Nyx

• 1. Introduction

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  Nyx is the Greek goddess who personifies the night, and in Homer's Iliad even Zeus, king of the gods, is said to be in awe of displeasing her. The Romans called her Nox, which also means Night. Poets placed her among the very first beings in existence. Some made her the mother of Sleep, Death and Strife. Others gave her a family so different that the stories barely resemble one another. This documentary follows several questions. Where did Nyx come from, and why do ancient writers disagree so sharply about her children? Why did some thinkers believe the universe began with her rather than with anything bright? What was she supposed to look like, and where was her house? And what did the ancient world actually do to honor her?

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• 2. Daughter of Chaos

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  Hesiod composed his Theogony in the late 8th century BC, and the Greeks regarded it as the standard account of how the gods began. In it, Nyx is born of Chaos together with her brother Erebus, whose name means Darkness. Their union is the first sexual coupling in the poem. It produces two children who are their opposites: Aether, the upper sky, and Hemera, Day.

  Then Nyx bears more children entirely on her own, with no father. Most are grim. They include Doom, Destruction, Death in the form of Thanatos, Blame, Pain, Deceit, Old Age and Strife. Yet the list also holds Hypnos, who is Sleep, along with the Dreams, the Fates and Nemesis. Even Philotes, whose name means Love, appears among her brood. Hesiod's audience would not have heard these names as mere ideas. They were forces that held real power in the world.

  Hesiod places her house at the far western end of the Earth, though he is unclear whether it lies beyond the river Oceanus. In a somewhat confused passage, he puts it near the entrance to the underworld and wraps it in dark clouds. The Titan Atlas stands outside, holding up the sky. Nearby are the homes of two of her sons, Hypnos and Thanatos. Nyx shares the house with her daughter Hemera, and they never meet inside. At the threshold they pass one another, one leaving while the other enters. While one crosses the Earth, the other waits within for her turn. On her own journey, Nyx wears a vaporous cloud and carries Hypnos in her arms.

  Homer gives that sleeping son a story of his own. In the Iliad, the goddess Hera begs Hypnos to lull Zeus to sleep. He refuses, and reminds her of the last time she asked. Back then, Zeus slept while Hera persecuted Heracles, and Zeus woke furious. Hypnos says Zeus would have thrown him into the sea had he not fled to the protection of Nyx. Scholars have drawn two conclusions from this scene. One suggestion is that Homer knew a genealogy in which Nyx came even before Oceanus and Tethys, who are often taken as the primeval couple of the Iliad. Pietro Pucci adds that the story may come from an earlier work with a fuller account.

  Centuries later, in the 5th century, the poet Nonnus told a different version of the persuasion. In his Dionysiaca, Iris visits Hypnos at Hera's request, wearing the ugly form of his mother Nyx, and talks him into helping.

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• 3. Rival Family Trees

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  Not every ancient writer accepted Hesiod's version of Nyx's children. In one early account she is the mother of Tartarus, with Aether as the father. In others she bears Eros to Aether, or bears Aether, Eros and Metis to Erebus. The poet Bacchylides apparently made Hemera the daughter of Nyx and Chronos, who is Time, and elsewhere names Hecate as her daughter. Aeschylus calls Nyx the mother of the Erinyes, the Furies. Euripides, meanwhile, gives her a daughter named Lyssa, or Madness, fathered by Uranus.

  The Romans produced even longer lists. Cicero names Aether and Dies, meaning Day, as the children of Nox and Erebus. He then adds a crowd of troubles, among them Guile, Fear, Toil, Envy, Lamentation, Fraud and Obstinacy, together with Favour, Darkness and Misery. Hyginus makes Nox the daughter of Chaos and Caligo, meaning Mist. By Erebus she bears Cheerfulness, Friendship and Pity beside Discord and Petulance. Her children also include Styx, the three Parcae named Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, and three Hesperides named Aegle, Hesperia and Erythea. Several other Roman sources call her the mother of the Furies, sometimes naming Pluto as their father.

  Later Greek writers kept adding variants. Quintus Smyrnaeus calls Nyx the mother of Eos, the dawn. The Byzantine author Tzetzes gives her the Fates, apparently fathered by the Titan Cronus. Nonnus follows Hesiod in making her a child of Chaos. But the 12th-century writer Michael of Ephesus, whose work was wrongly credited to Alexander of Aphrodisias, makes her the daughter of Oceanus and the mother of Uranus.

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• 4. Before Everything

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  Philodemus, writing in his work On Piety, reports that the legendary poet Musaeus considered Tartarus and Night to be the first beings, followed by Air. He says Epimenides, from the 7th or 6th century BC, named Air and Night as the two first principles from which everything else is built. The Neoplatonist Damascius adds that Tartarus is born from that pair and produces two Titans. Acusilaus, from the 6th century BC, put Chaos ahead of Erebus and Night, who then produce Aether, Eros and Metis. A comment on Theocritus offers a different pairing, with Night and Aether as the parents of Eros.

  The comic playwright Antiphanes, from the 4th century BC, told the story another way, as recorded by the Christian writer Irenaeus. In his version Night exists first, alongside Silence, and from them comes Chaos. Night and Chaos then give rise to Eros, who in turn produces Light and the first generation of gods. Philodemus also records that Chrysippus called Night the first goddess in the first book of his Physics.

  The most vivid picture comes from Aristophanes, in his comedy The Birds, staged in 414 BC. It parodies a creation story that many scholars think was Orphic, a tradition attributed to the legendary poet Orpheus.

  In the beginning were Chaos and Night and black Erebus and broad Tartarus, and no Earth, Air, or Sky. And in the boundless bosom of Erebus did black-winged Night at the very start bring forth a wind egg, from which as the seasons revolved came forth Eros the seductive, like to swift whirlwinds, his back aglitter with wings of gold.

  A fragment of Euripides' play Hypsipyle, performed around 411-407 BC, seems to echo the same tradition, naming Night and Erôs among the early gods. Luc Brisson reads these passages as traces of an ancient version of the Orphic theogony. In his view, Night is alone at the start and lays the egg from which Eros and then everything else arises. Alberto Bernabé likewise sees a very old poem built around Eros hatching from an egg produced by what he calls Chaos-Night.

  The oldest Orphic poem we can name is the Eudemian Theogony, from the 5th century BC. It takes its name from Eudemus of Rhodes, a student of Aristotle, whom Damascius used as his source. The one certain fact about the poem is where it begins. Damascius says it made its start from Night, the same place Homer begins, although Homer did not make his genealogy continuous. Aristotle himself writes in his Metaphysics of theologians who make Night the parent of all. The Byzantine author John the Lydian cites Orpheus for three first beginnings: Night, Ge and Ouranos. From this, West concludes that Night is the mother of Uranus and Gaia, whose own children Oceanus and Tethys would then produce the Titans.

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• 5. Nurse of the Gods

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  A burned and fragmentary papyrus found at Derveni carries a commentary dating to around the end of the 5th century BC. It preserves an Orphic poem now called the Derveni Theogony. In it, Night appears to be the first deity. According to Bernabé, she exists eternally before the cosmos, in a state of cold and passive darkness. One surviving line calls Ouranos the son of Night, the first to become king. Who his father was remains unclear. Bernabé argues that Night produced him without a partner, though others have criticized that view. Some suggest Aether, others Phanes, and Gábor Betegh adds Gaia as another of her children.

  The poem calls Night the immortal nurse of the gods. In its story she shelters the young Zeus. After Zeus overthrows his father Cronus and becomes king, he returns to ask how to secure his rule. She is described as the one who knows all the oracles, and she speaks her prophecy from within her shrine, called an adyton. Zeus then swallows either the phallus of Uranus or the body of Phanes, depending on how scholars reconstruct the lines. Readers have compared Night here to Gaia in Hesiod, who is also a mother of Uranus and also stays on as a guide to younger gods. Gaia receives the infant Zeus, just as Night nurses him. Gaia's own prophecy leads Zeus to swallow his wife Metis.

  The Rhapsodies, or Rhapsodic Theogony, is the longest Orphic poem and dates to the 1st century BC or AD. Its first god is Chronos, yet fragments still give Night a primordial role. Writers describe the mass from which Chronos emerges as dark and shadowy. John Malalas says Orpheus names gloomy Night as the one who comes first. When Phanes bursts from the cosmic egg that Chronos has made, a bright light appears, and Night alone looks upon him. Phanes then builds the cosmos inside her cave. A passage says the father made these things in the misty cave, and Hermias places him in the shrine of Night. Proclus calls the pair two rulers seated eternally in the innermost shrine.

  In this poem, Night is both the consort and the daughter of Phanes, and their children are Uranus and Gaia. She is the second ruler of the gods. Proclus says Phanes hands her a sceptre he made himself, willingly, and she later gives it just as willingly to her son Uranus. With the sceptre she seemingly receives the gift of prophecy.

  As nurse, she raises her grandson Cronus, and West suggests she may have raised all the Titans. According to Hermias, the nymphs Amalthea and Adrasteia raise young Zeus in her cave. Adrasteia guards the entrance, clanging cymbals. When Zeus grows up, Night tells him he will become the fifth king of the gods. She then gives him a plan against his father: use a trick through honey. She tells him to wait until Cronus stands under tall trees, drunk with the work of loud-buzzing bees, and then bind him.

  After his victory, Zeus asks how to make his rule last. Night advises him, and he consumes Phanes, taking the whole of creation into his stomach. From then on Zeus keeps her as his advisor. On her recommendation, he seats Nomos, meaning Law, beside him. She also prophesies that Themis, who becomes his consort, will remain a virgin until a son of Cronus and Rhea is born.

  A much later writer, Libanius of the 4th century AD, gives Night one more prophecy. In the usual Greek telling, Zeus and Poseidon both desire the Nereid Thetis, until the Titan Themis warns them that her son will be greater than his father. Libanius says it was Nyx who delivered that warning.

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• 6. Three Nights

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  Hermias reports that three Nights have been handed down in Orpheus. The first prophesies, and is tied to understanding. The middle one is revered, and is tied to moderation. The third gave birth to justice. Scholars disagree about what that means.

  Clémence Ramnoux reads the three as a feminine trinity gathered around Phanes: his mother, his consort and his daughter. Bernabé, in his collection of Orphic fragments, sorts the passages about Night into three groups and treats the Nights as separate deities in different parts of the story. For him, the first is primordial and eternal, the offspring of Chronos. She is the Night who watches Phanes emerge, the nurse of the gods, and the prophet who receives her gift from Chronos. He reads a line from Proclus, saying Phanes brings forth the Nights and, as a father, has intercourse with the middle one, as the second Night giving birth to the third.

  Brisson takes a different view. He sees Night as the feminine half of the bisexual god Phanes, and so at once his mother, sister and daughter. On this reading, when Phanes mates with Night, he is mating with his own feminine side. Dwayne Meisner rejects the idea of three separate Nights altogether. He interprets the passage from Hermias as Neoplatonic allegory. One passage from Proclus complicates the count further, because it apparently describes five Nights rather than three.

  The fifth of the Orphic Hymns, probably of the 2nd century AD, is addressed to Night. It calls her the mother of gods and men, who gave birth to all, and in that role names her Cypris, a title of Aphrodite. In the proem to the Hymns, Orpheus speaks to Musaeus and calls her the oldest of all. The later Orphic Argonautica, from the 4th or 5th century AD, mentions holy oracles of Night about the lord Bacchus.

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• 7. Gates and Chariots

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  Alcman, a choral poet of the 7th century BC, placed Nyx in the far north, according to a note on Sophocles. He called the Riphean Mountains the breast of black night. Stesichorus, in his Geryoneis in the 6th century BC, seems to put her beyond Oceanus in the far west. There, after Helios crosses the river at the end of the day, he reaches the depths of holy, dark night. The philosopher Parmenides borrows Hesiod's picture of Night and Day taking turns and speaks of the gates of the ways of Night and Day. Walter Burkert says Parmenides also placed the Heliades in her house. In Euripides' Orestes she lives in Erebus, and Sophocles mentions the springs of Night, which lie in the north. Apollonius of Rhodes, in the 3rd century BC, writes that the river Eridanus rises at the end of the earth, where the gates and precincts of Night stand.

  The tragedians gave her a body and a vehicle. In the Ion of Euripides, she is robed in black and rides a chariot pulled by two horses. She prepares it as Helios finishes his journey, and the stars accompany her across the sky. In a fragment from his Andromeda, she drives through Olympus, and in the Orestes he gives her wings. Aeschylus dresses her in a black robe studded with colourful stars. Apollonius shows her putting the yoke on her horses as the sun sets. Theocritus calls the stars the attendants at the chariot of quiet Night.

  Roman poets stressed how frightening she could be. In Virgil's Aeneid, in the 1st century BC, Nox seems to live in the underworld while she drives her chariot across the sky. Tibullus gives the chariot four horses, with the Stars following behind and Sleep coming after them. Statius calls Sleep her charioteer. Ovid, in his Fasti, pictures a wreath of poppy around her head. Poppy, the flower of drowsiness, makes the last of these portraits the gentlest of the lot.

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• 8. Clay, Stone and Altars

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  Pausanias describes the chest of Cypselus, a 6th-century BC object, which showed Nyx as nurse to Hypnos and Thanatos. She held each of the two gods, shown as children, in one of her hands. This is one of the few images of Nyx that can be identified with confidence, because she lacks any fixed appearance. In ancient Greek and Roman art she is easily confused with Selene and Eos. The earliest surviving image is an Attic lekythos from around 500 BC. It shows her driving a two-horse chariot away from Helios, who rises into the sky in his quadriga as the new day begins.

  In the 5th century BC she appears on vases beside Helios, Selene and Eos, usually winged. On the lid of an Athenian pyxis, she drives a chariot with four horses and stars scattered above her head. She heads toward a column that marks the edge of the world, with Selene and Helios, or perhaps Eos, following behind. Sometimes she wears a dress with black borders or a black cloth over her clothes. On an Attic kylix, a winged figure, probably Nyx, walks behind Selene's horse in a black-bordered peplos.

  After the 5th century BC she no longer shares the scene with other celestial gods, and most identifications are uncertain. One candidate is a figure on the Gigantomachy frieze of the Pergamon Altar, from the 2nd century BC. She grabs the edge of a bearded giant's shield and holds a jar with a snake coiled around it in her other hand. Later artists often show her as a velificans, with a veil billowing behind her head. On Roman sarcophagi, a figure who puts others to sleep may be her.

  She had very little place in cult. Pausanias records an oracle of Night on the acropolis of Megara, beside temples of Dionysus Nyktelios and Zeus and a sanctuary of Aphrodite. A commentator on Pindar claims Nyx was the first owner of the Oracle of Delphi, followed by Themis and then Python. Menander Rhetor says that Apollo competed with Nyx, Poseidon and Themis for control of Delphi. Plutarch mentions an oracle shared by Nyx and Selene. Pausanias also notes a statue of Night in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, made by the artist Rhoecus.

  Roman authors mention animals sacrificed to her. Ovid speaks of black roosters, Statius of black bulls, and Virgil of a black sheep.

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