Perse was one of the wives of the
sun god, Helios.[6][7] According to
Homer and
Hesiod, with Helios she had
Circe and
Aeëtes,[8] with later authors also mentioning their children
Pasiphaë,[9]Perses,[10]Aloeus,[11] and even
Calypso,[11] who is however more commonly the daughter of
Atlas. It is not clear why Perse bore Helios, the source of all light, such dark and mysterious children.[12]
When
Aphrodite cursed Helios to fall in love with the mortal princess
Leucothoe, he is said to have forgotten about Perse.[13] She seems to have been linked to witchcraft and knowledge of herbs and potions, much like her daughters Circe and Pasiphaë.[14] She might have also been associated with the witchcraft goddess
Hecate, who was also called Perseis (as in "daughter of
Perses")[15][16] and who is said to be Circe's mother in one version.[17][18]
Possible connections
Perseis' name has been linked to
Περσίς (Persís), "female Persian", and
πέρθω (pérthō), "destroy" or "slay" or "plunder".[citation needed]
Kerenyi also noted the connection between her and Hecate due to their names, denoting a
chthonic aspect of the nymph, as well as that of
Persephone, whose name "can be taken to be a longer, perhaps simply a more ceremonious, form of Perse",[19] as did Fowler, who noted that the pairing made sense given Hecate's association with the
Moon.[20] It has been suggested that Hecate's "Perseis" epithet denotes lunar connections.[21] However, as Mooney notes, there is no evidence that Perse was ever a moon goddess on her own right.[22]
An inscription of
Mycenaean Greek (written in
Linear B) was found on a tablet from
Pylos, dating back to 1400–1200 BC.
John Chadwick reconstructed[n 1] the name of a goddess, *Preswa who could be identified with Perse. Chadwick found speculative the further identification with the first element of Persephone.[24][25]
^Comments about the goddess pe-re-*82 of
Pylos tablet Tn 316, tentatively reconstructed as *Preswa
"It is tempting to see ... the classical Perse ... daughter of
Oceanus ...; whether it may be further identified with the first element of Persephone is only speculative."
John Chadwick. Documents in Mycenean Greek. Second Edition
Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004,
ISBN9780415186360.
Google Books.