Phaethon
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Phaethon. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
fa'e-thon, in classical mythology, the child of the Sun and the ocean nymph, Clymene. Being twitted of humble birth he was sent by his mother to the palace of Phoebus, the Sun, in the far east for proof of his ancestry. He begged the boon of being allowed to drive his father's chariot for a single day that all might know who he really was. Phoebus, having given his promise rashly, was unable to induce the youth to refrain. Seeing that nothing else would avail, he told him of the difficulty of ascending the first part of the roadway, the dizzy height of the road at another, and the steep pitch into the ocean at evening. He told him how to pass the horns of the bull, the arrow of the archer, the lion's jaws, and the arms of the scorpion and the crab. Dawn threw open the purple doors of the east, the day star marshaled the stars aside, the moon retired, the hours harnessed up the horses. As a parting word, Phoebus told Phaethon to hold tightly his reins and to spare the whip. Phaethon leaped into the chariot full of youthful confidence. The steeds felt at once that a new hand was at the rein and a lighter person in the chariot. They became ungovernable. The chariot, that is to say, the sun, passed too near the earth. It scorched the face of nature, creating the Libyan Desert. To prevent the destruction of the world Zeus slew Phaethon with a thunderbolt. He fell near the mouth of the Po. His weeping sisters were transformed into the Lombardy poplars for which that valley is noted. Their tears turned to bits of amber, still cast ashore by the waves after a storm.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A son of the Sun, or of Phoebus and Clymene. According to Hesiod and Pausanias he was son of Cephalus and Aurora , or of Tithonus and Aurora according to Apollodorus. He is, however, generally acknowledged to be son of Phoebus and Clymene. Phoebus allowed him to drive the chariot of the sun for one day. Phaethon, on receiving the reins, at once showed his incapacity; the horses became unmanageable, and heaven and earth were threatened with a conflagration, when Jupiter struck Phaethon with a thunderbolt, and hurled him into the river Po, where he perished.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The story Aiton's told in 1910 and 1000 Classical Characters told in 1900 is still the story told today: it comes chiefly from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and nothing has been found to change it, though the disagreement the 1900 entry notes among Hesiod, Pausanias and Apollodorus over who Phaethon's parents were remains just as unsettled. Modern scholars do read the amber-weeping sisters and the river Eridanus, which the ancients variously identified with the Po, as a fossil memory of the long overland amber trade that carried Baltic resin south into the Mediterranean. The one wholly new Phaethon is in the sky rather than the books: asteroid 3200 Phaethon, discovered in 1983 and named for its plunge close to the sun, is the source of the December Geminid meteor shower and the target of Japan's DESTINY+ probe.
Written for this edition, 2026.