thumb|300x300px|The Three Graces in a [[fresco at Pompeii, 1–50 AD]]

The Charites (; ; singular Charis (), also called by the English translation the "Graces") are goddesses of Greek mythology who personify beauty and grace. According to Hesiod, their names were Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia and were the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, the daughter of Oceanus. However, their names, number and parentage varied across accounts. They have little independent mythology, and are usually described as attending various gods and goddesses, particularly Aphrodite.

In Roman mythology, they were known by the Latin equivalent of the Greek: the Gratiae. In Roman and later art, they were generally depicted nude in an interlaced group, but during the Greek Archaic and Classical periods, they were typically depicted as fully clothed, in a line, and in dance poses.

Parentage, number, and names

thumb|The Three Graces, from [[Sandro Botticelli's painting Primavera in the Uffizi Gallery.]]

In Hesiod's Theogony, the Charites are the three daughters of Zeus: Aglaia ("Splendor"), Euphrosyne ("Joy"), and Thalia ("Good Cheer"), by the Oceanid Eurynome (also called Hermione). The identical genealogy is given by Apollodorus. The same three names are also given by Pindar, with a possible reference to their "father" Zeus and no mother mentioned. Although the Charites were usually considered to be Zeus' daughters and three in number, their names as well as their parentage and number varied. Homer mentions Pasithea as "one of the youthful Graces", and perhaps has "Charis" (the singular form of "Charites"), as the name of another, but does not give their parentage, number, or any other of their names.

The geographer Pausanias gives other variations, some regional. He says that, according to Boeotian tradition, Eteocles, the king of Orchomenus, established three as the number of Charites, but that the Athenians and Spartans worshipped only two. For the Athenians the two Charites were Auxo and Hegemone, while for the Spartans they were Cleta and Phaenna. Also, according to Pausanias, the Hellenistic poet Hermesianax said that Peitho ("Persuasion") was one of the Charites, and the poet Antimachus said that the Charites were the "daughters of Aegle and the Sun <nowiki>[</nowiki>Helios<nowiki>]</nowiki>".

While Hesiod has Eurynome, and Antimachus has Aegle, as the mother of the Charites, other names were also given. According to Orphic Hymn 60, the Charites ("Aglaea, Thalia, ... Euphrosyne") were the daughters of Zeus and Eunomia. The Stoic philosopher Cornutus includes the names Eurynome, and Aegle, he gives other names for mothers as well: Eurydome, Eurymedousa, Hera, and Euanthe. Nonnus has his three Charites (Hesiod's Aglaia, Homer's Pasithea, and Hermesianax's Peitho) being the daughters of Dionysus and Coronis.

A purported summary of a lost poem by an otherwise unknown poet "Sostratus", while naming the three Charites, adds to Homer's Pasithea, and Hesiod's Euphrosyne, the name Kale, saying that it was she who was the wife of Hephaestus.

Mythology

thumb|6th-century BCE relief|left

The Charites' major mythological role was to attend the other Olympians, particularly during feasts and dances. They attended Aphrodite by bathing and anointing her in Paphos before her seduction of Ankhises and after she left Olympus when her affair with Ares is found out. Additionally, they are said to weave or dye her peplos. Along with Peitho, they presented Pandora with necklaces to make her more enticing. Pindar stated the Charites arranged feasts and dances for the Olympians. They also danced with the Seasons, Hebe, Harmonia and Aphrodite in celebration of the arrival of Apollo among the gods of Olympus, while Artemis sang and Apollo played the lyre. They were often referenced as dancing and singing with Apollo and the Muses. Pindar also referred to them as the guardians of the ancient Minyans and the queens of Orchomenus who have their thrones beside Pythian Apollo's. In the Iliad, as part of her plan to seduce Zeus to distract him from the Trojan War, she offers to arrange Hypnos's marriage to Pasithea, who is referred to as one of the younger Charites.

One of the Charites had a role as the wife of the smith god Hephaestus. Hesiod names the wife of Hephaestus as Aglaia. In the Iliad, she is called Charis, and she welcomes Thetis into their shared home on Olympus so that the latter may ask for Hephaestus to forge armor for her son Achilles. Some scholars have interpreted this marriage as occurring after Hephaestus's divorce from Aphrodite due to her affair with Ares being exposed. Notably, however, some scholars, such as Walter Burkert, support that the marriage of Hephaestus and Aphrodite as an invention of the Odyssey, since it is not represented within other Archaic or Classical era literature or arts, and it does not appear to have a connection to cult.

Cult

thumb|[[The Three Graces (Canova)|The Three Graces, Antonio Canova's first version, now in the Hermitage Museum|280x280px]]

The cult of the Charites is very old, with their name appearing to be of Pelasgian, or pre-Greek, origin rather than being brought to Greece by Proto-Indo-Europeans. The purpose of their cult appears to be similar to that of nymphs, primarily based around fertility and nature with a particular connection to springs and rivers. A temple was dedicated to the Charites near the Tiasa river in Amyclae, Laconia that was reportedly founded by the ancient King of Sparta, Lacedaemon.

thumb|Les Trois Grâces by [[James Pradier, 1831. Louvre.|left|280x280px]]

In Orkhomenos, the goddesses were worshipped at a very ancient site with a trio of stones, which is similar to other Boiotian cults to Eros and Herakles.

In cult, the Charites were particularly connected with Apollo and appear to be connected to his cult on Delos; however, this connection is not present in other cults to Apollo.

Visual art

Ancient art

thumb|Early 5th-century BCE relief from the [[acropolis of Athens; Ancient folklore held that it was sculpted by Socrates, though this is unlikely.]]

Despite the Charites usually being depicted nude entwined in a "closed symmetrical group" for the last two millennia, this was a later development, as in depictions from Archaic and Classical Greece, they are finely dressed, and usually shown in a line, as dancers. In contrast, the third century BCE poets Callimachus and Euphorion describe the trio as being nude. The opportunity for artists to show their skill in representing figures with three nude female figures seen from different angles has been a factor in the enduring popularity of the subject.

thumb|308x308px|The Three Graces from the [[Piccolomini Library, now in Siena Cathedral|left]]

One of the earliest known Roman representations of the Graces was a wall painting in Boscoreale dated to 40 BCE, which also depicted Aphrodite with Eros and Dionysus with Ariadne. Indeed, a large marble Graeco-Roman group, which was a key model in the Renaissance,

List of notable artworks with images resembling the three Charites

  • Anonymous
  • Anonymous
  • Jean Arp (16 September 18867 June 1966) The Three Graces (1961)
  • Francesco Bartolozzi
  • Jacques Blanchard (1631–33) Man surprising Sleeping Venus and Graces
  • Giulio di Antonio Bonasone
  • Sandro Botticelli (1482); detail of Primavera;
  • Marie Bracquemond (1880) Trois femmes aux ombrelles
  • Antonio Canova (1799) The Three Graces
  • Agostino Carracci
  • Paul Cézanne
  • Antonio da Correggio (1518);
  • Francesco del Cossa, Allegory of April, Palazzo Schifanoia, School of Ferrara.
  • Maurice Raphael Drouart
  • Ewen Feuillâtre The Three Graces : Aglaea, Euphrosyne & Thalia (2020)
  • Hans Baldung Grien (1540)
  • Ludwig Von Hofmann
  • Laura Knight
  • Jean-Baptiste van Loo (1684–1745) at the Château de Chenonceau
  • Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1348–50) Allegory of Good Government
  • Aristide Maillol, Les Trois Nymphes (1930-1937)
  • Jacob Matham
  • Arthur Frank Mathews
  • Henry Moore, Three Standing Figures (1947)
  • Bruce Peebles & Co. advertisement (c. 1900)
  • Eduard Zimmermann, "Fountain of the Three Graces" (Drei Grazien Brunnen) in the ETH Zurich main building (1921).
  • Pablo Picasso The Three Graces (1925)
  • Germain Pilon
  • Jacopo Pontormo (1535)
  • James Pradier (1831) Les Trois Grâces
  • Jean-Baptiste Regnault Les Trois Grâces (1797–1798)
  • Peter Paul Rubens
  • Raphael Sanzio
  • Anna Soghomonyan, Three Graces (2020)
  • Cosimo Tura (1476–84) detail of Allegory of April
  • Unknown artist, The Three Graces sculpture in Indianapolis
  • Kehinde Wiley Three Graces
  • Joel-Peter Witkin

See also

  • 627 Charis
  • Charisma
  • Charis (name)
  • Grâces
  • Three of Cups Tarot
  • Arete (ancient Greco-Roman goddess & concept of excellence).

Footnotes

(The Imagebase links are all broken)

References

  • Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. . Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
  • Arafat, Karim, s.v. Charites, published online 22 December 2015, in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Tim Whitmarsh, digital ed, New York, Oxford University Press. .
  • Athanassakis, Apostolos N., and Benjamin M. Wolkow, The Orphic Hymns, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. . Internet Archive. Google Books.
  • Boys-Stones, George, L. ANNAEUS CORNUTUS, GREEK THEOLOGY, ToposText.
  • Cameron, Alan, Greek Mythography in the Roman World, Oxford University Press, 2004. .
  • Clark, Kenneth, The Nude, A Study in Ideal Form, orig. 1949, various edns, page refs from Pelican edn of 1960
  • Colluthus, The Rape of Helen in Oppian, Colluthus, Tryphiodorus, translated by A. W. Mair, Loeb Classical Library No. 219, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1928. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
  • Fisher, Nick, "Kharis, Kharites, festivals, and social peace in the classical Greek city," in Ralph M. Rosen and Ineke Sluiter (Eds), Valuing Others in Classical Antiquity (Leiden, Brill, 2010) (Mnemosyne Supplements, 323).
  • Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2).
  • Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, . "Charites" p. 99
  • Hard, Robin (2004), The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, . Google Books.
  • Homer, Iliad, Volume II: Books 13-24, translated by A. T. Murray, revised by William F. Wyatt, Loeb Classical Library No. 171, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1999. Online version at Harvard University Press. .
  • Keightley, Thomas, The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy, Whittaker and Company, 1838. Google Books.
  • Lang, C., Cornuti Theologiae Graecae Compendium, Leipzig 1881. Internet Archive.
  • Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Volume II: Books 16&ndash;35,, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, Loeb Classical Library No. 345, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1940. . Online version at Harvard University Press. Internet Archive (1940).
  • Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Volume III: Books 36&ndash;48, translated by W. H. D. Rouse, Loeb Classical Library No. 346, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1940. . Online version at Harvard University Press. Internet Archive (1940, reprinted 1942).
  • O'Hara, James J., "Sostratus Suppl. Hell. 733: A Lost, Possibly Catullan-Era Elegy on the Six Sex Changes of Tiresias", in Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-2014), 1996, Vol. 126 (1996), pp. 173-219. .
  • Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
  • Pindar, Olympian Odes. Pythian Odes. Edited and translated by William H. Race. Loeb Classical Library No. 56. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997, revised 2012. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
  • Schachter, Albert, s.v. Charites, in Brill’s New Pauly Online, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and, Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry, published online: 2006.
  • Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Charis"
  • Statius, Thebaid, Volume I: Thebaid: Books 1-7, edited and translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Loeb Classical Library No. 207, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2004. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
  • Torres, José B., Lucius Annaeus Cornutus: Compendium de Graecae Theologiae traditionibus, Bibliotheca Teubneriana, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2018. Online version at De Gruyter.
  • Tripp, Edward, Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology, Thomas Y. Crowell Co; First edition (June 1970). .
  • The charites — Judgement of Paris — art article (Spanish)
  • The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (images of the Graces)

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