Aurora (mythology)

This article is about the Roman goddess of dawn; for the asteroid, see 94 Aurora.
Aurora e Titone: Aurora, goddess of the morning and Tithonus, Prince of Troy, painted by Francesco de Mura

Aurora is the Latin word for dawn, the goddess of dawn in Roman mythology and Latin poetry. Aurora is comparable to the Greek goddess Eos, though Aurora did not bring with her any resonance of a greater archaic goddess.

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Roman mythology

In ancient Roman mythology Aurora, goddess of the dawn, renews herself every morning and flies across the sky, announcing the arrival of the sun. Her parentage was flexible: for Ovid she could equally be Pallantis, signifying the daughter of Pallas,1 or the daughter of Hyperion.2 She has two siblings, a brother (Sol, the sun) and a sister (Luna, the moon), and four children, the Winds

Aurora appears most often in Latin poetry with one of her mortal lovers. A myth taken from the Greek Eos by Roman poets tells that one of her lovers was the prince of Troy, Tithonus. Tithonus was a mortal, and would age and die. Wanting to be with her lover for all eternity, Aurora asked Zeus to grant immortality to Tithonus. Zeus granted her wish, however Aurora had failed to ask him for eternal youth. As a result, Tithonus ended up aging eternally. Aurora ended up turning her beloved Tithonus into a grasshopper.

Aurora, by Guercino, 1621-23: the ceiling fresco in the Casino Ludovisi, Rome, is a classic example of Baroque illusionistic painting

Usage in literature and music

From Homer's Iliad :

Now when Dawn in robe of saffron was hastening from the streams of Okeanos, to bring light to mortals and immortals, Thetis reached the ships with the armor that the god had given her. (19.1)
But soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered, then gathered the folk about the pyre of glorious Hector. (24.776)

From Virgil's Aeneid :

Aurora now had left her saffron bed,
And beams of early light the heav'ns o'erspread,
When, from a tow'r, the queen, with wakeful eyes,
Saw day point upward from the rosy skies.

These lines and the following 12 were used by the experimental electronic band Placement in the song Rosy Skies.

In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (I.i), Montague says of his lovesick son Romeo

But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
Should in the furthest east begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora's bed,
Away from the light steals home my heavy son...

In the poem "Tithonus" by Lord Alfred Tennyson, Aurora is described thus:

Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renewed.
Thy cheek begins to redden through the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosened manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of a fire

In singer-songwriter Björk's Vespertine track, Aurora is described as:

Aurora
Goddess sparkle
A mountain shade suggests your shape
I tumble down on my knees
Fill my mouth with snow
The way it melts
I wish to melt into you

In Chapter 2 of Walden, Where I Lived and What I Lived for, Henry David Thoreau states:

Every morning was a cheerful invitation
to make my life of equal simplicity,
and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.
I got up early and bathed in the pond;
that was a religious exercise,
and one of the best things which I did.

Depiction in art

Notes

  1. ^ "When Pallantis next gleams in heaven and stars flee..." (Ovid, Fasti iv. 373.
  2. ^ Fasti v.159; also Hyginus, Preface to Fabulae.

External links

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  • This page was last modified on 21 November 2008, at 21:19.

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