Nyx — Primordial Night

The House of Night at the Edge of Tartarus

Hesiod gives Night a precise address, and it is not a pleasant one. In a later passage of the Theogony he describes the far boundary of the world beside Tartarus: there stands "the dread house of murky Night, wrapped in dark clouds," and before it Atlas holds up the sky. Night and Day approach each other there and exchange greetings as they pass over a great bronze threshold; one goes down into the house as the other goes out, and the house never holds both at once. Day carries light for mortals, while Night carries Sleep in her arms, "deadly Night, veiled in mist." In the same neighbourhood live her sons Hypnos and Thanatos, whom the shining sun never looks on.

Later poets turned this geography into a chariot ride. In Euripides' Ion, a tapestry shows Night driving her chariot across the sky in black robes, with the stars following her, and Roman writers such as Virgil speak of Nox rising from Ocean. The image of Night as a charioteer is real, but it belongs mostly to tragedy and later poetry rather than to Hesiod.

Night as Oracle and Mother of the World

Several competing creation stories gave Nyx a higher rank than Hesiod does. In Aristophanes' Birds, the chorus parodies a cosmogony in which "black-winged Night" lays a wind-egg in the depths of Erebus, and from it springs golden-winged Eros, who then sets the rest of creation going. The joke only works because audiences recognised the pattern from religious poetry.

That poetry survives in fragments of the Orphic theogonies. In these versions Night is not simply an early goddess but a source of wisdom and continuity between the generations of gods. She is said to give oracles from a cave, and when Zeus comes to power he consults her about how to establish his rule over the cosmos. The Derveni papyrus, the oldest surviving Greek book, a fourth-century BC commentary on an Orphic poem, calls Night the "immortal nurse of the gods" who prophesies from her inner sanctuary. The pseudo-Orphic Hymn to Night, from the Roman imperial period, addresses her as mother of gods and men.

The oracular Night was not only literary. Pausanias saw an "oracle of Night" on the acropolis of Megara, one of very few recorded places where she had anything like a cult. Ordinary Greeks seem not to have built temples to her; she received offerings mainly in the context of mystery religion and occasional sacrifices of black animals, a standard offering to dark powers.

Nyx in Ancient Art

Night is rarely labelled in Greek art, but a few images are secure. Pausanias describes the Chest of Cypselus at Olympia, an elaborately carved archaic chest, on which a woman held two sleeping children: a white one, Sleep, and a black one, Death, with their feet twisted. An inscription named her as Night. On the great Altar of Zeus at Pergamon, whose Gigantomachy frieze is now in Berlin, a goddess identified as Nyx takes part in the war against the Giants, hurling a vessel wrapped by a snake at her opponent. On vases, Nyx sometimes appears as a veiled woman driving a chariot down towards the sea as Helios rises, the reverse of the dawn scenes more often painted for Eos.

What People Often Get Wrong

Nyx is not the first being in Hesiod. Chaos comes first; Gaia, Tartarus and Eros follow, and only then does Chaos produce Erebus and Night. The idea that Night is the very first principle belongs to the Orphic and other alternative cosmogonies. She is also not the wife of Zeus, nor a figure of evil. Her children include the Fates, Eris and Nemesis, but also Philotes (Affection) and the Hesperides in some lists. Hesiod's catalogue is less a list of horrors than a map of everything that lies outside human control. For the wider sequence of primordial beings, see the Greek creation myth.

Ancient sources

• Hesiod, Theogony 123–125, 211–232 and 744–766 — Nyx's birth from Chaos, her children with and without Erebus, and the house of Night where Night and Day pass on the bronze threshold.
• Homer, Iliad 14.256–261 — Hypnos recalls fleeing to Night, "subduer of gods and men," and Zeus holding back his anger out of respect for her.
• Aristophanes, Birds 693–702 — black-winged Night lays a wind-egg in Erebus from which Eros is born.
• Derveni papyrus and the Orphic fragments — Night as nurse of the gods and giver of oracles who advises Zeus.
• Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.40 and 5.18 — the oracle of Night at Megara and the image of Night with Sleep and Death on the Chest of Cypselus.

Frequently asked questions

Why was Zeus afraid of Nyx?

Homer does not explain it, only that Zeus would not do anything displeasing to "swift Night." The likeliest reading is that Night is older than Zeus and outside the order he controls; even the king of the gods respected the primordial powers.

Who is Nyx's husband?

Erebus, the primordial Darkness, with whom she had Aether and Hemera. Most of her other children she produced alone.

What is the Roman name for Nyx?

Nox. She plays a similar role in Latin poetry but had little independent cult in Rome.

Is Nyx the mother of the Fates?

In Hesiod's list of Night's children, yes. Elsewhere in the same poem, though, the Moirai are daughters of Zeus and Themis, so Hesiod himself preserves two traditions.