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Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary
2 mythology vocabulary words
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Phaeton
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tags: [mythology]
► definition
Definition:the son of the Oceanid Clymene and the solar deity Helios in Greek mythology. His name was also used by the Ancient Greeks as an alternative name for the planet Jupiter, the motions and cycles of which were personified in poetry and myth.[...]When the god promised to grant him whatever he wanted, he insisted on being allowed to drive the sun chariot for a day. According to some accounts Helios tried to dissuade Phaethon, telling him that even Zeus was not strong enough to steer these horses, but reluctantly kept his promise. Placed in charge of the chariot, Phaethon was unable to control the horses. In some versions, the Earth first froze when the horses climbed too high, but when the chariot then scorched the Earth by swinging too near, Zeus decided to prevent disaster by striking it down with a thunderbolt. Phaethon fell to earth and was killed in the process.[...]text from Wikpedia, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
painting: by James Ward (before 1859) https://www.wikiart.org/en/james-ward/the-fall-of-pha-ton
► uses
Uses:
“he would have gladly given a hundred pounds, to have seen my closet in the eagle’s bill, and afterwards in its fall from so great a height into the sea; which would certainly have been a most astonishing object, worthy to have the description of it transmitted to future ages:” and the comparison of Phaëton was so obvious, that he could not forbear applying it, although I did not much admire the conceit.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
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