Greek and Roman tradition Eos In
Greek mythology,
Eos was the goddess and
personification of the dawn. She is described as living "beyond the streams of
Oceanus at the ends of the earth". A more precise location of her home is given in
Homer's
Odyssey, where
Odysseus claims Eos lives at the mythical island of
Aeaea, stating that it houses "the dwelling of early Dawn and her dancing-lawns (), and the risings of the sun". In the
Hymn to Aphrodite, the home was described as having 'shining doors' (), behind which Eos locked her lover
Tithonus. Homer also depicts Eos herself, wearing saffron-colored robes () and riding in a chariot pulled by a pair of horses named Lampos and Phaethon. Similarly, the Greek
lyric poet Bacchylides calls her "white-horsed Dawn" (). The colour and number of the horses varies between authors, with common colours being white and red. lekanis dish (c. 4th century BCE) depicting
Eos driving a chariot pulled by four white horses. In the
Iliad, "early-born", also translated as "born in the morning", () is given as an
epithet of Eos
. In the
Orphic Hymns, she is called ("light-bringing"), ("shining on mortals"), and ("bright-shining"). In Homeric formulas, she was also referred to as "gold-throned" ().
Aphrodite A possible mythological descendant of may be
Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. Scholars posit similarities based on her connection with a sky deity as her father—
Zeus or
Uranus— and her association with the colours red and gold. In the
Iliad, Aphrodite is hurt by a mortal and her wounds are tended to by her mother
Dione. Dione is seen as a female counterpart to Zeus, and is thought to etymologically derive from the Proto-Indo-European root .
Aurora Aurora was the goddess of the dawn in
Roman mythology, and the equivalent of the Greek Eos. Similar imagery is utilized when describing both goddesses, likely due to the
Hellenization of Roman culture. In
Ovid's
Metamorphoses,
Aurora opens the red doors () to fill her rosy halls, and in
Nonnus'
Dionysiaca the goddess shakes off her sleep and leaves
Cephalus in order to "open the gates of sunrise" ( ).
Ovid associates her with the colours yellow, red, and purple, and describes her as ("the golden-yellow one") in his
Amores.{{efn|For further example: in the
Aeneid, the sea or the waves flush red () as
Aurora descends from high heavens 'shimmering yellow' () in her 'rosy chariot' (). Ovid describes her "purple hand" (
purpurea ... manu) and "saffron hair" (
croceis Aurora capillis). In
Metamorphoses, the Dawn is moving on "saffron-wheels", and his poem
Fasti tells of Aurora, "Memnon's saffron mother" (
Memnonis ... lutea mater), as arriving on rosy horses (
in roseis ... equis), and "with her rosy lamp" (
cum roseam ... lampada) she expels the stars of the night. In
The Golden Ass,
Apuleius depicts the movement of Aurora as she began to soar through the skies "with her crimson trappings" (
poenicantibus phaleris Aurora roseum). Ancient Greek poet
Nonnus refers to the Dawn as "rose-crowned" ({,
rhodostephéos) in his poem
Dionysiaca. In
Lucretius's
De Rerum Natura, Book V,
Latin deity
Mater Matuta "spreads the rosy morning" (
roseam Matuta ... auroram differt), and the author poetically describes the sunrise, i.e., colours changing from red to gold, at dawn (
aurea cum primum ... matutina rubent radiati lumina solis). In an
Orphic Hymn (77/78), the goddess Eos is said to be 'blushing red' or 'reddening' ().
Indo-Iranian tradition Ushas is the
Rigvedic and
Vedic goddess of the dawn in
Hinduism. In the ancient
Rigveda, she is described as the daughter of the sky god
Dyáuṣ, born from the harnessing of the
Aśvins. She is described as "the Dawn's shine" (); the dawn is "gold-coloured" (); and she throws on embroidered garments "like a dancer" (). She wears crimson garments and a gleaming gold veil. In the
Samaveda, she is described as "red, like mare"; she shots "ruddy beams of light", "yokes red steeds to her car"," and "harnesses the red cows." Her horses are said to be pale red, ruddy, yellowish, or reddish-yellow in Vedic traditions. The
Avesta refers to a mythical eastern mountain called "Dawn-house" (). The
Yasnas also mention a mountain named , possibly meaning "crack of dawn" (as a noun) or "having reddish cracks" (as an adjective).
Baltic tradition Saulė In
Latvian and
Lithuanian mythology,
Saulė is the
goddess of the sun. In
Baltic folklore, Saulė is said to live in a silver-gated castle at the end of the sea, located somewhere in the east, In folksongs, Saulė sinks into the bottom of a lake in a silver cradle to sleep "in the white seafoam". from from
Palūšė,
Ignalina District in Lithuania. In the
Lithuanian tradition, the sun is portrayed as a "golden wheel" or a "golden circle" that rolls down the mountain at sunset. Saulé is also described as being dressed in clothes woven with "threads of red, gold, silver and white". In
Latvian folk songs, Saulė and her daughter(s) are dressed of shawls woven with gold thread, and Saulė wears shoes of gold, which parallels the Greek poet
Sappho describing Eos as ("golden-sandalled"). The goddess is portrayed as dancing in her gilded shoes on a silver hill, and her fellow Baltic goddess
Aušrinė is said to dance on a stone for the people on the first day of summer. Saulė is sometimes portrayed as waking up 'red' () or 'in a red tree' during the morning. Her association with red may represent the "fiery aspect" of the sun: the setting and the rising sun are equated with a rose wreath and a rose in bloom, due to their circular shapes. Saulė drives a carriage with copper-wheels, a "gleaming copper chariot", or a golden chariot pulled by untiring horses. Alternately, she has been described as driving a "sleigh" (
kamaņiņa) made of fish bones. The goddess is portrayed driving her shining car on the way to her husband, the Moon. In other accounts, she is said to sail the World Sea on a silver or golden boat, In a Latvian folk song, Saulė hangs her sparkling crown on a tree in the evening and enters a golden boat to sail away. When she begins her nocturnal journey through the World Sea, her chariot changes into a boat and "the Sun swims her horses".
Aušrinė In Lithuanian mythology,
Aušrinė is the goddess of the
morning star (Venus) who prepares the way for Saulė each morning. In one myth, a man named Joseph becomes fascinated with Aušrinė, and goes on a quest to find the 'second sun', who is actually a maiden that lives on an island in the sea and has the same hair as the Sun.
Slavic tradition depicting the evening and morning
Zoryas. According to Russian folklorist
Alexander Afanasyev, the figure of the Dawn in Slavic tradition is varied: she is described in a
Serbian folksong as a maiden sitting on a silver throne in the water, her legs of a yellow color and her arms of gold. In a
Croatian fairy tale, the ("Dawn-maiden") "sails the sea in the early morning in her boat of gold with a silver paddle" (alternatively, a silver boat with golden oars) and sails back to
Buyan, the mysterious island where she dwells.
Zorya In
Slavic paganism,
Zorya is the
personification and guardian deity of the dawn. She is also depicted as a beautiful golden-haired woman who lives in a golden kingdom "at the edge of the White World", and rows through the seas with her silver boat and golden oar (alternatively, a golden boat and silver oar). Some versions of her myth split the functions of the goddess into two versions or sisters:
Zorya Utrennyaya, the goddess of the dawn, and
Zorya Vechernyaya, the goddess of the
dusk. In a Russian saying, Zorya is invoked as a ( "red maiden"), and in another story, Zorya sits on a golden chair and holds a silver disk or mirror (identified as the sun). In other stories, a maiden sits on the white-hot stone
Alatyr in Buyan, weaving red silk. More specifically, the maiden is described as the "rose-fingered" Zorya, who, with her golden needle, weaves a veil over the sky in rosy and "blood-red" colours using a thread of "yellow ore".
Germanic tradition by
Johannes Gehrts Remnants of the root and its derivations survive in
onomastics of the
Middle Ages. A medieval French obituary from the 12th century, from
Moissac, in
Occitania, registers compound names of Germanic origin that contain root
Aur- (e.g., Auraldus) and
Austr- (e.g., Austremonius, Austrinus, Austris). Names of
Frankish origin are attested in a "
polyptyque" of the
Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, containing
aust- (sometimes
host- or
ost-) and
austr- (or
ostr- >
French out-).
Germanic personal names in Galicia and
Iberian toponyms with prefix
aus-,
astr- and
aust- (>
ost-) also attest the survival of the root well into medieval times.
Balkan tradition In
Albanian paganism,
Prende is the goddess of the dawn whose name traces back to the PIE ("he who brings the light through"), from which the
Ancient Greek (
Persephone), is considered to have descended from. Prende is also called — an Albanian phrase meaning "near day" or "dawn".
Afërdita also serves as the native name for the planet
Venus. The Albanian
imperative form 'come forth the dawn' traces back to
Proto-Albanian 'come forth brightness of the day/dawn', from PIE . According to linguist
Václav Blažek, the
Albanian word ("star") finds a probable ultimate etymology in the root ("dawn"), specifically through ("morning-star'), which implies the quite natural semantic evolution 'dawn' > 'morning star' > 'star'. In Albanian mythology, Prende is pulled across the sky in her chariot by swallows, called ("the Lady's Birds"), which are connected to the chariot by the rainbow (), which is also known as or ("the Lady's Belt").
Celtic tradition A character named
Gwawrdur is mentioned in the
Mabinogion tale of
Culhwch and Olwen. Stefan Zimmer suggests either a remnant of the Dawn goddess or a name meaning "(with) the color of steel", since
gwawr may also mean 'color, hue, shade'. The name also appears in the
Canu Aneirin under the variants
Gwardur,
Guaurud,
Guaurdur,
(G)waredur, or
(G)waledur. All of these stem from the
Middle Welsh ('dawn'; also 'hero, prince'). According to linguist
Ranko Matasović, the latter derives from
Proto-Celtic *warī- ('sunrise, east',
Middle Irish ), itself from the PIE root ('spring').
Others Scholars have argued that the Roman name
Aurēlius (originally
Ausēlius, from Sabine 'sun') and the
Etruscan sun god
Usil (probably of
Osco-Umbrian origin) may be related to the Indo-European word for the dawn. A figure in Belarusian tradition named Аўсень (Ausenis) and related to the coming of spring is speculated to be cognate to . == Poetic and liturgic formula ==