Phaethon was the son of Helios, the sun-charioteer, and the nymph Clymene. One day when Phaethon was telling his companions about his divine father, the god of the sun, they laughed and talking back, they taunted him: "How do you know that Helios is really your father?”. Then the boy flushed, and went to his mother, seeking reassurance; she told him to travel all the way to the East to meet his divine parent. He travelled the whole world, until he reached the magnificent palace from where at the start of every day the sun rises.
Here Helios kindly received and greeted his son with joy, and wishing to celebrate the occasion he decided to grant Phaethon any wish he had, swearing on the sacred river Styx.
However, Helios’ happiness was short-lasting, for his son quickly asked permission to ride the Sun’s four-horsed chariot. Shaking his head in dismay, he regretted his rushed promise and bitterly admitted that that alone was the only wish he would never want to grant to him, because it was an attempt beyond the young man’s possibilities.
At first he tried to dissuade the youth, describing the perils and dangers awaiting him along the solar route… but the boy was unmovable, and at the end Helios had to sadly grant what Phaethon asked. He escorted him to his chariot, and smeared a magic salve on Phaethon’s face to shield him from the blazing flames.
As soon as he took the reins, the horses sensed the touch of an hand weaker than the usual, and went out of control. Phaethon could do nothing to restrain the divine steeds. At first, the chariot flew too high, dissolving the clouds with the heat, burning the constellations, setting the sky in chaos, scorching the vault of heaven and thus producing the Milky Way (according to one of the many versions of its creation); then it flew too low, setting ablaze the earth: the top of the mountains caught fire, forests were incinerated, the crops were scorched black, Africa became a desert, ancient springs evaporated and rivers like the Nile, the Danube and the Ganges began to dry up – Poseidon rose out of the sea and waved his trident in anger at the sun, but soon the heat became too great even for him and he dove to the bottom of the sea –, Hades and Persephone wondered what catastrophe was shaking the world, cities burned with all their ramparts, realms and nations were turned to ashes; Phaethon was helpless in containing the destruction, shaking with fear, breathing vapours that burned like furnace-blasts, feeling the chariot glowing white-hot beneath his feet, blinded by the scorching smoke and the cinders everywhere.
At this point the scorched Gaia lifted her head, appealing to Zeus to put an end to the widespread destruction, and there was only one thing the King of the Gods could do: he struck Phaethon from the runaway chariot and from life with a lightning bolt. The chariot was thus destroyed.
Half-consumed by the thunderbolt, Phaethon falls, now a streaming trail of light, his body ravaged by flames, steaming a nauseating stench from the smouldered body, finally plunging into the waters of the river Eridanus (the Greek name for the river Po in Northern Italy, and also one of constellations).
Then Helios stopped the horses and brought them back to his palace. Dishevelled at the tragic fate and loss of his son, loathing himself, in his grief he even considered resigning from illuminating the world thereon, denying his duty, but was later on convinced by all the gods not to shroud the world in darkness.
Phaethon’s sisters, the Heliadae, and their mother Clymene cried for him and mourned his tomb for a long time, until they were changed into poplar trees and their tears into golden amber. On his tomb, the Naiads Hesperiae engraved this epitaph: “Here lies Phaethon, who in the sun-god's chariot fared; great was his fall, yet did he greatly dare”.
At this point, Phaethon was elevated to the rank of the god of the wandering star (aster planetos) Jupiter, called Aster Phaethon (Φαέθων) by the Greeks.
Originally Posted by Emiya Kurou
