Eosphorus

"Dawn-bringer." The name of the morning star. Eosphorus was the son of Eos and Astraeus1 or of Eos and Cephalus,2 and the brother of Hesperus (the evening star). The ancient Greek viewed the morning star and the evening star as two different celestial objects and thus associated two deities with them. Later they came to regard it as one and the same planet, based on the Babylonian view, and the deities were combined in Hesperus.

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References

Notes

  1. Hesiod. Theogony, 381.
  2. Hyginus. Astronomica ii, 42.

Source

  • Grimal, Pierre; Kershaw, Stephen. (1992). The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology. London: Penguin Books.