Phaeton. A son of Sol, or, according to most mythologists, of Phoebus and Clymene. Anxious to display his skill in horsemanship, he was so presumptuous as to request his father to allow him to drive the chariot of the sun across the heavens for one day. Helios was induced by the entreaties of his son and of Clymene to yield, but the youth being too weak to check the horses, they rushed out of their usual track, the chariot was upset, and caused great mischief; Libya was parched into barren sands, and all Africa was more or less injured, the inhabitants blackened, and vegetation nearly destroyed. Zeus killed him with a flash of lightning, and hurled him down into the River Eridanus. His sisters, the Heliadae or Phaethontiades, who had yoked the horses to the chariot, were metamorphosed into poplars, and their tears into amber.
