- published: 17 Oct 2015
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Hyperion (Ancient Greek: Ὑπερίων, "The High-One") was one of the 12 Titans of Ancient Greece, the sons and daughters of Gaia (the physical incarnation of Earth) and Ouranos (literally meaning 'the Sky'), which were later supplanted by the Olympians. He was the brother of Kronos. He was also the lord of light, and the Titan of the east.
He was referred to in early mythological writings as Helios Hyperion (Ἥλιος Ὑπερίων), 'Sun High-one'. In Homer's Odyssey, Hesiod's Theogony and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the Sun is once in each work called Hyperionides (Ὑπεριωνίδης) 'son of Hyperion', and Hesiod certainly imagines Hyperion as a separate being in other writings. In later Ancient Greek literature, Hyperion is always distinguished from Helios; the former was ascribed the characteristics of the 'God of Watchfulness, Wisdom and Light', while the latter became the physical incarnation of the Sun. Hyperion plays virtually no role in Greek culture and little role in mythology, save in lists of the twelve Titans. Later Greeks intellectualized their myths:
Hyperion may refer to:
The term "mythology" can refer either to the study of myths (e.g., comparative mythology), or to a body or collection of myths (a mythos, e.g., Inca mythology). In folkloristics, a myth is a sacred narrative usually explaining how the world or humankind came to be in its present form, although, in a very broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story. Myths typically involve supernatural characters and are endorsed by rulers or priests. They may arise as overelaborated accounts of historical events, as allegory for or personification of natural phenomena, or as an explanation of ritual. They are transmitted to convey religious or idealized experience, to establish behavioral models, and to teach.
Early rival classifications of Greek mythos by Euhemerus, Plato's Phaedrus, and Sallustius were developed by the neoplatonists and revived by Renaissance mythographers as in the Theologia mythologica (1532). Nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as evolution toward science (E. B. Tylor), "disease of language" (Max Müller), or misinterpretation of magical ritual (James Frazer). Later interpretations rejected opposition between myth and science, such as Jungian archetypes, Joseph Campbell's "metaphor of spiritual potentiality", or Lévi-Strauss's fixed mental architecture. Tension between Campbell's comparative search for monomyth or Ur-myth and anthropological mythologists' skepticism of universal origin has marked the 20th century. Further, modern mythopoeia such as fantasy novels, manga, and urban legend, with many competing artificial mythoi acknowledged as fiction, supports the idea of myth as ongoing social practice.