This paper aims at showing the close ties between Renaissance literature and science as emerge from the use and the transformation, in a post-Copernican context, of the myth of Phaeton--according to Greek mythology: the boy who tried to conduct the chariot of the Sun and died in this attempt. G.B. Benedetti's analysis and criticism of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," book two, provides an insight into this literary and scientific issue. Astronomical poems and variations of Phaeton's myth by other illustrious Renaissance men--including T. Brahe and King James of Scotland and England--are taken into account, as well.