Nyx- Greek PrimordialPrimordial"Night the Subduer"

Born from Chaos

In Hesiod's Theogony, Nyx appeared at the beginning of all things, emerging from Chaos where Gaia and Erebus also took shape. She predates the Titans, predates the separation of sky and earth. When she came into being, there was no sun to banish darkness, no moon to soften it. She was original and absolute, the darkness before any dawn.

Erebus, the darkness of underground places, was both her brother and her consort. Their union produced two children who defied their parents' nature: Aether, the bright upper air, and Hemera, Day itself. Light born from the deepest darkness.

But the children Nyx bore alone, without any father, were darker. Death and Sleep. The three Fates. Nemesis. Strife. Hesiod fills twenty lines of the Theogony naming them all. Among them were the Oneiroi, the thousand dreams. In the Odyssey, Penelope speaks of two gates through which dreams pass to reach the living: true visions through polished horn, false ones through ivory. Both gates stand in Nyx's domain.

Night the Subduer

In the Iliad, Hypnos tells Hera of a time she asked him to put Zeus to sleep so she could persecute Heracles. Hypnos complied, and while Zeus slept, Hera raised storms that blew Heracles to the island of Cos. Zeus awoke in fury and hunted through Olympus for the god who had laid him unconscious. He would have hurled Hypnos from heaven into the sea, but Hypnos fled to his mother Nyx.

Homer calls her "Night the subduer" and says Zeus checked his anger for fear of displeasing "Night the swift." The king of the gods simply would not challenge her. When Hera asks Hypnos to do it again in the same passage, he agrees only after she swears an oath on the river Styx, and only because he knows his mother's protection still holds.

The Bronze Threshold

Nyx dwells in a great palace at the western edge of the world, beyond Oceanus. Hesiod describes the place in the Theogony: when Hemera returns from her travels across the earth, Nyx steps out from the palace with her dark veil to spread night over the world. When Nyx returns at dawn, Hemera goes forth. Mother and daughter greet each other at the great bronze threshold, but they never dwell together. As one steps inside, the other steps out. As one rests, the other works. When it is Nyx's turn, she rides forth in a chariot drawn by dark horses. Her star-flecked veil trails across the sky.

Near this same palace, Hypnos and Thanatos have their dwelling. Hypnos wanders the earth and comes gently upon mortals, but his twin Thanatos has a heart of iron and a spirit of pitiless bronze within him. Once he seizes a man, he does not let go. Close by lies the entrance to Tartarus and the house of Styx. Atlas holds the sky on his shoulders nearby.

The Egg of Night

The Orphic mysteries gave Nyx a different and older role. In the Orphic cosmogonies, she was the first being, the source from which all else came. She laid an egg in the bosom of Erebus, and from it hatched Phanes, also called Eros Protogonos, "First-Born Love," the radiant creator who brought forth the ordered cosmos and then yielded sovereignty to Nyx herself.

Aristophanes parodies this in the Birds: Night lays a wind-egg, golden-winged Eros hatches from it and mingles with Chaos to produce the race of birds. The Derveni Papyrus, dating to the fourth century BCE and the oldest surviving European manuscript, contains an Orphic theogony in which Nyx's pronouncements guide the succession of divine rulers. The Orphic Hymn to Night addresses her as the origin of all things and asks her favor with offerings of incense.

Oracles and Offerings

At Delphi, Nyx held the prophetic site before Apollo. In Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris, the chorus recounts how Night's oracles came first, until the god displaced them.

Pausanias records a cult image of Nyx at Megara, honored alongside other chthonic deities. Black animals were sacrificed to her. Libations poured to her were nephalia: wineless offerings of milk and honey, the same given to the dead and the powers older than wine.

Quintus Smyrnaeus gives the most vivid poetic image: Night rising at day's end, her starry mantle trailing across the darkening sky. On the chest of Cypselus at Olympia, Pausanias describes a more intimate portrait: Nyx carrying twin children in her arms, Hypnos and Thanatos, one white and one dark. Sleep and Death, held together by their mother.