Characters
- Asteria — Titan mother (Coeus’s daughter); later Delos in other tales
- Crius, Eurybia, Coeus, Phoebe — grandparents (Titan generation)
- Hecate — only child of Perses and Asteria; honored by Zeus
- Leto — maternal aunt (in this stemma)
- Perses — Titan father (Crius’s son)
- Zeus — confirms and expands her portions
Places
- (No single earthly locale in the parentage passage)
- Cosmic domains — earth, sea, and heaven (her Hesiodic shares)
Themes
Narrative
Hesiod places Hecate as only child of the Titan Perses (son of Crius and Eurybia) and Asteria (daughter of Coeus and Phoebe). She is thus cousin to Leto and to the luminous children of Hyperion’s line—an only daughter whom Zeus, in the *Theogony*’s famous digression, does not diminish but honors above all with shares in earth, sea, and starry heaven, and with power in every sacrifice.
This entry isolates the genealogical knot: Hecate is not Night-born here but a Titan granddaughter bridging Crius’s and Coeus’s houses. Her later cult as crossroads and witch-goddess builds on Hesiod’s already exceptional honor, while Asteria’s Delian fate and Perses’ name (“Destroyer”) color the family without altering Hesiod’s grant of privileges.