Helios had an earthly wife too, and a son named Phaëton, who once begged to be allowed to drive the chariot of the sun for just one day.  Helios yielded; but poor Phaëton had no strength nor skill to guide the horses in the right curve.  At one moment they rushed to the earth and scorched the trees, at another they flew up to heaven and would have burnt Olympus, if Jupiter had not cast his thunderbolts at the rash driver and hurled him down into a river, where he was drowned.  His sisters wept till they were changed into poplar trees, and their tears hardened into amber drops.