Deities
Astraea
Greek Deities
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Astraea, star maiden, is the Greek goddess of justice and innocence and, in the best known telling, the last of the immortals to abandon the earth as humanity's ages decline from gold to iron. Classical sources do not agree on her parentage: some make her a Titan born daughter of Astraeus, lord of the dusk, and Eos, the dawn, while later poets identify her with Dike, daughter of Zeus and Themis and the personification of justice herself, driven from among mortals by the violence of the Iron Age. Ovid places her flight to the heavens at the very end of the Golden Age, and ancient astronomy fixed her afterward among the stars as the constellation Virgo, holding the scales of Libra beside her, a justice withdrawn from the world but not extinguished.
History & Origin
Ovid's Metamorphoses recounts Astraea as the very last of the immortals to abandon the earth, forced to flee skyward once the Iron Age's violence and corruption became unbearable even for the goddess of justice, an ascension later tradition connected with the constellation Virgo.
Facts
Attributions
Mythic AssociationThe last immortal to abandon the earth as the Golden Age gives way to the Iron Age 1Tradition: Ancient Greek Religion Attestation
Era of Attestation Era of AttestationThe name Astraea does not appear in Hesiod, whose Works and Days instead describes the goddesses Aidos and Nemesis withdrawing from a corrupted humanity at the end of the same declining ages Astraea's own myth uses; the name and its identification with the constellation Virgo first appear together in the Hellenistic poet Aratus's Phaenomena, in the third century BCE, well before Ovid's own retelling. 2 Veneration TodayHistorically attested; no continuous cult 1 Veneration Status DetailAstraea was never the object of an organized public cult in the way Zeus or Athena was. Her presence in Greek and Roman culture belongs almost entirely to poetry and moral allegory rather than to temple worship. 1 HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2 Belief
TheologyPolytheistic: many gods 1 Cult
Attributes and IconographyAncient astronomy fixed her afterward among the stars as the constellation Virgo, with the scales of Libra placed beside her, an image of justice withdrawn from the world but preserved in the sky rather than extinguished. 1 Attributes and IconographyIdentified with the constellation Virgo, shown holding the scales of Libra 1Tradition: Ancient Greek Religion Sources
Textual NoteOvid places her flight to the heavens at the very end of the Golden Age in the Metamorphoses, marking the moment humankind is left with no immortal presence still walking among it. 1 Disputed
LineageClassical sources disagree on her parentage: some make her a Titan, daughter of Astraeus, lord of the dusk, and Eos, the dawn, while later poets instead identify her with Dike, daughter of Zeus and Themis, the personification of justice herself. 1 Function
Domain / FunctionJustice, law and oaths 1Tradition: Ancient Greek Religion Domain DetailJustice and innocence 1Tradition: Ancient Greek Religion History
Historical NoteHer promised return at the end of Virgil's Fourth Eclogue gave later ages a ready image of a returning golden age, and Renaissance writers used it to flatter living rulers directly, celebrating Elizabeth the First of England in verse as Astraea come again. 2 Origins
Origin of the NameHer name, star maiden, reflects her final transformation into the constellation Virgo, and later poets identified her with Dike, the personification of justice, daughter of Zeus and Themis. 1 Position Profile
Key TextOvid's Metamorphoses describes Astraea as the last of the immortals to abandon earth at the end of the Golden Age, her departure marking humanity's decline into violence, after which she was placed among the stars as the constellation Virgo. 1 Learn More
The Last Immortal to Leave the Earth
Ovid's Metamorphoses opens with the decline of the ages of humankind, gold sliding into silver, silver into bronze, and bronze into an iron age of open violence and greed, brother turning against brother and hosts against guests. As the gods withdraw one by one from a world grown intolerable to them, Astraea is named the last to go, reluctant to abandon a species she has watched fall this far and lingering after every other immortal has already retreated to the heavens.
When she finally leaves, ancient astronomers and poets place her among the stars as the constellation Virgo, carrying beside her the scales that become Libra, so that justice withdrawn from human affairs is imagined not as destroyed but as removed to a distance, watching from above with the instrument for weighing right and wrong still in her hand. The image proved durable well past antiquity: Renaissance and early modern writers reused Astraea's return as a figure for a hoped for restoration of a just age, most famously flattering Elizabeth I of England as a returning Astraea whose reign might reopen the Golden Age her departure had ended.
Two Genealogies, One Star
Classical sources hand down two different families for Astraea rather than one, and neither drives the other out of use. The older strand makes her a daughter of the Titan Astraeus, whose name itself means starry and who fathers the winds and the stars on Eos, the dawn, in Hesiod's Theogony, so that Astraea belongs among a cluster of astral and atmospheric divinities rather than to the Olympian generation proper.
A separate and, by the time of Aratus and Ovid, more commonly repeated tradition identifies her instead with Dike, justice personified, daughter of Zeus and Themis, who walks among mortals in the Golden Age and flees them in the Iron Age exactly as Astraea is said to. Ancient mythographers themselves noticed the overlap and generally resolved it by treating Astraea and Dike as names for one figure viewed from two angles, her stellar ancestry describing what she becomes and her Olympian parentage describing the moral office she holds while still on earth, though the sources never fully harmonize the two family trees into a single agreed account. What survives the disagreement intact is the constellation: whichever parentage a given author prefers, Virgo in the sky is consistently read as Astraea, justice in retreat but not gone.
Correspondences & Relations
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Astraea directly: "has been identified with Demeter, with Astraea the last of the gods to leave a corrupted earth, and with the Mesopotamian Furrow."
Child Of
Astraeus, Deities Why this is disputed. Ancient sources disagree on Astraea's parentage. Hesiod's Theogony names Astraeus and Eos as parents of the winds and the morning stars, and later writers, drawn by the resemblance between Astraea's name and Astraeus's, identify their daughter with the star maiden; this stands beside the more usual tradition, found in Aratus and Hyginus, that makes Astraea a daughter of Zeus and Themis.
Eos, Deities Why this is disputed. Ancient sources disagree on Astraea's parentage. Some writers, following the resemblance between Astraea's name and the Titan Astraeus, make her the daughter of Astraeus and Eos, the dawn, alongside the stars and winds Hesiod's Theogony gives that pair as children; the more usual tradition, found in Aratus and Hyginus, instead makes Astraea a daughter of Zeus and Themis.
Held to Be the Same As
Themis, Deities Why this is disputed. Astraea and Themis are both goddesses of justice and both linked to the same iconography of scales, and some ancient and later accounts treat Astraea as a hypostasis or another name for Themis herself. The more usual reading, following Ovid's Metamorphoses and Aratus, keeps them distinct: Astraea is Themis's daughter, the last immortal to abandon the earth as the Golden Age ends, rather than Themis under another name.
Worshipped In
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