- Looks after
- A Titaness of bright prophecy; grandmother of Apollo and Artemis
Phoebe
Φοίβη
Phoebe, whose name means bright, is a Titaness, the wife of Coeus and the mother of Leto and Asteria.
Hesiod counts Phoebe among the twelve children of Uranus and Gaia, and gives her the epithet golden-crowned. She went to the bed of her brother Coeus and bore two daughters, Leto and Asteria. Through Leto she is the grandmother of Apollo and Artemis.
Her one story of her own is in the opening of Aeschylus's Eumenides. The priestess at Delphi names the line of owners of the oracle: first Earth, then Themis, then Phoebe, another Titaness, who gave it to Apollo as a birthday present. That is why, the priestess says, Apollo takes the name Phoebus.
There is little else. Phoebe has no known cult and no myths of action, and she is mostly a link in the genealogy that joins the Titans to the Olympians.
In later art and language
Phoebus, Apollo's epithet, is the masculine form of her name. Saturn's moon Phoebe, discovered in 1899, is named after her.
The ancient evidence for Phoebe is limited, so this page is short on purpose.
Ancient sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 136, 404-410
- Aeschylus, Eumenides 1-8