HYPERION (MYTHOLOGY)

'Hyperion' is a Titan, the son of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus ''Helios Hyperion'', 'Sun High-one'. But in the ''Odyssey'', Hesiod's ''Theogony'' and the Homeric ''Hymn to Demeter'' the Sun is once in each work called ''Hyperonides'' 'son of Hyperion' and Hesiod certainly imagines Hyperion as a separate being in other places. In later Greek literature, ''Hyperion'' is always distinguished from ''Helios''.
Hyperion plays virtually no role in Greek cult and little role in mythology, save in lists of the twelve Titans. Later Greeks intellectualized their myths:

"Of Hyperion we are told that he was the first to understand, by diligent attention and observation, the movement of both the sun and the moon and the other stars, and the seasons as well, in that they are caused by these bodies, and to make these facts known to others; and that for this reason he was called the father of these bodies, since he had begotten, so to speak, the speculation about them and their nature." —Diodorus Siculus (5.67.1)

Hyperion is often considered the 'God of Observation' while his sister Theia the 'Goddess of Sight.'

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Fiction inspired by or connected to Hyperion

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Fiction inspired by or connected to Hyperion

★ In William Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'', Hamlet compares his father (the late Old Hamlet) to Hyperion and his usurping uncle Claudius to a satyr: "Hyperion to a satyr," (Act I Scene II). Hyperion is mentioned again in Act 3, Scene 4.

★ John Keats wrote the poems "Hyperion" and "The Fall of Hyperion" in his honour.

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★ Hyperion: excerpts from original Greek sources