Charites (the Graces); Aglaia, Euphrosyne, Thalia

Before anyone carved them as three women with their arms looped around each other’s shoulders, the Graces were three rough stones. They had fallen from the sky over Orchomenus, or so the people of that Boeotian town believed, and their king Eteocles set them up and was the first to sacrifice to them. The stones sat in their precinct at the edge of the Kopaic marsh, and each harvest the farmers brought them a share of the grain and the fruit that the wet plain gave up in abundance. No face, no limbs, just stone that had come down out of the air. It is a strange beginning for goddesses who would become the very picture of human loveliness.

Hesiod gave them the shape they kept. In the Theogony they are the daughters of Zeus and the Oceanid Eurynome, three sisters born of the king of the gods and a daughter of the gray sea: Aglaia, the youngest, whose name means splendor or brightness; Euphrosyne, mirth; and Thalia, good cheer and the fullness of the feast. Their Greek name, Charites, comes from charis, a word that means grace and favor and the particular charm that makes a gift welcome or a person hard to look away from. The Romans called them the Gratiae. English took the plainer word and called them the Graces.

How many there were depended on where you stood. Hesiod’s three won out in Athenian art and stuck, but the Athenians themselves had once kept only two, Auxo and Hegemone, growth and the leader, names that belong as much to the turning year and the ripening field as to any dance floor. The Spartans also worshipped a pair, Cleta and Phaenna. The Boeotians insisted on three and credited Eteocles with fixing the count. The disagreement never fully settled. What stayed constant was the work.

That work was attendance. The Graces have almost no stories of their own; they are forever at someone’s side, lending the scene its sweetness. They wait on Aphrodite above all. When the goddess of love came to Paphos they bathed her and rubbed her with the oil the gods wear, the ambrosial scent that does not wash off, and they wove or dyed the robe she put on before she went looking for a lover. They danced in the chorus of the Seasons, with Hebe and Harmonia, on the day Apollo first came up to Olympus, while Artemis sang and Apollo drew his hand across the lyre. Wherever there was music, a banquet, a wedding, or a poem worth remembering, they were understood to be present. Pindar, writing for the victors at the games, called on them as the queens of Orchomenus and the givers of everything bright and pleasant that comes to mortals, and meant it as the highest praise he had.

Homer knew them in two registers. In the Iliad one Grace, called simply Charis, is the wife of Hephaestus, and it is she who opens the door of the smith’s bronze house when Thetis climbs to Olympus to beg new armor for her son Achilles; she seats the sea goddess on a silver chair and calls her husband out from his bellows. Hesiod, telling it differently, marries Hephaestus to Aglaia instead. The poets never agreed on which sister he took. And in the fourteenth book, when Hera wants Zeus asleep so the Greeks can have their way on the field, she goes to Hypnos, the god of sleep, and buys his help with a bride: Pasithea, one of the younger Graces, the one Hypnos has wanted all his days. Hera swears it on the Styx. That is the closest the Graces come to standing at the center of a plot, and even there a Grace is the price, not the player. They are given away, not consulted.

Their look changed as Greek art changed. The oldest images show them upright and clothed, stiff as the stones they replaced, standing in a line. By the Hellenistic age they had loosened into the grouping everyone now knows: three young women, nude or wrapped in fabric thin enough to show the body, standing close with their hands resting on one another’s shoulders and arms, the two on the outside facing forward and the one in the middle turned away, so the trio reads as a single linked ring. Sometimes they carry a sprig of myrtle, a rose, an apple, a knucklebone. The composition was copied onto mirrors and gems and painted walls, carried into Rome, and later picked up by Botticelli and Raphael and Rubens, who kept the pose long after they had forgotten the marsh and the fallen stones.

At Orchomenus and on the island of Paros they were honored with a festival, the Charitesia, a night of song and games whose centerpiece was a dance that ran until dawn. The dancers still on their feet when the sky went pale were given cake. It was a small prize for an exhausting devotion, but it suited the goddesses it honored, who asked for delight rather than dread.

What the Graces gave was real even when it was soft. They put charm into a face, ease into a gathering, persuasion into a speech, the spark into art that turns competent work into something people love. To be without them was to be graceless in the full old sense, awkward and unlovely and unable to please. A poet without them wrote dead lines; a host without them threw a joyless feast. Their power was the whole distance between a thing done and a thing done beautifully.

But it was always a power lent to others. The Graces hold no domain the way Zeus holds the sky or Poseidon the sea. They have no weapon, no monster to face, no throne to defend. Their gift exists only while it is being poured into something else, a body, a banquet, a song, and so they are never quite the subject of their own myth. They can be promised away to settle a queen’s scheme. They wait at the door of a greater god’s house and announce a greater guest. The most beautiful figures in the Greek imagination spend eternity making other people, and other gods, look good.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Charites in Greek mythology?

The Charites, known in English as the Graces and to the Romans as the Gratiae, are Greek goddesses of grace, beauty, charm, festivity, and joy. In the most common tradition, set by Hesiod, they are three sisters named Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia, daughters of Zeus and the Oceanid Eurynome. They mostly appear as attendants to greater gods rather than as figures with myths of their own.

How many Graces were there and what were their names?

The number varied by region. Hesiod’s count of three, named Aglaia (splendor), Euphrosyne (mirth), and Thalia (good cheer), became standard, but the Athenians originally worshipped two Graces called Auxo and Hegemone, and the Spartans two called Cleta and Phaenna. The Boeotians of Orchomenus established three as the number and credited their king Eteocles with fixing it.

What do the Graces do in Greek myth?

The Graces attend and serve the greater gods, most often Aphrodite, whom they bathe, anoint, and clothe before her affairs. They dance and sing at divine feasts and weddings, and they bestow on mortals charm, gratitude, eloquence, and the inspiration behind art, music, and dance. They have almost no independent myths and instead lend beauty and pleasure to the stories of others.

How were the Graces worshipped?

Their oldest cult was at Orchomenus in Boeotia, where they were honored as rough stones believed to have fallen from the sky and were offered a share of the harvest. At Orchomenus and on the island of Paros they were celebrated with a festival called the Charitesia, featuring music, games, and an all-night dance contest in which dancers who lasted until dawn were rewarded with cake. They also had temples at Paros, Hermione, Elis, and Sparta.

Was a Grace married to Hephaestus?

Yes, in some traditions. In Homer’s Iliad the wife of the smith god Hephaestus is a Grace called Charis, while Hesiod names that wife as Aglaia, the youngest of the three. Another Grace, Pasithea, was promised by Hera to Hypnos, the god of sleep, in exchange for putting Zeus to sleep during the Trojan War.

Related Entries

Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hera, Zeus, Apollo, Eros/Cupid, Erotes, Hebe, Dionysus, Oceanus, Hesperides, Nymph, Nereid