Selene

Also Known As: Greek Σελήνη, “moon”; also Mene, “moon, month”, and Selanaia; titles Pasiphae “All-Shining”, Aegle “Radiance”; Roman Luna
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology, Roman Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: She is the moon itself given a body, crossing the sky nightly in a chariot and marking out the months by the swelling and thinning of her light.
Role in Mythos: Sister of the sun and the dawn, she carries the moon on its course and stands as the great nocturnal witness of Greek myth.
Relation to Humans: Her light was called a sure token and a sign to mortals, and she was invoked alongside Helios in oaths and healing prayers. She also fell in love with a mortal shepherd and kept him, which is the story everyone remembers.

Cold silver comes up off the water before she does, laid flat across the swell, and then the rim of the chariot clears the horizon and the horses climb. Their manes are long enough to trail. The woman behind them has bathed her body in the stream that circles the world, put on clothing that throws light, and yoked a strong-necked team, and the crown on her head turns the unlit air pale gold. The Homeric hymn that describes all this treats it as a report rather than a fancy, and ends by calling her a sure token and a sign to mortal men.

Her name is simply the Greek word for the moon. That plainness is the whole of her. Other goddesses touched the moon, borrowed it, or were folded into it later, but Selene was the disc itself with a body and a temper attached. Hesiod places her in the second generation of Titans, born to Theia and Hyperion beside Helios the sun and Eos the dawn, three siblings who between them own every kind of light there is. The poets disagree about her parents, and the disagreements are ancient. One Homeric hymn gives her mother as Euryphaessa. Another makes her the daughter of Pallas, son of Megamedes. Euripides calls her the daughter of Helios, which demotes a sister to a child, and nobody at the time appears to have objected.

In the hymn she is long-winged, crowned in gold, and bright enough that the stars hide their shapes around her, which is how Sappho put it. Aeschylus gives her a colder title, the eye of night, glinting in the centre of a warrior’s shield. Artists settled on a full round face, a long robe, and a veil that arches above the head with the crescent riding over it. Sometimes the crescent is a crown and sometimes it is the lifted fold of her cloak catching the light. At Elis there were stone images of the two siblings in the marketplace, rays projecting from the head of Helios and horns from the head of Selene. Her team is usually a pair of horses, though Pausanias saw her on the throne of Zeus at Olympia riding what he thought was a horse and had to admit that some people insisted it was a mule.

The love story is the one that survived everything else. Sappho and Nicander both told it, and a scholiast preserved the shape: the goddess comes down to a cave on Mount Latmos in Caria, where a shepherd prince named Endymion is sleeping. He never wakes for it. Apollodorus explains why, and the explanation is stranger than the romance. Zeus offered Endymion a wish, and Endymion asked to stay immortal, unaging, and asleep forever. Quintus Smyrnaeus says a memorial of the goddess and her couch was still there among the oaks, a spring rimmed with white stone that from a distance looks like poured milk, and that travellers came to marvel at the whiteness. Pausanias reports that she bore him fifty daughters, the Menae, one for each month of the four-year Olympic cycle. Two towns argued over the body. The Eleans showed a tomb of Endymion and the people of Heraclea near Miletus said he had gone up Latmos and had a shrine there.

Her other children come from all over the sky. By Zeus she bore Pandeia, exceedingly lovely among the deathless gods, and Alcman names Ersa, the dew, as the daughter of Zeus and the Moon, which is the sort of genealogy that is really a weather observation. A scholiast on Pindar gives her Nemea. Quintus makes her the mother, by her own brother Helios, of the four Seasons who wait on Hera. Ion of Chios and Plato both pass on the claim that the singer Musaeus was her son, and Ion calls him moon-fallen.

She also produced something with teeth. Aelian quotes a line of the sixth-century poet Epimenides in which the speaker declares himself sprung from fair-tressed Selene, who shook the savage lion of Nemea out of herself in a fearful shudder at the bidding of Hera. Hyginus has her nourish the beast in a cave with two mouths until Heracles came for its hide. The moon gave birth to a monster because a jealous queen asked her to, and none of the sources treat this as out of character.

Virgil tells one more encounter, briefly and with a shrug. Pan, the god of Arcadia, charmed her with a gift of snow-white wool and called her down into the depths of the woods, and she did not scorn the call. Ancient readers suspected he was really retelling the Endymion story with a shepherd’s fleece in it.

What she can do is mostly what light can do. She measures time, since her waxing and waning is the month itself and the Greek word for her doubles as the word for it. She sees, and being seen by her matters: she was summoned with Helios in an Epidaurian hymn to Asclepius, and in Apollonius she catches Medea creeping out at night and taunts her for it, love recognising love. When Oenone ran through the dark toward the pyre of Paris, Selene shone at full brightness and made the long tracks plain, because she remembered her own.

Her limits are sharper than her powers. Zeus once simply forbade her, along with Eos and Helios, to appear at all, so that Earth could not find the drug that would have saved her Giant sons in the dark. Witches were worse. Thessalian women were believed to drag the moon out of the sky to take her blood, which is what lunar eclipses and the red moon were, and when it happened whole villages beat bronze and cymbals to break the spell and get her back. Statius has the hag laughing at her panting horses. Ovid’s Medea says the clanging bronze eases her throes. Plato, who thought the practice was chiefly a danger to the women doing it, mentions it as a proverb. And for a goddess who was overhead every night, she was given almost nothing. A title at Thalamae, two stone figures at Elis, and in Rome a temple to Luna on the Aventine whose day was the last of March.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Selene in Greek mythology?

Selene is the Greek Titan goddess of the moon, the moon itself personified as a woman. Hesiod makes her the daughter of Theia and Hyperion and the sister of Helios the sun and Eos the dawn. Her Roman counterpart is Luna, and her name doubles as the ordinary Greek word for the moon.

What is the story of Selene and Endymion?

Selene fell in love with Endymion, a shepherd prince, and came down to him in a cave on Mount Latmos in Caria. Endymion was granted a wish by Zeus and chose to remain immortal, unaging, and asleep forever, so the goddess visited a man who never woke. Pausanias says she bore him fifty daughters, the Menae, one for each month of the four-year Olympic cycle.

What did Selene look like?

The Homeric Hymn to Selene describes her as long-winged, with radiance streaming from her immortal head and a golden crown that lights the air. In art she has a full round face, a long robe, and a veil arching above her head with a crescent set over it, and at Elis her statue had horns projecting from her head. She rides a chariot drawn by a pair of horses, though some sources give her oxen or mules.

Did Selene give birth to the Nemean Lion?

Some ancient sources say she did. Aelian quotes the poet Epimenides, who has the speaker descended from Selene and describes her shuddering the lion of Nemea out of herself at Hera’s bidding, and Hyginus says Luna raised the beast in a cave with two mouths before Heracles killed it. Other accounts of the Nemean Lion give it different parents entirely.

Why did people beat bronze during a lunar eclipse?

Greeks and Romans believed Thessalian witches could drag the moon down out of the sky to take her blood, and that eclipses and red moons were the visible result. Beating cymbals and bronze pots was meant to break the spell and return Selene to her course. Ovid, Seneca, and Statius all refer to the practice, and Plato treats moon-drawing as a proverb for a skill that destroys the person who uses it.