AURORA (perhaps through a

See also:

• FORM (Lat. forma)

form ausosa from Sansk. ush, to

See also:

• BURN, RICHARD (1709-1785)

burn ; the

See also:

• COMMON

common

See also:

• IDEA (Gr. Ibia, connected with i&eiv, to see; cf. Lat. species from specere, to look at)

idea of " brightness " suggests a connexion with aurum,

See also:

• GOLD
• GOLD [symbol Au, atomic weight 195.7(H = 1),197.2(0 =16)]

gold)  , the Roman goddess of the dawn, corresponding to the Greek goddess Eos . According to Hesiod (Theog . 271) she was the daughter of the Titan Hyperion and Thea (or Euryphassa), and sister of Helios and Selene . By the Titan Astraeus, she was the mother of the winds Zephyrus, Notus and Boreas, of Hesperus and the stars . Homer represents her as rising every morning from the couch of Tithonus (by whom she was the mother of Emathion and Memnon), and drawn out of the east in a chariot by the horses Lampus and Phaethon to carry light to gods and men (Odyssey, xxiii . 253); in Homer, she abandons her course when the sun is fully risen (or at the latest at mid-day, Iliad, ix . 66), but in later literature she accompanies the sun all day and thus becomes the goddess of the daylight . From the roseate shafts of light which herald the dawn, she bears in Homer the epithet " rosy-fingered." The conception of a dawn-goddess is common in primitive religions, especially in the Vedic mythology, where the deity Usas is closely parallel to the Greco-Roman; see Paul Regnaud, Le Rig-Veda in Annales du musee Guimet, vol. i. c . 6 (Paris, 1892) . She is also represented as the lover of the hunter Orion (Odyssey, v . 121), the representative of the constellation that disappears at the flush of dawn, and the youthful hunter Cephalus, by whom she was the mother of Phaethon (Apollodorus iii . 14 .

3) . In

works of art, Eos is represented as a young woman, fully clothed, walking fast with a youth in her arms; or rising from the sea in a chariot drawn by winged horses; sometimes, as the goddess who dispenses the dews of the morning, she has a pitcher in each hand . In the fresco-painting by Guido Reni in the Rospigliosi palace at Rome, Aurora is represented strewing flowers before the chariot of the sun . Metaphorically the word Aurora was used (e.g . Virg . Aen. viii . 686, vii . 6o6) for the East generally .