In Greek mythology, Phaethon (Ancient Greek Φαέθων, "shiner," "radiant") is the mortal son of the sun god Helios and the Oceanid Clymene who begged to drive his father's chariot for a day, lost control, and set the world ablaze until Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt into the river Eridanus. He is this doomed charioteer — not the near-Earth asteroid 3200 Phaethon, which was named after him for its sun-grazing orbit.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Phaethon" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Family
Most authors make Phaethon the son of Helios and the Oceanid Clymene; he is reared in some versions in the house of Merops, king of the Ethiopians, who is Clymene's mortal husband. Less common genealogies name other mothers (Merope, Rhodos, Prote) or make Clymenus a son of Helios the intermediary father. His sisters are the Heliades, who mourn him as black poplars weeping amber into the Eridanus.
Hesiod knows a different Phaethon — son of Eos and Cephalus — who must not be merged with Helios's charioteer without source warrant. Hyginus's attribution of a scorched-earth Phaethon tale to Hesiod is widely doubted.
II.Mythology
Taunted about his birth, Phaethon seeks Helios's palace and asks proof of paternity. The Sun swears by Styx to grant a gift; the boy demands the chariot of day. Despite warnings about the steep road, the zodiacal beasts, and horses that obey only Helios, Phaethon takes the reins. The team bolts: the car climbs too high and freezes the heavens, then plunges too low and scorches earth — deserts, darkened peoples, and boiling rivers in aetiological readings — until Earth cries out and Zeus hurls a thunderbolt.
Phaethon falls flaming into the Eridanus. The Heliades lament until they become poplars; their tears harden as amber. Apollonius places the smouldering grave in the far west. Lost tragedies by Aeschylus (Heliades) and Euripides (Phaethon) treated the myth; Ovid's Metamorphoses supplies the most influential continuous narrative.
The story explained extreme climates and amber deposits; it remains a paradigm of youthful hubris and failed succession to a cosmic office.
III.Namesakes
The atlas id phaethon is Helios's mortal son, the charioteer. Asteroid 3200 Phaethon (a sun-grazing Apollo asteroid associated with the Geminid meteors), the poetic epithet of the Sun, and other modern uses borrow the name; they are commemorations, not alternate identities of this character. Distinct mythic Phaethons (notably Eos's son) require separate ids when entered.