[3] In most versions, Clymene is the one to reveal to Phaethon his divine parentage and encourage him to seek out his father, and even drive his solar chariot to catastrophic results.

The Greek proper name Κλυμένη (Kluménē) is the feminine form of Κλύμενος (Klúmenos), meaning "famous".

[6] Although she shares name and parentage with Clymene, the wife of Iapetus, who is also a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys (and thus one of her sisters), she is nevertheless distinguished from her.

[7] In another version, attributed to the pseudo-Hesiodic work Catalogue of Women, Clymene is the mortal daughter of Minyas, who married Helios and had Phaethon by him.

Here the poet merely describes them as the common stables of the Morning and of the Sun; but further on he tells us they were near to the dwellings of Merops, and in fact the whole plot of the piece has reference to this.

[14]Another fragment, of uncertain position in the play, also preserved by Plutarch, has Clymene state she loathes the handy horned bow, and youths' pastime exercises, as they remind her of her son.

[20] Sometime later, after Aphrodite cursed Helios to fall in love with the mortal princess Leucothoe, he is said to have forgotten all his previous lovers, Clymene included.

Their wedding was attended by the Horae, Naiad nymphs who danced around, the lights of the sky such as Helios' sister Selene and Eosphorus (the planet Venus), the Hesperides, and Clymene's family.

The torch of love was stronger than the blaze of his car and the shining of his rays, when over the bend of the reddened Ocean as he bathed his fiery form in the eastern waters, he beheld the maiden close by the way, while she swam naked and sported in her father's waves.

[33] The Themistian asteroid 104 Klymene was named after the many women called Clymene in Greek mythology, Phaethon's mother included.