In Greek mythology, Nyx is Night itself. Hesiod's Theogony makes her a primordial goddess who comes into being from Chaos, long before Zeus and the Olympians. By her brother Erebus she becomes the mother of Day and the bright upper air. On her own she bears Sleep, Death, the Fates, Strife and a long line of other powers. Homer adds the detail most people remember: Zeus himself would not risk angering her.
She drives a dark chariot across the sky. She cradles Sleep and Death in her arms, and she lives in a house at the edge of the world that she shares, by turns, with her own daughter. The surviving accounts of Nyx come from poets who gave her different ranks, from Hesiod's genealogy to some Orphic traditions that placed her first.
In This Article
- Night Before the Olympians
- Her Children With Erebus
- The Children She Bore Alone
- The House of Night
- Why Zeus Held Back
- Other Stories of the First Night
- Worship and Images
- Key Takeaways
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Nyx's Place Among the Primordial Gods
Night Before the Olympians
Hesiod's Theogony, composed around 700 BCE, is the oldest connected account of the Greek gods, and it gives Night a very early birth. First came Chaos, a gap or void. Then came Gaia (Earth), Tartarus and Eros. From Chaos came Erebus and "black Night." Nyx thus belongs among the earliest divine beings in Hesiod's account.
Because she arrives so early, modern handbooks call her primordial. Nyx does not govern the night the way Poseidon governs the sea. She is the goddess of night because she is the night. When darkness spreads over the sky each evening, Nyx herself has come.
The Romans called her Nox, and Latin poets took over the Greek genealogy along with the figure. They added little story of their own, but they kept her moving. In Book 5 of Virgil's Aeneid, black Night rides up the sky in her two-horse chariot and holds the heavens while the Trojans sleep.
Her Children With Erebus
Lines 123 to 125 of the Theogony give Nyx and Erebus two children: Aether, the bright upper air, and Hemera, Day. Hesiod says Night conceived and bore them after mingling in love with Erebus. Two beings born of Chaos thus join to make the first light the world has seen.
The parents are partners with separate regions. Erebus is the darkness under the earth and in its deep places. In Homer's Odyssey, the souls of the dead rise out of Erebus to meet Odysseus, so his name marks the dark road to Hades. Nyx is the goddess of darkness that covers the open sky. Hesiod keeps the two apart as siblings, and most later writers follow him.
Erebus does almost nothing else in the poem, and this single union is enough. The dark below the world meets the dark above it. What they produce is Aether, the shining air where the gods live, and Hemera, the day itself. In Hesiod's world, light is born straight out of darkness.
The Children She Bore Alone
A few lines later Hesiod lists a second family. He is explicit that Night bore these children without lying with anyone. They include:
- Moros (Doom), the Keres, and Thanatos (Death)
- Hypnos (Sleep) and the tribe of Dreams
- Momus (Blame) and Oizys (Misery)
- the Hesperides, who tend golden apples beyond the river Ocean
- the Moirai (Fates) and Nemesis
- Apate (Deceit), Philotes (Affection), Geras (Old Age), and Eris (Strife)
It is a grim household. Hesiod says the Keres and the Fates pursue the wrongs of men and gods and never let their anger go until the offender has paid. Nemesis brings retribution. Momus finds fault, Oizys brings grief, and Geras wears bodies down. Even the gentler children belong to the hours after dark: Dreams arrive in sleep, and the Hesperides keep their garden in the far west, where the sun goes down.
Eris carries the line one generation further. Hesiod gives her a brood of her own, including Toil, Famine, Battles and Lies. Strife, a daughter of Night, fathers nothing and mothers misery.
Hesiod did not settle every name. Near line 904 of the same poem, the Moirai are daughters of Zeus and Themis, and the Theogony keeps both parentages side by side.
The House of Night
Hesiod also gives Nyx an address. In his tour of the world's edges, the dread house of gloomy Night stands wrapped in dark clouds. Her sons live close by. Sleep moves gently over land and sea, while Death has a heart of iron and lets go of no one he has caught.
At the house, Night and Day greet each other as they cross a great bronze threshold. One goes down into the house as the other comes out, and the house never holds both at once. Hemera, born of Nyx and Erebus, now takes turns with her mother across the same doorway, and every sunrise and sunset is that handover between mother and daughter. Day goes out carrying light for people on earth. Night goes out carrying Sleep in her arms.
Why Zeus Held Back
The best-known story about Nyx is one speech in Book 14 of Homer's Iliad. Hera asks Hypnos to put Zeus to sleep, and Hypnos hesitates because he has done it before. That time, Hera was harassing Heracles at sea while Zeus slept. Zeus woke in a rage and hunted through the halls of the gods for Hypnos, meaning to throw him from the sky into the sea.
Hypnos fled to Night, whom Homer calls the subduer of gods and men. Zeus stopped there. Angry as he was, he shrank from doing anything that would displease swift Night.
Nyx does not fight, threaten or even speak in the scene. She only has to be there. Among the Greek gods Nyx is one of very few figures who can turn the king of the gods aside, and Homer gives no reason for it. Zeus, the god who threw Hephaestus out of heaven and held Hera by her wrists, lets his quarry go.
Other Stories of the First Night
Hesiod's order of creation was never the only one. In Aristophanes' comedy Birds, staged in 414 BCE, the chorus sings a creation story designed to flatter birds. In the beginning were Chaos, Night, black Erebus and Tartarus. Black-winged Night laid a wind-egg in the boundless lap of Erebus, and from it, as the seasons turned, Eros hatched with golden wings. Birds, the chorus claims, descend from Eros and are therefore older than the gods.
The passage is a joke, and most scholars read it as parody of creation poems then in circulation, especially those attributed to Orpheus. In some Orphic traditions, Night has a much larger part. Damascius, a late Neoplatonist, reports that the older scholar Eudemus of Rhodes described an Orphic theogony that began from Night herself. In that version she is no longer Chaos's daughter but the first being of all. In the Orphic Rhapsodies, by contrast, Nyx is Phanes's daughter and succeeds to his power.
The Derveni papyrus fits the same pattern. This charred commentary on an Orphic poem was found near Thessaloniki in 1962. It describes Night prophesying from her innermost shrine and Zeus seeking her counsel. Homer's Zeus avoids offending Night, and the Orphic Zeus goes further, learning from her. Neither tradition was correcting an official version. Each built its own sequence of creation, and Night's rank moved with it.
Worship and Images
Nyx appears mostly in poetry, but literary invocations, notices of local worship and images offer different kinds of evidence for her place in ancient religion. The first is literary invocation. The Orphic Hymn to Night, from a collection usually dated to the Roman imperial period, opens by hailing her as mother of gods and men. It shows the words used to pray to her, though not where or how often anyone prayed them.
Local worship, the second kind, is scarce. Pausanias, who wrote his travel guide to Greece in the second century CE, reports an oracle of Night on the acropolis of Megara, near a temple of Dionysus Nyctelius. He says nothing about how it worked or who consulted it. He also credits the early sculptor Rhoecus with an image of Night at Ephesus, in the sanctuary of Artemis. Beyond such brief notices, there is little sign of an organized cult.
Images are the richest evidence. Pausanias describes the Chest of Kypselos at Olympia, where one panel showed a woman holding a white child asleep in one arm and a black child in the other. The inscriptions named the children Sleep and Death and the woman Night, nurse of both.
On the Great Altar of Pergamon, carved in the second century BCE, a goddess fights a Giant, wielding a vessel with a snake coiled around it. Often identified as Nyx, she is not securely named: the Pergamonmuseum catalogue also discusses Persephone and one of the Fates as possible identifications. On a terracotta lekythos attributed to the Sappho Painter, the Metropolitan Museum of Art identifies Helios rising, with Nyx driving her chariot away to the left and Eos to the right.
Key Takeaways
- Nyx is Night itself, born from Chaos in Hesiod and older than the Titans and Zeus.
- With Erebus she bears Aether and Hemera; alone she bears Sleep, Death, the Fates, Strife and more.
- She shares a house at the world's edge with her daughter Day, crossing its bronze threshold as Day leaves.
- In Book 14 of the Iliad, Zeus gives up chasing Hypnos rather than displease her.
- Some Orphic traditions begin with Night; others make her Phanes's daughter and successor. Orphic sources also present her as Zeus's adviser.
- Pausanias records an oracle of Night at Megara. He also describes her image at Ephesus and her depiction on the Chest of Kypselos; these images alone do not establish worship.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does Zeus fear Nyx?
In Book 14 of the Iliad, Zeus gives up punishing Hypnos once Hypnos takes refuge with Nyx, rather than risk displeasing her. Homer does not explain why Zeus holds her in such awe.
Was Nyx good or evil?
Ancient sources portray Nyx differently. Hesiod's Theogony calls her “evil Night” in H. G. Evelyn-White's translation and makes her the mother of Death, Misery and Strife. By contrast, the Orphic Hymn to Night calls her “Blessed, benevolent” in Thomas Taylor's translation and asks her to dispel fear.
Who was Nyx in love with?
Erebus, her brother, is Nyx's partner in Hesiod, who says she mingled in love with him and bore Aether and Hemera. Aristophanes' parody also pairs them, placing her egg in his lap. In the Orphic Rhapsodic tradition, Nyx also mates with Phanes; in that genealogy, she is his daughter and succeeds to his power, rather than being the first deity.
Who are Nyx's children?
With Erebus, Nyx has Aether and Hemera. On her own, according to Hesiod, she bears Thanatos, Hypnos, the Dreams, the Moirai, the Keres, Nemesis, Eris and several others. Through Eris, her line extends to Toil, Famine, Battles and Lies.
Who is Nyx?
Nyx is the Greek personification of Night. She is born from Chaos in Hesiod's Theogony, older than Zeus and the Olympians, and the Romans called her Nox.
Nyx's Place Among the Primordial Gods
In Hesiod's account, Nyx stands near the beginning of creation and gives birth to Day, Sleep, Death and Strife. Homer gives her a different kind of stature: Zeus abandons his pursuit of Hypnos rather than displease her. From the house she shares by turns with Day to the oracle Pausanias records at Megara, Night belongs both to stories of the world's beginnings and to local religious life.