Hesperos
Hesperos ( ancient Greek Ἕσπερος , Latin Hesperus ) is a titan of Greek mythology .
It is also the ancient name for the planet Venus as the evening star .
mythology
Hesperus is the son or brother of Atlas . As his son, he is known to be a star. One night he was taken away by a storm from Mount Atlas , where he was going to watch the stars, and was gone for those around him. But they held him in honor and named the evening star Hesperos after him . ( Ovid )
According to others, he is said to be the son of Astraios and Eos .
As the brother of Atlas, Hesperus is considered the father of Hesperis , with whom Atlas became the father of the Hesperides . They lived in the garden from which Herakles fetched the apples as one of his works and briefly shouldered the world for Atlas.
The walking star Hesperos
The evening star Hesperos is the planet Venus : In ignorance of the fact that the morning star and the evening star are temporally different appearances of the same celestial body, namely the planet Venus, Venus was also given the name Phosphoros in ancient Greece as the morning star ( Φώσφορος "light bearer", "Lightbringer"; Latin lucifer ) and (H) Eosphoros ( Ἑωσφόρος "Bringer of the Dawn").
The ancient Babylonians saw this as early as 1700 BC. And the planet was considered the goddess of love Ishtar . After the Greeks adopted this knowledge, the planet was appropriately named Aphrodite , while the Romans called it Venus .
Even when it was known that the evening and morning stars were the same heavenly body ( Pythagoras or Parmenides ), they were kept apart as mythical persons.
Artist's impression
Both Hesperus and Phosphorus , the morning star, are depicted as boys flying up or down with torches, and Hesperos often floats in front of the moon goddess. This is based on the fact that the constellation Venus / Crescent Moon occurs relatively frequently and presents a very impressive picture. For example, the constellation morning star / waning crescent moon is shown on the Turkish flag .
etymology
The name of this mythical figure is derived from the Greek word ἑσπέρα hespera for evening or west . This word in turn has a common etymological root with Latin vesper 'the evening, the evening star' and west in the Germanic languages.
Probably derived from Hesperios , Hesperia , a mythical land identified with Spain or Italy.
magazine
A magazine was named after him in the 19th century. Hesperus: encyclopedic magazine for educated readers appeared from 1809 to 1832, most recently by Cotta-Verlag. It was published by Christian Carl André and dealt mainly with scientific and economic topics.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 270-4; Diodorus Siculus IV, 27.2; Euripides, Heracles 394
- ↑ Keller, Hans-Ulrich Kosmos Himmelsjahr 2007 , p. 128, Franckh-Kosmos-Verlag, 2006
- ^ Langenscheidt, Pocket Dictionary Old Greek 11th Edition, 2005
- ^ Kluge, Friedrich: Etymological Dictionary of German Languages 23rd Edition, 1999
- ^ Hesperus - BSB catalog. Retrieved November 21, 2019 .