Selene
Also known as: Mene, Luna (Roman)
Mythological Narrative
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## The Moon in Her Chariot
Selene is the moon itself, imagined as a goddess who bathes in Ocean and drives her horses across the sky at night. Hesiod places her with Helios and Eos among the children of Hyperion and Theia. The *Homeric Hymn to Selene* describes the radiance from her head filling the air and calls her full moon a sign and token to mortals, since the month was counted by her phases.
### Endymion
Her best-known myth is her love for Endymion, a beautiful young man cast into endless sleep. Sources disagree on the details: in some he is a king of Elis, in others a shepherd on Mount Latmus in Caria, and the sleep is sometimes Zeus's gift and sometimes Selene's wish. The story became a favorite subject of Roman sarcophagi, where Selene descends from her chariot toward the sleeper.
### Selene and Artemis
Selene is distinct from Artemis in early poetry. From the Classical period on, writers increasingly identified the moon with Artemis (as they identified the sun with Apollo), and in Roman art Luna and Diana overlap. Selene herself received little formal cult; she belongs more to poetry, astronomy, and magic than to temple worship.
Cross-Pantheon Parallels & Archetypes
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Selene.
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