Aura (goddess)
Aura ( Greek Αὔρα , also Αὔρη aure ) is the goddess of the morning breeze in Greek mythology .
Her myth is passed down in the Dionysiacs of the Nonnos of Panopolis , where she appears once as the daughter of the titan Lelantos and the nymph Periboea , and another time as the daughter of the goddess Cybele . There she also appears as the mother of Iakchos , who is commonly identified with Dionysus .
Aura belongs to the older gods of the titans and is described as a virgin huntress who was particularly proud of her chastity. In her arrogance, Aura compared her body with the goddess Artemis, calling Artemis too feminine to be a true virgin. Artemis then turned to Nemesis with a request for revenge, whereupon he arranged for Aura's rape of Dionysus. She became pregnant with twins by Dionysus and went mad, with Aura trying to kill / eat her newborn children and devouring one of the two in one piece (the girl). But one of the twins, Iakchos, was saved in time by Artemis, who handed him over to the Eleusinian Bacchae . (Iakchos was one of the deities revered in the Mysteries of Eleusis .) Eventually, Zeus turned aura into a flowing stream or breeze.
literature
- Leonhard Schmitz : Aura . In: William Smith (Ed.): Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology . tape 1 : Abaeus – Dysponteus . Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1870, p. 435 (English, Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
- Heinrich Wilhelm Stoll : Aura 1 . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1.1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 733 f. ( Digitized version ).
Web links
- Aura (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dionysiaka 48,264.
- ^ Dionysiacs 1.28.
- ↑ Dionysiaka 48,887.
- ↑ AURA - Greek Titan Goddess of the Breeze. Retrieved October 2, 2018 .