The Titaness Who Became an Island

Asteria is a second-generation Titaness, daughter of Coeus and Phoebe and sister of Leto, and her Greek name means of the stars, she is associated with falling stars, with the oracles read in dreams, and with the night. Her chief myth is one of flight and transformation. Pursued by the desire of Zeus, Asteria refused him and, to escape, turned herself into a quail and plunged into the sea, where she became a floating island. That island, known as Ortygia (the quail island) and later as Delos, was where her sister Leto, also fleeing Zeus's jealous wife Hera, at last found a place to give birth to Apollo and Artemis, so that the island Asteria became was the birthplace of her own nephew and niece. By an earlier union with the Titan Perses, Asteria is also the mother of Hecate, the goddess of the crossroads and of magic. Her story is a good example of the Greek habit of explaining a sacred place through the metamorphosis of a divine being.