Night
Nyx
ΝύξRoman: Nox
Night, and the mother of nearly everything nobody wants to meet.
Gustave Moreau, 1880
- 2
- epithets
- 0
- cult sites
- 5
- offspring
- 0
- unions
- 1
- recorded birth
Vitals
- Kind
- Primordial
- Generation
- 0
- Domains
- night, the things born without a father
- Accent
- Night — darkness, the moon, sleep, the crossroads
- Sacred symbols
- the dark mantle, the star-veil
- Principal cult sites
- No cult attested
What they were called
ὀλοή
destructive
εὐφρόνη
the kindly time — a name used to avoid saying the real one
Lineage
See in the treeDescent
Hesiod says Erebos and Nyx came out of Chaos, without naming a parent's role.
Offspring in this roster
Notable myths
The Children of Night
Nyx bore Thanatos and Hypnos, the Moirai, Nemesis, Eris and the rest without any father — Hesiod is explicit that she lay with no one. They are the forces that arrive whether or not anyone has done something to deserve them. The genealogy is an argument: death, sleep, apportionment and strife are not punishments handed out by a ruling god, they are older than any ruler.
Hesiod, Theogony 211-225
The One Zeus Would Not Cross
Hypnos once put Zeus to sleep so that Hera could act against Herakles. When Zeus woke he went hunting for Hypnos through the sky, and Hypnos escaped by taking refuge with Nyx. Zeus stopped there. Homer says he held back from doing anything swift Night would find offensive.
Homer, Iliad 14.256-261
The account
Nyx is the most productive figure in the Theogony and one of the least described. She comes out of Chaos alongside Erebos, and with him produces Aither and Hemera — the bright upper air and the day. Then she produces the rest alone, without lying with anyone: Moros and black Ker, Thanatos and Hypnos, the tribe of Dreams, Momos and Oizys, the Hesperides, the Moirai and the Keres, Nemesis, Apate, Philotes, Geras and Eris. That list is essentially the inventory of everything that happens to people against their will. Homer gives her the single most striking line about her standing: Zeus, furious with Hypnos, held back from throwing him out of heaven because he was afraid of doing anything that would displease Night. She is older than the Olympian order and outside it, and the poem treats that as a fact everyone knows rather than something to argue about.
Ancient sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 123
- Hesiod, Theogony 211-225
- Homer, Iliad 14.256-261
Where a line reference is not given, the work is cited without one rather than guessed at.
Image credit
- Title
- Nyx, Night Goddess
- Artist
- Gustave Moreau
- Date
- 1880
- Licence
- Public domain
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