Erebus — Primordial Darkness

What Hesiod Actually Says

Hesiod deals with Erebus in just three lines of the Theogony. "From Chaos came Erebus and black Night; and from Night, in turn, came Aether and Day, whom she conceived and bore after mingling in love with Erebus." That is the whole of his part in the myth. He never acts, speaks, or appears again in the poem. A common mistake is to call Erebus the father of all of Nyx's children. In Hesiod, Night produces Doom, Fate, Thanatos, Hypnos, the Dreams, the Moirai, Nemesis, Eris and the others "without lying with anyone." Only Aether and Hemera are said to be Erebus' children.

Later writers made the family much larger. The Latin handbook of Hyginus lists a long brood of personified forces born to Nox and Erebus, including Fate, Old Age, Death, Sleep, Dreams, Discord, Misery and the Fates. Cicero, in On the Nature of the Gods, has a similar list, and late tradition even makes the ferryman Charon one of their sons. If you see Erebus called the father of Thanatos or Hypnos, the source is Roman, not Hesiod.

Erebus in Other Creation Stories

Greek cosmogony was never a single fixed account, and Erebus is ranked differently in different versions. In Aristophanes' Birds, the chorus parodies an Orphic-style creation. At first there were Chaos, Night, black Erebus and broad Tartarus, and no earth or sky. Then black-winged Night laid a wind-egg "in the boundless bosom of Erebus," and from it hatched golden-winged Eros. Here darkness is the nest from which Love is born, not just the partner of Night. Other Orphic and philosophical cosmogonies started instead with Time, Water, or a primeval egg. In those versions Erebus is a minor element or is left out entirely. For an overview of how the various accounts compare, see the Greek creation myth.

A Place as Much as a Person

In Homer, "Erebus" is almost always a place or a direction, not a god. When Circe instructs Odysseus in the rites for calling up the dead, she tells him to turn his sacrificial sheep "toward Erebus." Then the souls gather "out of Erebus" to drink the blood. In the Iliad, Athena recalls helping Heracles when he was sent to fetch the hound of Hades "out of Erebus." In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Zeus sends Hermes down to Erebus to bring Persephone back. The word therefore describes the dark passage beneath the earth that leads to the realm of Hades. Roman poets used it the same way. In Virgil's Aeneid, Dido's priestess calls on "Erebus and Chaos" together with triple Hecate as she prepares the magic pyre.

Erebus had no temples, no festivals and no images. No Greek vase or relief has been identified as a portrait of him, and he was not a god whom anyone prayed to. He is best understood as a cosmological principle, what darkness was before anything existed to be lit. Night, by contrast, was a figure poets could imagine driving a chariot or sheltering her son Sleep. In the Iliad, even Zeus holds back from angering swift Night. No poet ever gives Erebus that kind of personality.

The Name

Linguists usually link Erebos to an Indo-European root for darkness. Sanskrit rajas (the dusky middle air) and Gothic riqis ("darkness") are cognates. A connection with the Semitic word for "evening" (as in Hebrew 'ereb) has also been proposed, but it is far less widely accepted. The name lives on in the HMS Erebus, the ship of Sir John Franklin's lost Arctic expedition, and in Mount Erebus in Antarctica, named after that ship.

Ancient sources

• Hesiod, Theogony 123–125 — Erebus and Night come from Chaos; Night bears Aether and Day after union with Erebus.
• Homer, Odyssey 10–11 — Circe tells Odysseus to turn his offerings toward Erebus; the dead rise out of Erebus to speak with him.
• Aristophanes, Birds — the chorus' cosmogony, in which Night lays an egg in the bosom of Erebus and Eros hatches from it.
• Hyginus, Fabulae, preface — a Roman genealogy listing many children of Nox and Erebus.
• Virgil, Aeneid 4 and 6 — Erebus invoked in Dido's magic rites and used as a name for the depths of the Underworld.

Frequently asked questions

Is Erebus the same as Tartarus?

No. Both are primordial, but Tartarus is the deepest pit, far below the Underworld, where the Titans are imprisoned. Erebus is darkness itself, and the shadowy passage between the upper world and the dead.

Who are Erebus' parents?

In Hesiod he has no parents in the usual sense. He simply emerges from Chaos. Roman sources make him a child of Chaos and Caligo (Mist).

Was Erebus married to Nyx?

He is her brother and her partner, and their union produced Aether and Hemera. Hesiod never calls them husband and wife.

Does Erebus appear in any myths?

Hardly at all as a character. He features in creation stories and genealogies, and is otherwise used as a name for the dark of the Underworld.

Books to read next

• Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days (Oxford World's Classics)
• Stephen Fry, Mythos
• Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics)

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