Clymene

Oceanid, one of the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys named in the catalogue at Hes. *Theog.* 351. In the Ovidian tradition she is the mother of Phaethon by Helios and of the Heliades — Phaethon's sisters who mourn him as poplar trees on the Eridanus and whose tears are amber. Euripides's fragmentary *Phaethon* gives her a different husband (Merops, king of Ethiopia) while keeping Helios as the true father of Phaethon, producing the divine-vs-mortal tension that drives the tragedy. The name *Clymene* is shared with several other minor figures (a Minyad; the mother of Atalanta; a handmaid of Helen) — the Oceanid mother of Phaethon is by far the most famous.

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