Dear friends of ancient mythology! In the last weeks I have been studying the mythology of Selene. Here are some results. First coin: Egypt, Alexandria, Commodus, AD 177-192 AE - BI Tetradrachm, 12.44g, 26.5mm Alexandria, 189/90 (RY 30 of Marcus Aurelius) Obv.: M A KOM ANTΩ - CEB EVCEB Laureate head r. Rev.: Bust of Selene, diademed, l., crescent on her head, l. large crescent in the right field L Λ (year 30)Ref:: Milne 2686; Cologne 2252; Dattari 3889; Emmet 2558.30; BMC 1404; SNG Copenhagen 582; SNG Munich 101; SNG Oxford 2686; Demetrio 2286; Förschner 785 Etymology: It was already known in antiquity that the name Selene was derived from Greek. Σελας (= shine, glow). Mythology: Since the beginning of time the change of day and night has determined the life of the people. So it is understandable that there were deities for it. According to Hesiod, Apollodor and others the parents of Selene were Hyperion and Theia, but also Hyperion and Euryphaessa (Homeric hymns). Hyperion was also the father of Helios and Eos and hence Helios and Selene were brother and sister, which fits well with our two main stars. Theia was a daughter of Uranos and Gaia. So all of them are Titanids. Thus they belong to the ancient dynasty of gods from the time before the Olympians, which is appropriate to their importance. Euryphaessa is another name of Theia and means "the shining one", so it is closely related to the moon. Theia had a sad fate. She demanded her share of the Titan rulership and was punished for it: Hyperion was killed and Helios drowned in Eridanos, whereupon Selene threw herself to death. Theia, however, fainted deeply, where Helios appeared to her and announced that he under the new Olympian gods would walk across the sky as sun and Selene would shine as the moon. Then Theia awoke again, went through the land with drums and cymbals and disappeared in a storm when they tried to seize her (Kerenyi). The trinity of the siblings Helios, Selene and Eos ruled the day, the night and the early morning. An equal trinity results if we look at the phases of the moon: waxing moon, full moon, waning moon. So change is the characteristic of the moon. She is usually depicted with the crescent moon on her head. Since the "horns" of the crescent moon resemble the horns of a bull, she is often depicted in a bull league or even riding on a bull. Later on Artemis, Diana and Hecate came to the fore, all of whom have a reference to the moon. This is a sign that the old gods had now been replaced by the new Olympic gods. For Selene, there are only few cult testimonies, in contrast to the moon god Men, who was widely worshipped in Asia minor. It is interesting, of course, that there was a male moon god! See "Hoeft, Coins and ancient Mythology, Men - the Anatolian moon god". Virgil tells us that Pan, who is known to have often persecuted the nymphs, harassed the moon goddess with special love. But Selene rejected him. So Pan hid his hairy and goat-like figure under a white sheepskin. She didn't recognize him, so he was able to lure his beloved to him. She rode on his back and he could do with her what he wanted. Ranke-Graves writes that the seduction of Selene refers to the moonlight orgy on the eve of the May Day celebrations, when the young May Queen rode into the woods on the back of her chosen one to celebrate the forest wedding. But her most famous love story is about her love for Endymion. Endymion was a handsome young man who lived as a shepherd in Caria. His parents were Aethlios (or Zeus himself) and Kalyke. Because of his justice (Ibykos) Zeus loved him and granted him a request. And Endymion asked for immortality and eternal youth. So Zeus put him into everlasting sleep. During her nocturnal journeys across the sky, Selene saw the sleeping youth and fell in love with him and placed him in a cave on Mount Latmos in Caria. There she visited him every night and always kissed him shyly without waking him up. This myth of Endymion is so beautiful because it is so pure and the delicate image of a slumbering man kissed by the moonbeam is covered with such sweet magic of the gods. And this brings to mind one of my favourite poets, the tragic Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) , who writes in his poem "When I was a boy": "And as you delight the heart / Of plants, / When they stretch out their tender arms against you, / So you have delighted my heart Father Helios! and, like Endymion, / I was your favourite, / Holy Luna!" But others say that Selene fathered 50 daughters with him. Pausanias writes that Endymion was king of Elis and that he and his wife Asterodia (or Chromia, daughter of Iton) had the sons Aitolos, Paion and Epeios. In order to arrange his succession, he had a race between them in Olympia, which was won by Epeios. Paion then emigrated and founded Paionia. Aitolos, on the other hand, was banished due to a self-inflicted accident with fatal outcome and went to Kuretia. A daughter of Eurykyda had begotten a son Eleios with the sea god Poseidon, who after the flight of his uncle Aitolos had become his successor as king of Elis. But this mythology does not fit at all to the Selene-Endymion myth, so that I believe that this Endymion must be a different figure. This is already mentioned in Hederich. He should be called Endymion(2), unlike the Endymion(1) of the Selene myth. In ancient times Selene appeared too as an epithet of two queens from the house of the Ptolomeans. Cleopatra II Selene, daughter of Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III was Queen of Syria from 82-69 B.C. She was married to Antiochos VIII, Antiochos IX and Antiochos X and was a symbol for the continuity of the Seleucid rule until its end. The famous Cleopatra VII. (69-30 B.C.) had 3 children with Marcus Aurelius. Ptolemy Philadelphos and the twins Akexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, born 40 B.C., thus "sun" and "moon". You can see the high standards she had! Cleopatra Selene was married to Juba II of Mauritania, who both grew up in the household of Octavia in Rome. There they founded a flourishing community which served as a Roman client state. Second coin: Mauritania, Juba II, 25 BC - 23 AD. AR - Drachma, 3.24g, 17.83mm, 18 struck AD 11 (?) Obv.: REX IVBA Head of Juba, diademed, r. Rev.: BACIΛ - ICC - A KΛEO[ΠA]TPA. Isis crown with ears of grain, below crescent Ref.: SNG Copenhagen 574 Pedigree: ex Harlan J. Berk. The French name Celine (e.g. Ferdinand Celine, Celine Dion) is said to come from Selene. History of Art: Hellenistic art did not actually deal with the mythology of Selene and Endymion. Only the Romans took up this topic. In Pompeii the first wall paintings are found. On sarcophagi it was understandably a popular motif because of the eternal sleep and eternal youth. I have added the following pictures: (1) Selene, Attic red-figured Kylix, early classical, c. 500-450 B.C., attributed to the Brygos painter, now in the Berlin Collection of Classical Antiquities. On a tondo we see the moon goddess Selene in a biga, drawn by 2 winged horses. The goddess wears a nightcap and is crowned with the moon disk. (2) Selene and Endymion, Apulian red-figured volute crater, late classical-early Hellenistic, ca. 4th century B.C., attributed to the underworld painter, today in the Museum of Art, Dallas, USA. The upper panel of the vase shows the shepherd Endymion, who leads Selene, the goddess of the moon, down from heaven. The goddess stands in a quadriga and is crowned with the crescent moon and a radiant aureole. (3) Selene and Endymion, sarcophagus, Roman, 3rd quarter of the 3rd century AD, sarcophagus relief in Parian marble, found in Saint-Medard-d'Eyrans, Gironde, France. Today in the Musee du Louvre, Paris. The motif of Diana and Endymion was very popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods and there are countless paintings with this theme. I have chosen this one: (4) Diana y Endimion, 1780, by Domingo Alvarez Enciso (1737-1800), now in the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes in Cadiz, Spain. (see Endymion myth above!) Sources: (1) Hesiod, Theogony (2) Pseudo-Apollodor, Bibliotheke (3) Pausanias, travel in Greece (4) Vergil, Georgica Literature: (1) Benjamin Hederich, Gründliches mythologisches Lexikon (2) Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher, Lexikon der griechichen und römischen Mythologie (3) Robert von Ranke-Graves, Greek mythology (4) Karl Kerenyi, The Mythology of the Greeks (5) Drr Kleine Pauly (6) Hans-Joachim Hoeft, Coins and Ancient Mythology, 2017 (7) Echtermeyer/von Wiese, German poems Online sources: (1) https://www.theoi.com/Titan/Selene.html (2) Wikipedia Best regards
