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Ancient

Ovid

What now avail, O son of Hyperion, thy beauty and brightness and radiant beams? For thou, who dost inflame all lands with thy fires, art thyself inflamed by a strange fire. Thou who shouldst behold all things, dost gaze on Leucothoë alone, and on one maiden dost thou fix those eyes which belong to the whole world. Anon too early dost thou rise in the eastern sky, and anon too late dost thou sink beneath the waves, and through thy long lingering over her dost prolong the short wintry hours. Sometimes thy beams fail utterly, thy heart’s darkness passing to thy rays, and darkened thou dost terrify the hearts of men. Nor is it that the moon has come ’twixt thee and earth that thou art dark; ’tis that love of thine alone that makes thy face so wan. Thou delightest in her alone. Now neither Clymene seems fair to thee, nor the maid of Rhodes, nor Aeaean Circes’ mother, though most beautiful, nor Clytie, who, although scorned by thee, still seeks thy love and even now bears its deep wounds in her heart. Leucothoë makes thee forgetful of them all, she whom most fair Eurynome bore in the land of spices. But, after the daughter came to womanhood, as the mother surpassed all in loveliness, so did the daughter surpass her. Her father, Orchamus, ruled over the cities of Persia, himself the seventh in line from ancient Belus.

“Beneath the western skies lie the pastures of the Sun’s horses. Here not common grass, but ambrosia is their food. On this their bodies, weary with their service of the day, are refreshed and gain new strength for toil. While here his horses crop their celestial pasturage and Night takes her turn of toil, the god enters the apartments of his love, assuming the form of Eurynome, her mother. There he discovers Leucothoë, surrounded by her twelve maidens, spinning fine wool with whirling spindle. Then having kissed her, just as her mother would have kissed her dear daughter, he says: ‘Mine is a private matter. Retire, ye slaves, and let not a mother want the right to a private speech.’ The slaves obey; and now the god, when the last witness has left the room, declares: ‘Lo, I am he who measure out the year, who behold all things, by whom the earth beholds all things—the world’s eye. I tell thee thou hast found favour in my sight.’ The nymph is filled with fear; distaff and spindle fall unheeded from her limp fingers. Her very fear becomes her. Then he, no longer tarrying, resumes his own form and his wonted splendour. But the maiden, though in terror at this sudden apparition, yet, overwhelmed by his radiance, at last without protest suffers the ardent wooing of the god.

“Clytie was jealous, for love of the Sun still burned uncontrolled in her. Burning now with wrath at the sight of her rival, she spread abroad the story, and especially to the father did she tell his daughter’s shame. He, fierce and merciless, unheeding her prayers, unheeding her arms stretched out to the Sun, and unheeding her cry, ‘He overbore my will,’ with brutal cruelty buried her deep in the earth, and heaped on the spot a heavy mound of sand. The son of Hyperion rent this with his rays, and made a way by which you might put forth your buried head; but too late, for now, poor nymph, you could not lift your head, crushed beneath the heavy earth, and you lay there, a lifeless corpse. Naught more pitiful than that sight, they say, did the driver of the swift steeds see since Phaëthon’s burning death. He tried, indeed, by his warm rays to recall those death-cold limbs to the warmth of life. But since grim fate opposed all his efforts, he sprinkled the body and the ground with fragrant nectar, and preluding with many words of grief, he said: ‘In spite of fate shalt thou reach the upper air.’ Straightway the body, soaked with the celestial nectar, melted away and filled the earth around with its sweet fragrance. Then did a shrub of frankincense, with deep-driven roots, rise slowly through the soil and its top cleaved the mound.

“But Clytie, though love could excuse her grief, and grief her tattling, was sought no more by the great light-giver, nor did he find aught to love in her. Thereafter she pined away, her love turned to madness. Unable to endure her sister nymphs, beneath the open sky, by night and day, she sat upon the bare ground, naked, bareheaded, unkempt. For nine whole days she sat, tasting neither drink nor food, her hunger fed by naught save pure dew and tears, and moved not from the ground. Only she gazed on the face of her god as he went his way, and turned her face towards him. They say that her limbs grew fast to the soil and her deathly pallor changed in part to a bloodless plant; but in part ’twas red, and a flower, much like a violet, came where her face had been. Still, though roots hold her fast, she turns ever towards the sun and, though changed herself, preserves her love unchanged.”

Modern

Gantz

p. 34

Finally, for the tale of two other lovers of Helios, Klytie and Leukothea, our primary source is again Ovid. As he tells the story, Klytie is one of those whom Helios has loved in the past; still longing for the god, she is struck with jealousy when his attentions turn toward Leukothea, daughter of Orchamos and Eurynome, and she reveals the affair to the girl's father, who buries his daughter alive (Met 4.192-270). Helios' efforts to uncover her are in vain, and Klytie, scorned by him ever after, becomes the heliotrope. A comment by Lactantius Placidus repeats this story and assigns it to "Hesiod," but scholars have generally been dubious (Hes fr 351 MW).

Grimal

s.v. Leucothoe (Λευκοθόη)

The name sometimes given to LEUCOTHEA. It is also the name of the rival of CLYTIA, the lover of the sun, who was transformed into a heliotrope.

Hard

p. 45

When a myth was devised to explain the origin of heliotrope, a plant that keeps its flowers constantly turned toward the sun, Helios was bound to play a central part in it. Ovid's account runs as follows. On beholding LEUKOTHOE, daughter of Orchamos, king of Persia, the most beautiful girl in the land of spices, Helios conceived a desperate passion for her, forgetting all his previous loves. So he made his way into her room in the guise of her mother and dismissed her attendants, and then resumed his proper form in order to seduce her. One of his former mistresses, a certain KLYTIE (who is described elsewhere as a sister of Leukothoe) was so jealous of Leukothoe that she caused it to become generally known that she had a lover. On hearing the rumour, her cruel father buried her alive, and she died before Helios could rescue her. Overcome with sorrow, he sprinkled nectar over her body and the surrounding soil, causing an incense-tree to grow up in place of her. As for Klytie, he would have nothing to do with her, and she pined away for love of him, refusing all food and drink, until she finally turned into a heliotrope; and she retains her love for Helios even in this new form, as is witnessed in the movement of the flowers of the heliotrope. In another account, the father is called Orchomenos, which would imply that her story is now set in Boetia in mainland Greece.¹³⁸

p. 608

¹³⁸ Ov. Met. 4.190–270, Westermann, anon., p. 348.

Parada

s.v. Leucothoe 2

With whom Aphrodite made Helius fall in love.

•Orchamus ∞ Eurynome 5.

♇Buried alive by his [sic] father, when he knew through Clytia 1 of his dsughter's love for Helius.

D.Ov. Met.4.190ff. •Ov. Met.4.208ff. ♇Ov. Met.4.240ff.

Smith

s.v. Leucothoe

a daughter of the Babylonian king Orchamus and Eurynome, was beloved by Apollo; but her amour was betrayed by the jealous Clytia to her father, who buried her alive; whereupon Apollo metamorphosed her into an incense shrub. (Ov. Met. 4.208, &c.) Leucothoe is in some writers only another form for Leucothea. (Hyg. Fab. 125.)

Tripp

s.v. Helius B.

Aphrodite, angry at Helius for reporting to her husband her affair with Ares, caused him to fall in love with Leucothoë, daughter of Orchamus. The girl must have been well protected, for the god found it necessary to disguise himself as her mother in order to gain acess to her bedroom. Once inside, he returned to his own form and seduced her. The nymph Clytië, an old flame, was consumed with jealousy and reported the incident to Orchaamus, who buried his daughter alive in punishment. The grief-stricken Helius transformed Lecothoë into a shrub that give frankincense. Clytië, whose spite had alienated her former lover completely, wasted away. In dying she beame the heliotrope, the flower whose head turns to follow the course of the sun across the sky each day.