| Leucothoe | |
|---|---|
 Apollo (as the Sun) caressing the Nymph Leucothea, byAntoine Boizot | |
| Abode | Persia,Boeotia orAndros |
| Genealogy | |
| Parents | Orchamus and Eurynome |
| Siblings | Clytie(one version) |
| Consort | Helios |
| Children | Thersanon |
InGreek mythology,Leucothoe (Ancient Greek:Λευκοθόη, fromλευκός, "white", andθοός, "quick, swift") was aBabylonian princess. The daughter ofOrchamus, a king ofPersia, Leucothoe was either a lover of thesun godHelios or a victim of rape. Anymph or Leucothoe's own sister, namedClytie, who loved Helios and was jealous of Leucothoe, informed Leucothoe's father that Leucothoe, despite being unmarried, was no longer a virgin, whereupon Orchamusburied his daughter alive in punishment. Helios then transformed Leucothoe's dead body into afrankincense tree.
The tale is best known from theAugustan poetOvid's narrative poemMetamorphoses, in which the fullest account of it survives, although references and allusions to Leucothoe's story survive in other sources as well.
As punishment for informing her husbandHephaestus of her affair withAres,Aphrodite cursed Helios to fall in love with Leucothoe. Utterly enamored with her, Helios lingered in the sky by rising earlier and setting later to spend more time watching her, making the winter days longer. He forgot about his previous lovers, includingRhodos,Clymene,Perse, andClytie, who felt betrayed after being loved and abandoned by him.
Son ofHyperion, what use to you now are beauty, lustre, and radiant light? Surely, you who make all countries burn with your fires, burn with a new fire. You, who should discern everything, contemplate Leucothoë, and your eyes, that ought to be fixed on the whole earth, are fixed on one virgin girl. Sometimes you rise too early in the dawn sky. Sometimes you sink too late into the waves. Thinking of her, you lengthen the winter hours. Sometimes you vanish, your mind’s defect affecting your light, and, obscured, terrify men’s hearts. It is not because the moon’s shadow, closer to the earth, eclipses you, that you fade. It is that love of yours that determines your aspect. You only love her.
— Ovid,Metamorphoses, lines 4.192–204, translation by A. S. Kline.
Eventually, Helios disguised himself as her mother,Eurynome, to gain entrance to her chambers,[a] and once he got there, he dismissed her servants and revealed himself to Leucothoe. He confessed his love to her, and she, "conquered, suffered his force" according to Ovid,[1] or he made love to her in others.[2][3]
But Clytie, still in love with him and consumed with jealousy, reported Leucothoe's affair to her father, Orchamus, who punished his defiled daughter by burying her alive, as she pleaded with him in despair. Leucothoe died before Helios could save her. Overcome with grief, Helios shone his rays upon her but could not revive her. So he sprinkled her body with "fragrant nectar" and turned her into afrankincensetree so that she would still breathe air, after a fashion, instead of staying buried beneath the earth. Clytie, meanwhile, scorned by Helios for her involvement in Leucothoe's death, sat on the ground pining away, neither eating nor drinking, constantly turning her face toward the Sun, until finally she became theheliotrope, whose purple flowers follow the Sun every day on his diurnal journey across the sky.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]
According toLactantius Placidus, Ovid got this myth fromHesiod,[2] although some scholars doubt this particular attribution.[12] His abridged version largely follows Ovid's own, but contains certain differences.[13] Like Ovid, Lactantius does not clarify how Clytie knew about Helios and Leucothoe, or how Helios knew it was Clytie who had informed the king.
In another narrative, after Helios had intercourse with Leucothoe, the girl who caused Leucothoe's doom is identified as her (unnamed) sister,[b] and their father's name isOrchomenus instead, which is also the name of atown inBeotia, suggesting in this version the myth took place there and not in Babylon. The anonymous author mentions by name the plants the two sisters turned into, contrasting the vagueness of Ovid's telling.[3][5]Hyginus might have known a very different version of this myth, for he names one of theArgonauts,Thersanon, as the son of Helios and Leucothoe, and places her inAndros rather than Persia, implying a version where Leucothoe survives (at least for as long as it took to produce a child). However, he could simply be referring to a differentLeucothoe.[15][11]
Some scholars have suggested that the stories of Leucothoe and Clytie were originally two distinct ones that were combined along with a third story, that of Helios discovering Ares and Aphrodite's affair and then informing Hephaestus, into a single tale either by Ovid himself or Ovid's source.[16]
It's been suggested that this myth was used to explain the use of frankincense in the god's worship, similar to the story of the nymphDaphne, who transformed into a laurel tree; Leucothoe's death by burial at the hands of her male guardian, not unlikeAntigone's fate, might denote archaic cult practices involving human sacrifice in tree-related worship.[17]
Media related toLeucothea at Wikimedia Commons
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