Aurora (mythology)

Aurōra (Latin: [au̯ˈroːra]) is the Latin word for dawn, and the goddess of dawn in Roman mythology and Latin poetry. Like Greek Eos and Rigvedic Ushas, Aurōra continues the name of an earlier Indo-European dawn goddess, Hausos.

Aurora
Personification of dawn
L'Aurore by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1881)
Abode	Sky
Symbol	Chariot, saffron, cicada
Genealogy
Siblings	Sol and Luna
Consort	Astraeus, Tithonus
Children	Anemoi
Equivalents
Greek	Eos
Hindu	Ushas
Indo-European	Hausōs
Slavic	Zorya
Japanese	Ame-no-Uzume
Nuristani	Disani

Name

Aurōra stems from Proto-Italic *ausōs, and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h_aéusōs, the "dawn" conceived as divine entity. It has cognates in the goddesses Ēṓs, Uṣas, Aušrinė, Auseklis and Ēastre.

Roman mythology

In Roman mythology, Aurōra renews herself every morning and flies across the sky, announcing the arrival of the Sun. Her parentage was flexible: for Ovid, she could equally be Pallantis, signifying the daughter of Pallas, or the daughter of Hyperion. She has two siblings, a brother (Sol, the Sun) and a sister (Luna, the Moon). Roman writers rarely imitated Hesiod and later Greek poets by naming Aurōra as the mother of the Anemoi (the Winds), who were the offspring of Astraeus, the father of the stars.

Aurōra appears most often in sexual poetry with one of her mortal lovers. A myth taken from the Greek by Roman poets tells that one of her lovers was the prince of Troy, Tithonus. Tithonus was a mortal, and would therefore age and die. Wanting to be with her lover for all eternity, Aurōra asked Jupiter to grant immortality to Tithonus. Jupiter granted her wish, but she failed to ask for eternal youth to accompany his immortality, and he continued to age, eventually becoming forever old. Aurōra turned him into a cicada.

Mention in literature and music

Aurōra and Cephalus, 1733, by François Boucher

Aurōra Taking Leave of Tithonus
1704, by Francesco Solimena

Apollo and Aurōra, 1671 by Gerard de Lairesse

Aurōra Heralding the Arrival of the Morning Sun, c. 1765, by François Boucher

From Homer's Iliad:

Now when Dawn in robe of saffron was hastening from the streams of Okeanos, to bring light to mortals and immortals, Thetis reached the ships with the armor that the god had given her.

— (19.1)

But soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered, then gathered the folk about the pyre of glorious Hector.

— (24.776)

Ovid's Heroides (16.201-202), Paris names his well-known family members, among which Aurōra's lover as follows:

A Phrygian was the husband of Aurora, yet she, the goddess who appoints the last road of night, carried him away

Virgil mentions in the fourth book of his Aeneid:

Aurora now had left her saffron bed, And beams of early light the heav'ns o'erspread

Rutilius Claudius Namatianus mentions in his 5th century poem De reditu suo:

Saffron Aurora had brought forward her fair-weather team: the breeze offshore tells us to haul the sail-yards up.

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (I.i), Montague says of his lovesick son Romeo:

But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
Should in the furthest east begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora's bed,
Away from the light steals home my heavy son...

In traditional Irish folk songs, such as "Lord Courtown":

One day I was a-musing down by the Courtown banks
The sun shone bright and clearly, bold Neptune played a prank...
There was Flora at the helm and Aurora to the stern
And all their gallant fine seamen, their course for to steer on.

In the poem "Let me not mar that perfect Dream" by Emily Dickinson:

Let me not mar that perfect Dream
By an Auroral stain
But so adjust my daily Night
That it will come again.

In "On Imagination" by Phillis Wheatley:

From Tithon's bed now might Aurora rise,
Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies,
While a pure stream of light o'erflows the skies.

In the poem "Tithonus" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Aurōra is described thus:

Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renewed.
Thy cheek begins to redden through the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosened manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire

In singer-songwriter Björk's Vespertine track, Aurōra is described as

Aurora
Goddess sparkle
A mountain shade suggests your shape

I tumble down on my knees
Fill my mouth with snow
The way it melts
I wish to melt into you

In Chapter 8 of Charlotte Brontë's Villette, Madame Beck fires her old Governess first thing in the morning and is described by the narrator, Lucy Snowe: All this, I say, was done between the moment of Madame Beck's issuing like Aurōra from her chamber, and that in which she coolly sat down to pour out her first cup of coffee.

The 20th-century Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert wrote about Aurōra's grandchildren. In his poem they are ugly, even though they will grow to be beautiful ("Kwestia Smaku").

The first and strongest of the 50 Spacer worlds in The Caves of Steel and subsequent novels by Isaac Asimov is named after the goddess Aurora. Its capital city is Eos.

Depiction in art

• Aurōra, fresco by Guido Reni (1614) in Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, Rome
• Aurora (Artemisia Gentileschi) (c.1625-1627)
• Aurōra by Guercino (1591–1666)
• The Countess de Brac as Aurōra by Jean-Marc Nattier (1685–1766)
• Aurōra e Titone by Francesco de Mura (1696–1782)
• Aurōra and Cephalus, by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (1767–1824)
• The Gates of Dawn by Herbert James Draper (1863–1920)
• Aurōra and Cephalus by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774–1833)
• Aurōra by Odilon Redon (1840 – 1916).
• Aurore by Denys Puech (1854 – 1942).

See also

• Dawn goddess
• Eos
• List of solar deities
• Mater Matuta
• Memnon (mythology)
• Zorya

External links

• The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (images of Aurora)
• "Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
• "Aurora, the goddess of the morning" . The American Cyclopædia. 1879.