theOceanids | |
 Townley'sClytie | |
| Other names | Clytia |
| Greek | Κλυτίη |
| Abode | Boeotia, others |
| Symbols | Heliotropium |
| Genealogy | |
| Parents | Oceanus andTethysor Orchomenus/Orchamus |
| Siblings | TheOceanids, theriver godsor Leucothoe |
| Consort | Helios |
Clytie (/ˈklaɪtiiː/;Ancient Greek:Κλυτίη,romanized: Klutíē) orClytia (/ˈklaɪtiə/;Ancient Greek:Κλυτία,romanized: Klutía,lit. 'renowned') is a waternymph, daughter of theTitansOceanus andTethys inGreek mythology. She is thus one of the 3,000Oceanid nymphs, and sister to the 3,000river-gods.
According to the myth, Clytie loved the sun-godHelios in vain, but he left her for another woman, the princessLeucothoe, under the influence ofAphrodite, the goddess of love. In anger and bitterness, she revealed their affair to the girl's father, indirectly causing her doom as the kingburied her alive. This failed to win Helios back to her, and she was left lovingly staring at him from the ground; eventually she turned into aheliotrope, a violet flower that gazes at theSun each day in its diurnal journey.
Clytie's story is mostly known from and fully preserved inOvid's narrative poemMetamorphoses, though other brief accounts and references to her from other authors survive as well.
Her name, spelled bothKlytie andKlytia (Κλυτίη,Κλυτία), is derived from theancient Greek adjectiveκλυτός (klutós), meaning "glorious" or "renowned".[1] That word itself derives from the verbκλύω, meaning 'to hear, to understand', ultimately from theProto-Indo-European root*ḱlew-, which means 'to hear'.[2]
AlthoughOvid does not mention Clytie's parentage or homeland (if not Babylon),Hesiod includes her name in his list of the 3,000Oceanids,[3] daughters of the water deitiesOceanus andTethys, two of the originalTitans.[4]Hyginus also gives her the same parentage.[5] Clytie is thus also sister to the 3,000river-gods. Neither Hesiod nor Hyginus mention the myth concerningHelios, but their figure seems to be identical to Ovid's.[6]
In another narrative that takes place inBoeotia, Clytie is identified asLeucothoe's own sister, and daughter of KingOrchomenus, although not by name.[7]
Ovid's account of the story is the fullest and most detailed of the surviving ones. According to him, Clytie was a lover of the god of the sunHelios, untilAphrodite made him fall in love with a Persian mortal princess called Leucothoe, in revenge for him informing her husbandHephaestus of her illicit affair with his brotherAres, the god of war.[8] Helios then ceased to care for her, as well as all the other goddesses and nymphs he had loved before, likeRhodos,Perse andClymene. He abandoned her and preferred to spend his days admiring the princess Leucothoe.[9][10] Though scorned and deserted, she still sought out his love and warmth. Angered by his treatment of her, and still missing him, she informed Leucothoe's strict father, KingOrchamus, about the affair.[6] Since Helios had defiled Leucothoe, Orchamus had her put to death by burial alive in the sands despite the girl's protest and proclaiming of her innocence.[11] Helios arrived too late to save the girl, but he did make sure to turn her into afrankincense tree by pouringnectar over her dead body, so that she would still breathe air (in a certain fashion).[12] Ovid seems to think that Helios bears some responsibility over Clytie's excessive jealousy because he writes that Helios's passion was never "moderate" when he loved her.[13]
Clytie intended to win Helios back by taking away his new love, but her plan backfired on her, and her actions only hardened his heart against her.[14] Thereafter Helios avoided her altogether, never going back to her.[15] In despair, she stripped herself and sat naked, accepting neither food nor drink, for nine days on the rocks, staring at the Sun and mourning his departure, but he never looked back at her.[16] After nine days she was eventually transformed into a purple flower, theheliotrope (meaning "sun-turning"[17]).[18] Also known as the turnsole, it is known for growing on sunny, rocky hillsides.[19][20] The flower turns its head always to look longingly at Helios the Sun as he passes through the sky in his solar chariot, even though he no longer cares for her, her form much changed, her love for him unchanged.[21][22]
The episode is most fully told by Roman poet Ovid in his first-century AD poemtheMetamorphoses; Ovid's version is the only full surviving narrative of this story, but he must had had a Greek original source, for the myth's origins and plot lie in the etymology of the flower's Greek name.[20] According toLactantius Placidus, he got this myth from seventh or sixth century BC Greek authorHesiod.[23] Some scholars however doubt this particular attribution to Hesiod.[24] Like Ovid, Lactantius does not explain how Clytie knew about Helios and Leucothoe, or how Helios knew it was Clytie who had informed Orchamus. It is possible that originally the stories of Leucothoe and Clytie were two distinct ones before they were combined along with a third story, that of Ares and Aphrodite's affair being discovered by Helios who then informed Hephaestus, into a single one either by Ovid or Ovid's source.[25]
One of the ancient paradoxographers identifies the girl who betrayed the secret as Leucothoe's sister instead, and their father's name asOrchomenus, but gives her neither a name nor a motivation behind her actions;[7] the mother of the two girls similarly goes unnamed (Eurynome in Ovid), perhaps as a consequence of anonymous' abridged narrative.[26][12]Orchomenus is also the name of a town inBoeotia, implying that this version of the story took place there rather than Persia.[7]Pliny the Elder wrote that:
I have spoken more than once of the marvel of heliotropium, which turns round with the sun even on a cloudy day, so great a love it has for that, luminary. At night it closes its blue flower as though it mourned.[27]
Edith Hamilton notes that Clytie's case is unique inGreek mythology, as instead of the typical lovesick god being in love with an unwilling maiden, it is a maiden who is in love with an unwilling god.[28]
Similar to the story of the naiadDaphne used as an explanation for theplant's prominence in worship, Clytie' story might have been used for similar purposes in connecting the flower she turned into, the heliotrope, to Helios.[29]
An ancient scholiast wrote that the heliotropium that Clytie was turned into was the first preservation of the love for the god.[30][31]
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Modern traditions substitute thepurple[a] turnsole with ayellowsunflower, which according to (incorrect) folk wisdomturns in the direction of the sun.[32] The original French formtournesol primarily refers to sunflower, while the Englishturnsole is primarily used for heliotrope. Sunflowers however are native toNorth America,[33][34] and were not found in antiquity in eitherGreece orItaly, making it impossible for ancient Greek and Roman authors to have included them in theiretiological myths, as sunflowers were not part of their native flora and they would have not known about them and their sun-turning properties.
It has also been noted that the heliotropium itself poses some difficulties for identification with Clytie's flower;heliotropium arborescens, which is the vivid purple variant, is not native to Europe either, instead coming from theAmericas just like the aforementioned sunflower. Native variants of heliotropium or other flowers called "heliotrope" are also the wrong colour, either white (heliotropium supinum) or yellow (vilossum), when Ovid described it as "like a violet" andPliny "blue".[27][35] Both however lived in the post-Hellenistic period after theconquests ofAlexander the Great, and could have been aware of theheliotropium indicum, a variant that can have a purplish or bluish corolla.[36] Moreover, evenheliotropium europaeum, a variant native in Europe which is normally white in colour, can have pale lilac flowers.[37]
Much like withPhaethon, another ancient myth featuringHelios, some modern retellings connect Clytie and her story toApollo, the god of light, but the myth as attested in classical sources does not actually concern him;[38] Ovid identifies twice the god Clytie fell in love with asHyperione natus/e (the son ofHyperion), and like other Roman authors does not conflate in his poem the two gods, who remain distinct in myth.[39] Clytie's lover whom she was jilted by is also connected to the story ofPhaethon, as the boy's father, a distinctly solar but non-Apolline figure, who in turn is not a sun god or given any solar characteristics as far as Ovid is concerned.[25]Joseph Fontenrose argued that despite Ovid's works being largely responsible for the prevalence of the two gods being the same one in post-classical times, he himself did not actually identify them in either the story of Phaethon or the story of Leucothoe and Clytie.[40]
One sculpture of Clytie, found in the collection ofCharles Townley, might be either a Roman work, or an eighteenth century "fake".[41]
The bust was created between 40 and 50 AD. Townley acquired it from the family of the principe Laurenzano inNaples during his extended secondGrand Tour of Italy (1771–1774); the Laurenzano insisted it had been found locally. It remained a favorite both with him (it figures prominently inJohann Zoffany's iconic painting of Townley's library (illustration, right), was one of three ancient marbles Townley had reproduced on his visiting card, and was apocryphally the one which he wished he could carry with him when his house was torched in theGordon Riots – apocryphal since the bust is in fact far too heavy for that) and with the public (Joseph Nollekens is said to have always had a marble copy of it in stock for his customers to purchase, and in the late 19th centuryParian ware copies were all the rage.[42]
The identity of the subject, a woman emerging from a calyx of leaves, was much discussed among the antiquaries in Townley's circle. At first referred to asAgrippina, and later called by TownleyIsis in alotus flower, it is now accepted as Clytie. Some modern scholars even claim the bust is of eighteenth century date, though most now think it is an ancient work showingAntonia Minor or a contemporaneous Roman lady in the guise ofAriadne.
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Another famous bust of Clytie was byGeorge Frederick Watts.[43] Instead of Townley's serene Clytie, Watts's is straining, looking round at the sun.
Clytie is briefly alluded to inThomas Hood's poemFlowers, in the lines "I will not have the mad Clytie,/Whose head is turned by the sun;".[44]William Blake's poemAh! Sun-flower has been suggested to allude to the myth of Clytie.[45]
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.[46]
The sunflower (which was not Clytie's original flower) ever since her myth, has "been anemblem of the faithful subject", in three or four ways: the "image of a soul devoted to the god or God, originally aPlatonic concept", as "an image of the Virgin devoted to Christ"; or "an image - in the strictlyOvidian sense - of the lover devoted to the beloved".[47] Northrop Frye claimed that Clytie's metamorphosis tale is at the 'core' of the poem.[48]
| Clytie's family tree according to Hesiod[49] |
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| International | |
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| National | |
| Other | |
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