Nyx

"Night." Nox or Night personified. Homer1 calls her the subduer of gods and men, and relates that Zeus himself stood in awe of her. In the ancient cosmogonies Night is one of the very first created beings, for she is described as the daughter of Chaos, and the sister of Erebus, by whom she became the mother of Aether and Hemera.2 According to the Orphics3 she was the daughter of Eros. She is further said, without any husband, to have given birth to Moros, the Keres, Thanatos, Hypnos, the Oneiroi, Momus, Oizys, the Hesperides, Moirae, Nemesis, and similar beings.4

In later poets, with whom she is merely the personification of the darkness of night, she is sometimes described as a winged goddess,5 and sometimes as riding in a chariot, covered with a dark garment and accompanied by the stars in her course.6

Her residence was in the darkness of Hades.7

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Iconography

Nyx is portrayed as a young women dressed in a star-spangled dress. On several Greek vases she is shown riding a quadriga. A statue of Night, the work of Rhoecus, existed at Ephesus.8 On the chest of Cypselus she was represented carrying in her arms the gods of Sleep and Death, as two boys.9

References

Notes

  1. Homer. Iliad xiv, 259 ff.
  2. Hesiod. Theogony, 123.
  3. Argonautica, 14.
  4. Hesiod. Theogony, 211 ff.; Cicero. On the Nature of the Gods iii, 17.
  5. Euripides. Orestes, 176.
  6. Euripides. Ion, 1150; Theocritus, ii, in fin.; Orphic Hymn 2, 7; Virgil. Aeneid v, 721; Tibullus, ii, 1.87; C. Valerius Flaccus. Argonautica iii, 211.
  7. Hesiod. Theogony, 748; Euripides. Orestes, 175; Virgil. Aeneid vi, 390.
  8. Pausanias. Description of Greece x, 38.3.
  9. ibid. v, 18.1.

Sources

  • Aken, Dr. A.R.A. van. (1961). Elseviers Mythologische Encyclopedie. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.