Aglaea, "Splendour", eldest-named but youngest of the three Charites (Graces), daughter of Zeus and the Oceanid Eurynome, from whose glancing eyes flowed limb-loosening love.1
Aglaea, whose name means "Splendour", is the first-named and yet the youngest of the three fair-cheeked Charites, the Graces. Hesiod sings that Eurynome, the beautiful daughter of Ocean, bore her to Zeus together with her sisters Euphrosyne and lovely Thaleia; from the eyes of the three Graces, as they glanced, flowed love that unnerves the limbs, and beautiful is their look beneath their brows. Apollodorus repeats the same parentage — by Eurynome, daughter of Ocean, Zeus had the Graces, Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia — and Pausanias too reaffirms it, naming Aglaia among the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome.2
As one of the Charites she belongs to the bright company of delight that dwells near the Muses on Olympus, the givers of festivity, radiance and the adorning charm that makes both gods and mortals beautiful. Hesiod places the Graces beside the Muses' dancing places, where they and Himerus (Desire) live in joy; Homer shows them weaving the ambrosial raiment of Athena and bathing and anointing Aphrodite with immortal oil after her shaming, the very embodiment of loveliness made tangible.3
Hesiod names Aglaea as the bride of a god: Hephaestus, the famous Lame One, made Aglaia, youngest of the Graces, his buxom wife. Here the contradiction of the sources opens — Homer's Iliad instead makes the smith-god's wife a Grace called Charis of the gleaming veil, and the song of Demodocus in the Odyssey gives him Aphrodite herself. The atlas keeps the marriage as a disputed fact: Aglaea is Hephaestus' consort in Hesiod, Charis in Homer.4
⁂
the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
