The Charites — translated as the Graces in Latin and modern usage — were three sister-goddesses of grace, beauty, mirth, and the social pleasures of feasting and dancing. They were daughters of Zeus and the Oceanid Eurynome, and their names were Aglaea ("radiance"), Euphrosyne ("good cheer"), and Thalia ("festivity" — not to be confused with the Muse of comedy of the same name, treated below). They attended upon Aphrodite, danced at the festivals of the gods, accompanied the Muses, and were the personifications of all that made human life graceful and pleasant. Their iconography — three nude or lightly-clothed women linked arm-in-arm, sometimes in a circle, often two facing forward and one back — was developed in late Hellenistic art and became one of the most enduring visual motifs in the Western tradition, carried through Roman, Renaissance (Botticelli's Primavera, Raphael's Three Graces), and modern art.
Before thisThe Moirai
Next on the wallThe Horae
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Hesiod, Theogony 907–911 (parentage and naming). Pindar repeatedly invokes them. Their cult was widespread but small; their importance was iconographic and poetic more than cultic. The Roman counterparts were the Gratiae, with the same names latinized.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
Child ofZeusThey were daughters of Zeus and the Oceanid Eurynome
Companion ofAphroditeThey attended upon Aphrodite, danced at the festivals of the gods, accompanied the Muses
Companion ofThe MusesThey attended upon Aphrodite, danced at the festivals of the gods, accompanied the Muses
When the sources speak
Dated witnesses for The Margins and the Monsters. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline
- c. 1600–1100 BCE
- Mycenaean palace tablets in Linear B record offerings and divine names, but little continuous myth.
- c. 1100–800 BCE
- Post-palatial oral traditions and changing cult landscapes precede the surviving alphabetic epics.
- late 8th–7th centuries BCE
- The Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days give influential but non-exclusive divine orders.
- 7th–6th centuries BCE
- Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, colonization, and local sanctuary traditions multiply regional narratives.
- 6th–5th centuries BCE
- Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystery materials develop alternative cosmogonies and afterlife doctrines.
- 5th century BCE
- Athenian tragedy and comedy recast heroic houses and divine justice for civic audiences.
- 4th century BCE
- Philosophers, antiquarians, and local historians interpret or criticize inherited myth.
- 323–31 BCE
- Hellenistic poets and scholars systematize variants across an enlarged Greek world.