Theia, also called Euryphaessa, the wide-shining, is a first-generation Titaness, daughter of Uranos and Gaia, and the goddess of sight and of the bright light of the clear sky. With her brother and husband Hyperion she is the mother of the three luminaries, Helios the Sun, Selene the Moon and Eos the Dawn, so that through her the Titan generation gives birth to the lights that cross the heavens.
The Greeks connected her especially with the shining of things, and the poet Pindar preserves a striking sidelight on her: he says it is because of Theia that people prize gold and value the sight of it above all else, treating her as the goddess who gives radiant things their worth in human eyes. Like the other archaic Titans she has little independent cult; her role is cosmogonic, a link in the chain by which Hesiod's Theogony accounts for where the sun, moon and dawn came from. Theia receives no attested cult of her own, and her chief afterlife is genealogical and poetic rather than religious: later mythographers such as Pseudo-Apollodorus repeat her role as mother of the three great lights with little elaboration, while Pindar's isolated remark connecting her to the value people place on gold and on the sight of radiant things remains one of the few moments any ancient author pauses to reflect on what her name and role might actually mean, rather than simply listing her among the Titans.