Phaethon (1)

Alternative parentage: Clymenus and Merope,^[15B] Helios and Prote,^[15B] Helios and Rhode,^[15B] Cephalus and Eos^[H45]

Received the significant name Phaethon from his father, and was afterwards also presumptuous and ambitious enough to request his father one day to allow him to drive the chariot of the sun across the heavens. Helios was induced by the entreaties of his son and of Clymene to yield, but the youth being too weak to check the horses, came down with his chariot, and so near to the earth, that he almost set it on fire. Zeus, therefore, killed him with a flash of lightning, so that he fell down into the river Eridanus or the Po. His sisters, who had yoked the horses to the chariot, were metamorphosed into poplars, and their tears into amber.^[15B]