Thanatos- Greek GodDeity"Brother of Sleep"

Son of Night

Thanatos was born to Nyx, the primordial night, alongside his twin Hypnos. They were children of Night alone, without a father. Nyx bore many dark powers into being, but Thanatos and Hypnos alone were twins.

He was not the Keres, who gnash their teeth and drag the wounded through battlefield carnage. The poet of the Shield of Heracles paints them drenched in gore. Thanatos came quietly. His was the death from age or fate's decree. He accepted no offerings and had no altar. Prayer was useless.

The Dwelling Beyond the Gates

Thanatos and Hypnos dwell together beyond the gates of the underworld, in the land of murky darkness where Night spreads her veil. The Sun never looks upon them, neither when he climbs the sky nor when he descends. Hypnos roams the earth freely and comes gently to men, but Thanatos has a heart of iron and a spirit of pitiless bronze within his breast. He walks among mortals when their hour comes. Whomever he seizes, he holds fast. Even the deathless gods hate him. What he takes stays taken.

Twin of Sleep

When Zeus's son Sarpedon, prince of Lycia, fell to Patroclus at Troy, Zeus commanded Apollo to cleanse the body and anoint it with ambrosia. He sent the twin brothers, Sleep and Death, to carry Sarpedon swiftly home to Lycia, where his kinsmen would honor him with tomb and pillar.

Elsewhere in the Iliad, the gulf between the twins is clear: Hera can bribe Hypnos with one of the Graces as a bride. No god attempts to bargain with Thanatos.

The Chaining by Sisyphus

Sisyphus, king of Corinth, tricked Thanatos. When the god came to claim him, Sisyphus asked to see the bonds intended for him. The moment Thanatos held them out, Sisyphus snapped them onto the god himself.

With Death chained, no mortal could die. The sick suffered without release. Warriors fell in battle but could not perish. Ares, robbed of his casualties, freed Thanatos and delivered Sisyphus to the underworld. But Sisyphus had planned for that too. He had told his wife beforehand to leave his body unburied, and once below, he convinced Persephone to let him return to the surface to arrange proper rites. He never came back willingly. Hermes dragged him below a second time. His punishment in Tartarus was to roll a boulder up a hill forever, watching it tumble back each time he neared the top.

Alcestis and the Rights of Death

Apollo had served King Admetus of Pherae as a herdsman and won him a rare concession from the Fates: Admetus could escape death if someone volunteered to die in his place. His wife Alcestis offered herself. When the hour came, Apollo confronted Thanatos before the palace and pleaded with him to spare her. Thanatos refused. He carried a sword, and with it he would cut a lock of the dying woman's hair, the ritual act that separates the soul from the body.

In Euripides, the two gods argue. Thanatos insists on his rights: the laws of death apply equally to all, and Apollo's intervention is an affront. When Apollo hints that a stronger force will come to take Alcestis back, Thanatos dismisses the warning and enters the palace to claim the queen.

The Wrestling with Heracles

Apollo's prophecy was fulfilled when Heracles arrived at Admetus's palace as a guest. Admetus hid his wife's death from his guest and entertained Heracles lavishly. Hospitality demanded no less, even in grief. When a servant let the truth slip, Heracles went to the tomb and lay in ambush for Thanatos, who would come to drink the blood offerings at the grave.

Thanatos appeared. Heracles seized him and wrestled him into submission until the god released Alcestis's shade. Heracles brought the veiled woman back to Admetus, who at first refused her, believing it improper to take another woman into his house. Only when the veil was removed did Admetus recognize his wife, restored from the dead but unable to speak for three days until her consecration to the underworld had been ritually dissolved.

The Winged Youth

Greek artists gave Thanatos the face of a beautiful young man with dark wings. On the Euphronios krater, painted around 515 BCE, the twins lift Sarpedon's body from the battlefield while Hermes directs them. Their faces are calm. On the chest of Cypselus at Olympia, Pausanias saw a woman holding two children, one white and one dark: Sleep and Death in their mother's arms. The Spartans placed statues of both brothers side by side at Lacedaemon.

On Attic funerary lekythoi, Thanatos carries an inverted torch, the flame turned toward the earth.