Ersa Explained

In Greek mythology, according to Plutarch, the 7th century BC Greek poet Alcman said that Ersa or Herse (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Ἔρσα|translit=Érsa|label=none, Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Ἕρση|translit=Hérsē|label=none, literally "dew"), the personification of dew, is the daughter of Zeus and the Moon (Selene).^[1] Plutarch writes:

References

• Campbell, David A., Greek Lyric, Volume I: Sappho and Alcaeus, Loeb Classical Library No. 142, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1990. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
• Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, .
• Keightley, Thomas, The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy, G. Bell and Sons, 1877.
• ní Mheallaigh, Karen, The Moon in the Greek and Roman Imagination: Myth, Literature, Science and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 2020. .
• Plutarch, Moralia. 16 vols. (vol. 13: 13.1 & 13.2, vol. 16: index), transl. by Frank Cole Babbitt (vol. 1–5) et al., series: "Loeb Classical Library" (LCL, vols. 197–499). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press et al., 1927–2004.

Notes and References

1. Hard, p. 46; ní Mheallaigh, p. 26; Keightley, p. 55. According to Hard, "this is really no more than an allegorical fancy referring to the heavy dew-fall associated with clear moonlit nights"; while according to Keightley, calls this a "pleasing fiction" of Alcman, and says that "The moon was naturally, though incorrectly, regarded as the cause of dew, and nothing therefore was more obvious than to say that the dew was the progeny of the moon and sky personified after the usual manner of the Greeks".