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Urania
Other accounts speak of her as the daughter of Uranus (or Ouranos), the Sky, and of Light, akin to the Egyptian sky-goddess Nut or Nuit, as well as the Assyrian goddess Mylitta, Ashera or Ashtaroth in Phoenicia and Carthage, Alilat in Arabia, and Artimpara in Scythia (modern Ukraine). In these myths she was probably an aspect of the love goddess Aphrodite, called Aphrodites Urania, who according to Hesiod was the daughter of Uranus. Homer speaks of this Urania as the tortoise-riding goddess of chaste love, mother of Hymenaeus, the god of the wedding feast. However, it is in her role as one of the Muses, as first cited by Hesiod, that she is best known. This Urania was said to be the mother of the musician Linus by Apollo, though other myths assign that role to her sister Calliope. She is usually shown wearing a sky-blue gown and either holding a celestial globe or pointing to it with her sceptre, the radius, and sometimes wears a crown of stars. In his Symposium, Plato asserted that love between men was sanctioned and protected by Urania, a reflection of the belief among the ancients that astrology played a role in determining sexual preference. Nineteenth-century gay rights activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs coined the term "Uranian" to identify male homosexuals, and the term was used by many gay men during the latter half of that century. Virgil invoked Urania, as did Milton in his Paradise Lost. Raphael adorned a panel with her image, and a painting of Urania and Calliope by French artist Simon Vouet hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The Sextant, one of the modern constellations, was originally designated and named Sextans Uraniae by the Polish astronomer Jan Hevelius. Urania has also lent her name to a genus of moths. The Muses Urania and Calliope, by Simon Vouet, c. 1634 "Teares of the Muses," by Edmund Spenser
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