Phosphorus () is one of the ''
Astra Planeta
In Greco-Roman Classical Mythology, the Astra Planeta (Ancient Greek: (Astra Planêta); lit. " Wandering Stars", "Planets" (their Roman name is the ''Stellae Errantae'')) are brothers, and are five of Eos' and Astraeus' children--along with th ...
'', specifically the god of the planet
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...
in its appearance as the Morning Star. Another Greek name for the Morning Star is "Eosphorus" ( grc, Ἑωσφόρος, Heōsphoros, link=no), which means "dawn-bringer". The term "eosphorus" is sometimes met in English. As an adjective, the word "phosphorus" is applied in the sense of "light-bringing" (for instance, the dawn, the god
Dionysus
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; grc, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity, and theatre. The Romans ...
, pine torches and the day) and "torch-bearing" as an epithet of several gods and goddesses, especially of
Hecate
Hecate or Hekate, , ; grc-dor, Ἑκάτᾱ, Hekátā, ; la, Hecatē or . is a goddess in ancient Greek religion and mythology, most often shown holding a pair of torches, a key, snakes, or accompanied by dogs, and in later periods depicte ...
but also of
Artemis
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Artemis (; grc-gre, Ἄρτεμις) is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity. She was heavily identified wit ...
/
Diana and
Hephaestus
Hephaestus (; eight spellings; grc-gre, Ἥφαιστος, Hḗphaistos) is the Greek god of blacksmiths, metalworking, carpenters, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metallurgy, fire (compare, however, with Hestia), and volcanoes.Walter Burk ...
.
Seasonally, Venus is the "light bringer" in the northern hemisphere, appearing most brightly in December (an optical illusion due to shorter days), signalling the "rebirth" of longer days as winter wanes.
Venus
The morning star is an appearance of the planet Venus, an
inferior planet
In the Solar System, a planet is said to be inferior or interior with respect to another planet if its orbit lies inside the other planet's orbit around the Sun. In this situation, the latter planet is said to be superior to the former. In the ref ...
, meaning that its
orbit
In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as a p ...
lies between that of the
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...
and the
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
. Depending on the orbital locations of both Venus and Earth, it can be seen in the eastern morning sky for an hour or so before the Sun rises and dims it, or (as the evening star) in the western evening sky for an hour or so after the Sun sets, when Venus itself then sets.
Venus is the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon, outshining the planets
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...
and
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...
but, while these rise high in the sky, Venus never does. This may lie behind myths about deities associated with the morning star proudly striving for the highest place among the gods and being cast down.
[Article "Lucifer"](_blank)
on ''Jewish Encyclopedia
''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on th ...
''.
Mythology
![Jutrzenka](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Jutrzenka.jpg)
In
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...
,
Hesiod
Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet i ...
calls Phosphorus a son of
Astraeus
In Greek mythology, Astraeus () or Astraios (Ancient Greek: Ἀστραῖος means "starry"') was an astrological deity. Some also associate him with the winds, as he is the father of the four Anemoi (wind deities), by his wife, Eos.
Etymolo ...
and
Eos
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Eos (; Ionic and Homeric Greek ''Ēṓs'', Attic ''Héōs'', "dawn", or ; Aeolic ''Aúōs'', Doric ''Āṓs'') is the goddess and personification of the dawn, who rose each morning from her home at ...
, but other say of
Cephalus Cephalus (; Ancient Greek: Κέφαλος ''Kephalos'' means "head") is a name used both for the hero-figure in Greek mythology and carried as a theophoric name by historical persons.
''Mythological''
* Cephalus, son of Hermes and Herse.
* Ceph ...
and Eos, or of
Atlas
An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth.
Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic ...
.
The Latin poet
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
, speaking of Phosphorus and
Hesperus
In Greek mythology, Hesperus (; grc, Ἕσπερος, Hésperos) is the Evening Star, the planet Venus in the evening. He is one of the ''Astra Planeta''. A son of the dawn goddess Eos (Roman Aurora), he is the half-brother of her other son, Pho ...
(the Evening Star, the evening appearance of the planet Venus) as identical, makes him the father of
Daedalion
In Greek mythology, Daedalion was a son of Hesperos, or Lucifer, and the brother of Ceyx. Ceyx describes his brother Daedalion as a great warrior, full of courage and vigour but acknowledged that he could also be harsh, relishing the cruelty of wa ...
. Ovid also makes him the father of
Ceyx, while the Latin grammarian
Servius Servius is the name of:
* Servius (praenomen), the personal name
* Maurus Servius Honoratus, a late fourth-century and early fifth-century grammarian
* Servius Tullius, the Roman king
* Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the 1st century BC Roman jurist
See ...
makes him the father of the
Hesperides
In Greek mythology, the Hesperides (; , ) are the nymphs of evening and golden light of sunsets, who were the "Daughters of the Evening" or "Nymphs of the West". They were also called the Atlantides () from their reputed father, the Titan Atlas ...
or of Hesperis.
[
While at an early stage the Morning Star (called Phosphorus and other names) and the Evening Star (referred to by names such as Hesperus) were thought of as two celestial objects, the Greeks accepted that the two were the same, but they seem to have continued to treat the two mythological entities as distinct. Halbertal and Margalit interpret this as indicating that they did not identify the star with the god or gods of mythology "embodied" in the star.
]
"Hesperus is Phosphorus"
In the philosophy of language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...
, "Hesperus is Phosphorus" is a famous sentence in relation to the semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy
Philosophy (f ...
of proper name
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', '' Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
s. Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic phil ...
used the terms "the evening star" (''der Abendstern'') and "the morning star" (''der Morgenstern'') to illustrate his distinction between sense and reference
In the philosophy of language, the distinction between sense and reference was an idea of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege in 1892 (in his paper "On Sense and Reference"; German: "Über Sinn und Bedeutung"), reflecting the ...
, and subsequent philosophers changed the example to "Hesperus is Phosphorus" so that it utilized proper names. Saul Kripke
Saul Aaron Kripke (; November 13, 1940 – September 15, 2022) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition. He was a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and emerit ...
used the sentence to posit that the knowledge of something necessary — in this case the identity of Hesperus and Phosphorus — could be discoverable rather than known ''a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ...
''.
Latin literature
The Latin word corresponding to Greek "Phosphorus" is "Lucifer
Lucifer is one of various figures in folklore associated with the planet Venus. The entity's name was subsequently absorbed into Christianity as a name for the devil. Modern scholarship generally translates the term in the relevant Bible passage ...
". It is used in its astronomical sense both in prose and poetry. Poets sometimes personify the star, placing it in a mythological context.Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
wrote:
''… vigil nitido patefecit ab ortu''
''purpureas Aurora fores et plena rosarum''
''atria: diffugiunt stellae, quarum agmina cogit''
''Lucifer et caeli statione novissimus exit''
Aurora, awake in the glowing east, opens wide her bright doors, and her rose-filled courts. The stars, whose ranks are shepherded by Lucifer the morning star, vanish, and he, last of all, leaves his station in the sky – ''Metamorphoses'' 2.114–115
A. S. Kline's Version
br/>
And Statius
Publius Papinius Statius (Greek: Πόπλιος Παπίνιος Στάτιος; ; ) was a Greco-Roman poet of the 1st century CE. His surviving Latin poetry includes an epic in twelve books, the ''Thebaid''; a collection of occasional poetry, ...
:
''Et iam Mygdoniis elata cubilibus alto''
''impulerat caelo gelidas Aurora tenebras,''
''rorantes excussa comas multumque sequenti''
''sole rubens; illi roseus per nubila seras''
''aduertit flammas alienumque aethera tardo''
''Lucifer exit equo, donec pater igneus orbem''
''impleat atque ipsi radios uetet esse sorori''
(And now Aurora
An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...
rising from her Mygdonian couch had driven the cold darkness on from high in the heavens, shaking out her dewy hair, her face blushing red at the pursuing sun – from him roseate Lucifer averts his fires lingering in the clouds and with reluctant horse leaves the heavens no longer his, until the blazing father make full his orb and forbid even his sister her beams
Statius, ''Thebaid''">Thebaid (Latin poem), Statius, ''Thebaid''
2, 134–150br>Translated by A. L. Ritchie and J. B. Hall in collaboration with M. J. Edwards
See also
* Aspect of Venus
* Astrotheology
* At-Tariq
* Auseklis
* Aurvandil, Earendel
* Barnumbirr
* Jesus
* Red Horn
* Samaritan woman at the well, Photine or Photini/Photina of Samarita
* Shahar (god)
* Sirius
Sirius is the list of brightest stars, brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Ancient Greek language, Greek word , or , meaning 'glowing' or 'scorching'. The star is designated α Canis Majoris, Latinisation ...
** Heliacal rising
The heliacal rising ( ) or star rise of a star occurs annually, or the similar phenomenon of a planet, when it first becomes visible above the eastern horizon at dawn just before sunrise (thus becoming "the morning star") after a complete orbit of ...
* Star and crescent
* Tlāhuizcalpantecuhtli
Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli is a principal member of the pantheon of gods within the Aztec religion, representing the Morning Star Venus.Townsend (1992): p. 118. The name comes from the Nahuatl words "dawn" and "lord".''Nahuatl Dictionary.'' (1997) ...
* Zorya
Zorya ( lit. "Dawn"; also many variants: Zarya, Zara, Zaranitsa, Zoryushka, etc.) is a figure in Slavic folklore, a feminine personification of dawn, possibly goddess. Depending on tradition, she may appear as a singular entity, often called "Th ...
References
{{Authority control
Children of Eos
Dawn gods
Greek gods
Lucifer
Stellar gods
Venus in culture
Venusian deities
Epithets of Hecate