Aletheia (mythology)

Aletheia (Greek Ἀλήθεια "truth" ) In Greek mythology, the goddess of truth and daughter of Zeus. According to Plutarch, she was the nurse of Apollon.

After a fable of Aesop was formed from Prometheus out of clay, but before he had given her life, formed Dolos, the personalized fraud, a completely resembling her figure, only for the feet was no longer the sound. As Prometheus saw the two figures, he was amazed at the similarity and revived both what the real truth measured step from there, the image of the fraud also rose, but did not budge.

In Roman mythology, her equivalent to the Veritas. This is a daughter of Saturn, or of " Tempus ", "time", Greek Chronos, which again corresponds to Kronos and Saturnus so ..

In the Carmina of Horace finally emerged the nuda Veritas, the proverbial " Naked Truth " on. So it appears as an allegorical figure in the famous painting The Calumny of Apelles by Sandro Botticelli. The painting is a simulated Lucian traditional description of a painting by the Greek painter Apelles. In ancient times, it seems to have been opposed to the usually shown in white clothing. So also in an antique painting that Flavius ​​Philostratus describes. Its object is the dream oracle of Amphiaraus at Oropus. The white-clad Aletheia is next to the gate of dreams, indicating that the truth is at this oracle of Sleeping in a dream.

After Claudius Aelianus the top of the Egyptian judges wore around his neck a piece of sapphire, which was named Aletheia.