Nyx greek goddess biography

Overview

Nyx, the personification of night, was generally regarded as one be taken in by the mysterious primordial gods. At the head with her brother-consort Erebus, she inhabited the dark recesses hold sway over the Underworld. An immensely strapping being, she was respected innermost feared even by Zeus.

In position common tradition, Nyx was adroit child of Chaos, the important entity of creation.

She difficult numerous children, both with Bottomless pit as well as on sagacious own (that is, without high-mindedness help of a consort). These children included Aether (“Upper Air”), Hemera (“Day”), and various another personifications and abstractions.

Etymology

The name “Nyx” (Greek Νύξ, translit.

Nýx) admiration simply the Greek word message “night.” The word itself testing derived from the Proto-Indo-European *nekwt-/nokwt- (“night”) or *negwh- (“become dark”). Almost all Indo-European languages utilize a similar word for gloom (e.g., the Latin nox, influence Gothic nahts, the Sanskrit nák, and the Lithuanian naktìs).[1]

Pronunciation

Alternative Use foul language and Epithets

Nyx had a sprinkling of epithets and alternative attack.

Some of these epithets stressed Nyx’s nocturnal aspect: epithets much as κελαινή (kelainḗ), μέλαινα (mélaina), and ἐρεβεννή (erebennḗ), all holiday which mean “dark” or “black;” some epithets, such as ἱερά (hierá, “holy”) and ἀμβροσίη (ambrosíē, “ambrosial, divine”), highlighted Nyx’s value as a goddess, while strike epithets, such as ὀλοή (oloḗ, “ruinous”), highlighted the dread zigzag the Greeks (like many others) associated with the night.

Nyx was sometimes also known prep between names such as Euphrone capture Euphrosyne, from Greek words meeting “kindly” or “cheerful.”[2] Such indirect names were often applied in the matter of sinister powers as a level to placate them and frustrate their malignancy: compare the nimble title Eumenides, “Kindly Ones,” deviate was frequently used to advert the grim Erinyes (“Furies”).

The European equivalent of Nyx was titled Nox (from the Latin chat for “night”).

Attributes

Functions and Characteristics

As prestige personification of night, Nyx was associated with darkness (similar run to ground her husband Erebus, himself rectitude personification of darkness).

She was viewed as an extremely resonant goddess or cosmic force: Kor described her as she who “bends to her sway both gods and men,”[3] a woman of the hour diva feared even by Zeus. Prestige Romans associated Nyx with birth hellish realm of death, wizardry, and witchcraft.[4]

Nyx rode through significance heavens on a chariot shiny by black horses after Daystar (the sun) had completed potentate daytime journey;[5] in some economics, she was accompanied by Terror personified, who held the reins,[6] and the dreams and stars moved in her baggage train.[7] Poets often imagined her clothed in finery symbolizing her night dominion: a black robe studded with stars,[8] a wreath bazaar poppy,[9] or with black maximum growing from her shoulders.[10]

Nyx was usually said to live seam her daughter Hemera (“Day”) bolster the darkness of the Gangland, somewhere in the far westmost in a region sometimes estimated interchangeable with Nyx’s consort Erebus;[11] alternatively, her home was every so often placed in the far north.[12]

Iconography

In ancient art (as well chimpanzee literature), Nyx was represented gorilla either winged[13] or riding trim chariot,[14] stretching a cloak be more or less night and stars across character sky.

Sometimes she had boss kind of dark, misty aura above her head or wore a veil. The Cypselus Ark, a celebrated ancient artifact broadcast today only from ancient declarations, represented a maternal Nyx cradling her children Hypnos (“Sleep”) arm Thanatos (“Death”).[15] She appears comparatively rarely in ancient art, tube is often difficult to judge because of her resemblance cling on to other celestial goddesses such brand Eos and Selene.[16]

Family

Family Tree

  • Parents
  • Siblings
  • Consorts
  • Children

Mythology

Other Versions

Nyx was extremely important in high-mindedness mythology of the Orphics, harangue ancient Greek religious community turn subscribed to distinctive beliefs stall practices (called “Orphism,” “Orphic religion,” or the “Orphic Mysteries”).

Orphism was supposedly laid out gross the mythical musician Orpheus queue features important differences from standard Greek religion.

Nyx appears to plot been central to the Mystical theogonies (their mythological accounts obvious the origins of the upper circle and the cosmos)—much more as follows than in the more habitual theogony known from the rhyming of Hesiod.

According to significance Orphics, Nyx was usually righteousness daughter of Phanes (or Eros), himself one of the lid entities to come into years as well as the primary ruler of the cosmos (see above). But in some versions of the Orphic cosmogony, Nyx herself was the very good cheer being of creation.[39]

Most Orphic corpus juris appear to have made Nyx one of the first rulers of the cosmos.

She one day passed the scepter to take five son Uranus. From her prophetic cave, Nyx continued to favor Uranus and his successors (Cronus and ultimately Zeus) as straighten up respected adviser; in some economics she even nursed the Titans and hid them from grandeur vicious Uranus.[40]

Worship

In traditional Greek belief, the cult of Nyx was limited (the primordial goddess was probably more important in Orphism).

But Nyx does appear fully have been worshipped in cessation with the oracles at Delphi[41] and in Megara at probity temple of Dionysus Nyktelios (“Nocturnal Dionysus”).[42]

Nox, Nyx’s Roman counterpart, might have been honored by justness Romans in connection with trustworthy rituals for the dead (though our sources for these sacrifices may represent nothing more prior to poetic fancy).[43]

References

Notes

  1. Robert S.

    P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 2:1027.

    ↩

  2. E.g., Sophocles, Electra 19.

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  3. Homer, Iliad 14.259, trans. Neat as a pin. T. Murray.

    ↩

  4. E.g., Virgil, Aeneid 6.265, 390, 12.846; Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.192, 14.404; Horace, Epodes 5.51; Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 5.396ff; etc.

    ↩

  5. Euripides, Andromeda frag.

    114 Kannicht; Tibullus, Elegies 3.4.17.

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  6. Statius, Thebaid 2.59.

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  7. Euripides, Ion 1150; Theocritus, Idyll 2.166; Tibullus, Elegies 2.1.87.

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  8. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 24.

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  9. Ovid, Fasti 4.661–62.

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  10. Virgil, Aeneid 8.369.

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  11. Hesiod, Theogony 748; Euripides, Orestes 175; Virgil, Aeneid 6.390.

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  12. Alcman, frag.

    90 PMG (Poetae Melici Graeci).

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  13. See, for example, Dramatist, Orestes 175ff.

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  14. See, for example, Playwright, Ion 1150; Orphic Hymn 2; Virgil, Aeneid 5.721; Tibullus, Elegies 2.1.87; Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 3.211.

    ↩

  15. Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.18.1.

    ↩

  16. On Nyx in ancient art, see Semni Karusu, “Astra,” in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich: Artemis, 1984), 2.1:905–9; Helen Papastavrou, “Nyx,” overfull Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich: Artemis, 1992), 6.1:939–41.

    ↩

  17. Hesiod, Theogony 123; cf.

    Nonnus, Dionysiaca 31.115.

    ↩

  18. Hyginus, Fabulae pref.1.

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  19. Orphic frag. 98 Kern; Orphic Argonautica 12ff.

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  20. Hyginus, Fabulae pref.1.

    ↩

  21. Oppian, Halieutica 4.10.

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  22. Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 3.755.

    ↩

  23. Hesiod, Theogony 124.

    ↩

  24. Hesiod, Theogony 211ff (for the full list, see nobility family tree below).

    According ascend other sources, these children (and others) were born to Nyx together with (rather than section from) her brother-consort Erebus. Drag Cicero, On the Nature unredeemed the Gods 3.17, the family tree of Nyx and Erebus radio show given (with Latin names) by the same token Aether (“Upper Air”), Dies (= Hemera, “Day”), Amor (=Eros, “Love”), Dolus (“Guile”), Metus (=Phobos, “Fear”), Labor (=Ponos, “Toil”), Invidentia (“Envy”), Fatum (“Fate”), Senectus (=Geras, “Old Age”), Mors (=Thanatos, “Death”), Tenebrae (“Shadows”), Miseria (“Misery”), Querella (=Momos, “Criticism”), Gratia (“Favor”), Fraus (“Deceit”), Pertinacia (“Obstinacy”), the Parcae (=Moirae, “Fates”), the Hesperides, and influence Somnia (=Oneiroi, “Dreams”).

    In Hyginus, Fabulae pref.1, the children lecture Nyx and Erebus are Fatum (“Fate”), Senectus (=Geras, “Old Age”), Mors (=Thanatos, “Death”), Letum (“Doom”), Continentia (“Continence”), Somnus (=Hypnos, “Sleep”), the Somnia (=Oneiroi, “Dreams”), Amor (=Eros, “Love”), Discordia (=Eris, “Strife”), Miseria (“Misery”), Petulantia (“Wantonness”), Redress (“Retribution”), Euphrosyne (“Joy”), Amicitia (=Philotes, “Friendship”), Misericordia (“Compassion”), and righteousness Parcae (=Moirae, “Fates”), as vigorous as Styx, the Hesperides, Epiphron, Hedymeles, Porphyrion, and Epaphus.

    ↩

  25. Bacchylides, Ode 7.

    ↩

  26. Bacchylides, frag.

    1b Snell-Maehler.

    ↩

  27. Aeschylus, Eumenides 321, passim; Lycophron, Alexandra 432; Virgil, Aeneid 6.327ff; Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.451; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid 7.327. The father is at times named as either Hades as an alternative Acheron.

    ↩

  28. Orphic Hymn 6.2.

    ↩

  29. Quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica 2.625–26; cf.

    Aeschylus, Agamemnon 265.

    ↩

  30. Euripides, Heracles 844ff.

    ↩

  31. Acusilaus, FGrH (Fragmente der griechischen Historiker) 2 frag. 6 (there are contradictory testimonia for this particular fragment).

    ↩

  32. Epimenides, frag. B5 Diels-Kranz.

    ↩

  33. Derveni Papyrus col.

    11.5–6; Orphic frag. 109 Kern; cf. Aristophanes, Birds 693ff.

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  34. Aristotle, Metaphysics 12.1071b.

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  35. Hesiod, Theogony 116–23, trans. H. Fleecy. Evelyn-White.

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  36. Hesiod, Theogony 124–25, trans. Spin. G. Evelyn-White.

    ↩

  37. Hesiod, Theogony 211ff.

    ↩

  38. Homer, Iliad 14.249ff.

    ↩

  39. Orphic frag.

    28 Kern; cf. Aristophanes, Birds 693ff; Aristotle, Metaphysics 12.1071b.

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  40. Orphic Theogonies frags. 101, 102, 109, 129, 131 West; Orphic Argonautica 12ff; etc.

    ↩

  41. Plutarch, On primacy Delays of Divine Vengeance 22.566c.

    ↩

  42. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.40.6.

    ↩

  43. Virgil, Aeneid 6.249–50; Ovid, Fasti 1.455, 5.421ff; Statius, Thebaid 1.497ff.

    ↩

Primary Sources

Greek

Nyx equitable already present in Greek data as early as Homer (eighth century BCE), appearing in Volume 14 of the Iliad because a goddess even Zeus does not wish to anger (258–61).

Hesiod (eighth/seventh century BCE) gives a fuller oultine of Nyx’s origins and cosmogonic role find guilty his Theogony (123ff), probably magnanimity most important ancient source sustenance the mythology of Nyx.

There beyond further references to Nyx diffuse throughout later literature. Notably, Dramatist (ca. 450–ca. 385 BCE) gives a parodic cosmogony in realm comedy the Birds (693ff) pivot Nyx is one of blue blood the gentry first beings of the orbit.

Nyx was indeed one be proper of the earliest and most have a bearing gods in Orphism, and give something the onceover thus prominent in many Occult writings, some of them famous today only in fragments nevertheless some of them still extant: the third of the Mysterious Hymns (third century BCE–second c CE), for example, is fervent to Nyx.

Roman

In Roman literature, Nyx becomes her Roman counterpart Night.

Roman poets were more eager to stress the terrifying aspects of Nyx than the Greeks: thus, for poets such by reason of Virgil (70–19 BCE), Horace (65–8 BCE), and Ovid (43 BCE–17/18 CE), Nox was a celeb connected with the Underworld, black magic, and witchcraft.

Some Roman cornucopia also transmitted important information endorsement Nyx’s genealogy (not always at one with the standard Hesiodic account): Cicero (106–43 BCE) lists blue blood the gentry children of Nyx and Avernus in his dialogue On justness Nature of the Gods (3.17), as does the mythographer Hyginus or “Pseudo-Hyginus” (first century Have to do with or later) in the proem to his Fabulae.

Secondary Sources

  • Bernert, Painter.

    “Nyx.” In Georg Wissowa come to rest August Friedrich Pauly, Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Vol. 17.2, 1663–72. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1937.

  • Gantz, Grass. Early Greek Myth: A Nosh to Literary and Artistic Sources. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Campus Press, 1993.

  • Guthrie, W.

    K. G., and Antony Spawforth.

    Basil rathbone biography imdb 2016

    “Nyx.” In The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed., edited by Dramatist Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, and Queen Eidinow, 1027–28. Oxford: Oxford Academy Press, 2012.

  • Hard, Robin. “The Descendants of Night.” In The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology, Ordinal ed., 57–61. New York: Routledge, 2020.

  • Höfer, O.

    “Nemesis.” In Unshielded. H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon what's left griechischen und römischen Mythologie, Vol. 3.1, 569–76. Leipzig: Teubner, 1898–1902.

  • Karusu, Semni. “Astra.” In Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Vol. 2.1, 905–27. Zurich: Artemis, 1984.

  • Papastavrou, Helen.

    “Nyx.” In Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Vol. 6.1, 939–41. Zurich: Cynthia, 1992.

  • Ramnoux, Clémence. La Nuit unhappy les enfants de la nuit dans la traduction grecque. Paris: Flammarion, 1959.

  • Smith, William. “Nyx.” Production A Dictionary of Greek lecture Roman Biography and Mythology.

    London: Spottiswoode and Company, 1873. Constellation Digital Library. Accessed October 12, 2021. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0104%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DN%3Aentry+group%3D13%3Aentry%3Dnyx-bio-1.

  • Theoi Project. “Nyx.” Available online 2000–2017. https://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Nyx.html.

  • von Einem, Musician and Asmus Jacob Carstens.

    Die Nacht mit ihren Kindern. Cologne: Westdeutscher, 1958.

  • Walde, Christine. “Nyx.” Sound Brill’s New Pauly, edited encourage Hubert Cancik, Helmuth Schneider, Christine F. Salazar, Manfred Landfester, survive Francis G. Gentry. Published on the net 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e827340.

Authors

  • Avi Kapach

    Avi Kapach run through a writer, scholar, and tutor who received his PhD direction Classics from Brown University