Somnus- Roman GodDeity"God of Sleep"

The Cave

Ovid placed him in the land of the Cimmerians, where perpetual cloud hides the sun. A stream trickles past the cave mouth, its murmuring enough to dull any waking mind. Poppies and soporific herbs carpet the threshold. Inside, no rooster crows and no wind stirs. Somnus lies on a bed of ebony, draped in dark fabric, and around him his thousand sons drift without shape, waiting to be sent into the sleeping world as dreams.

He is a son of Nox and twin brother of Mors. Virgil set them together at the entrance to the underworld in the Aeneid's sixth book, and Roman sculptors carved them as matching winged youths on sarcophagi, one torch upright, one inverted.

Iris and the Dream of Ceyx

Ovid tells the story in full. King Ceyx of Trachis drowned at sea, and Juno sent Iris to Somnus's cave to arrange a dream for the grieving queen Alcyone. Iris descended through the rainbow and entered the cave, pushing the shapeless dreams aside. Her radiance lit up the darkness, but Somnus could barely lift his eyelids. She repeated her message three times before he understood.

Somnus roused Morpheus, the son who could take human shape in dreams. Morpheus flew to Alcyone's bedside wearing Ceyx's drowned face, seawater dripping from his beard and hair. He told her the ship had gone down, that he was dead, that her prayers had not reached him in time. Alcyone woke screaming and threw herself from the cliffs at dawn. The gods turned them both into kingfisher birds.

Palinurus

Somnus could kill. In the Aeneid, Jupiter needed Aeneas's fleet to reach Italy, and the price was one life. Somnus descended onto the stern of Aeneas's ship disguised as the crewman Phorbas and sat beside the helmsman Palinurus. He spoke gently, urged Palinurus to rest, and shook a branch dipped in Lethe's water over his eyes. Palinurus fought it. He gripped the tiller and watched the stars. Somnus pushed him overboard, tiller and all, into the dark sea. The fleet sailed on without him. Palinurus swam for days before the people of the Italian coast murdered him on the beach where he washed ashore.