Rosy-Fingered Dawn, and the Price of Asking Wrongly

Eos is the goddess of the dawn, a second-generation Titaness, daughter of Hyperion and Theia and sister of Helios the Sun and Selene the Moon. Each morning she rises from the streams of Oceanus and opens the gates of heaven so that her brother's chariot may follow, and Homer's standing epithet for her, rosy-fingered, is among the most famous phrases in Greek poetry. A recurring theme in her myths is desire and its cost. In one tradition Aphrodite, jealous, cursed Eos with an unquenchable longing for mortal men, and she is repeatedly shown carrying off beautiful youths, Cephalus, Cleitus, Orion.

The most poignant tale is that of Tithonus: Eos begged Zeus to make her mortal lover immortal but forgot to ask also for eternal youth, so that Tithonus lived on, ageing endlessly, shrivelling until only his voice remained. The story became a classic ancient meditation on the difference between deathlessness and agelessness, and on the danger of getting exactly what one asks for.