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"It is your custom to help this house more than you ought. " - Thanatos, Euripides, Alcestis 19 ff (trans. Vellacott) (Greek tragedy C5th B.C.)
Greek Name
Θανατος
Transliteration
Thanatos
Roman Name
Mors, Letum
Translation
Death (thanatos)
THANATOS was the god or personified spirit (daimon) of non-violent death. His touch was gentle, likened to that of his twin brother Hypnos (Sleep). Violent death was the domain of Thanatos' blood-craving sisters, the Keres, spirits of slaughter and disease.
Thanatos plays a prominent role in two myths. Once when he was sent to fetch Alkestis (Alcestis) to the underworld, he was driven off by Herakles in a fight. Another time he was captured by the criminal Sisyphos (Sisyphus) who trapped him in a sack so as to avoid death.
In Greek vase painting Thanatos was depicted as a winged, bearded older man, or more rarely as a beardless youth. He often appears in a scene from the Iliad, opposite his brother Hypnos (Sleep) carrying off the body of Sarpedon. In Roman sculptural reliefs he was portrayed as a youth holding a down-turned torch and wreath or butterfly which symbolised the soul of the dead.
Thanatos and the body of Sarpedon, Athenian red-figure lekythos
Thanatos' duties as a Guide of the Dead were sometimes superseded by Hermes Psychopompos. Conversely, Thanatos may have originated as a mere aspect of Hermes before later becoming distinct from him.
The god's character is established by Hesiod in the following passage of the Theogony:
And there the children of dark Night have their dwellings, Sleep and Death, awful gods. The glowing Sun never looks upon them with his beams, neither as he goes up into heaven, nor as he comes down from heaven. And the former of them roam peacefully over the earth and the sea's broad back and is kindly to men; but the other has a heart of iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whomsoever of men he has once seized he holds fast: and he is hateful even to the deathless gods.[7]
An Orphic Hymn that invoked Thanatos, here given in late 18th century translation:
To Death, Fumigation from Manna.
Hear me, O Death, whose empire unconfin'd
extends to mortal tribes of ev'ry kind.
On thee, the portion of our time depends,
whose absence lengthens life, whose presence ends.
Thy sleep perpetual bursts the vivid folds
by which the soul, attracting body holds:
common to all, of ev'ry sex and age,
for nought escapes thy all-destructive rage.
Not youth itself thy clemency can gain,
vigorous and strong, by thee untimely slain.
In thee the end of nature's works is known,
in thee all judgment is absolved alone.
No suppliant arts thy dreadful rage controul,
no vows revoke the purpose of thy soul.
O blessed power, regard my ardent prayer,
and human life to age abundant spare.[15]
Thanatos has also been portrayed as a slumbering infant in the arms of his mother Nyx, or as a youth carrying a butterfly (the ancient Greek word "ψυχή" can mean soul or butterfly, or life, amongst other things) or a wreath of poppies (poppies were associated with Hypnos and Thanatos because of their hypnogogic traits and the eventual death engendered by overexposure to them).
He is usually described as winged and with a sword sheathed at his belt. In Euripides' Alcestis (438 BCE), he is depicted dressed in black and carrying a sword. Thanatos was rarely portrayed in art without his twin brother Hypnos.
FAMILY OF THANATOS
Hypnos (left) and Thanatos (right) carrying dead Sarpedon, while Hermes watches. Inscriptions in ancient Greek read HVPNOS-HERMES-θΑΝΑΤΟS (here written vice versa). Attic red-figured calyx-krater, 515 BC.
ENCYCLOPEDIA
THA′NATOS (Thanatos), Latin Mors, a personification of Death. In the Homeric poems Death does not appear as a distinct divinity, though he is described as the brother of Sleep, together with whom he carries the body of Sarpedon from the field of battle to the country of the Lycians. (Il. xvi. 672, xiv. 231.) In Hesiod (Theog. 211, &c. 756) he is a son of Night and a brother of Ker and Sleep, and Death and Sleep reside in the lower world. (Comp. Virg. Aen. vi. 277.) In the Alcestis of Euripides, where Death cones upon the stage, he appears as an austere priest of Hades in a dark robe and with the sacrificial sword, with which he cuts off a lock of a dying person, and devotes it to the lower world. (Alcest. 75, 843, 845.) On the whole, later poets describe Death as a sad or terrific being (Horat. Carm. i. 4. 13, Sat. ii. 1. 58), but the best artists of the Greeks, avoiding any thing that might be displeasing, abandoned the ideas suggested to them by the poets. and represented Death under a more pleasing aspect. On the chest of Cypselus, Night was represented with two boys, one black and the other white (Paus. v. 18. § 1), and at Sparta there were statues of both Death and Sleep. (iii. 18. § 1.) Both were usually represented as slumbering youths, or as genii with torches turned upside down. There are traces of sacrifices having been offered to Death (Serv. ad Aen. xi. 197; Stat. Theb. iv. 528; Lucan, vi. 600; Philostr. Vit. Apoll. v. 4), but no temples are mentioned anywhere.
PAEAN (Paian, Paiêôn or Paiôn), that is, "the healing." The name was used in the more general sense of deliverer from any evil or calamity (Pind. Pyth. iv. 480), and was thus applied to Apollo and Thanatos, or Death, who are conceived as delivering men from the pains and sorrows of life. (Soph. Oed. Tyr. 154 ; Paus. i. 34. § 2 ; Eurip. Hippol. 1373.) With regard to Apollo and Thanatos however, the name may at the same time contain an allusion to paiein, to strike, since both are also regarded as destroyers. (Eustath. ad Hom. p. 137.)
Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
CLASSIC LITERATURE QUOTES
PARENTAGE OF THANATOS
PARENTAGE OF THANATOS
Hesiod, Theogony 21 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"And Nyx (Night) bare hateful Moros (Doom) and black Ker (Violent Death) and Thanatos (Death), and she bare Hypnos (Sleep) and the tribe of Oneiroi (Dreams). And again the goddess murky Nyx, though she lay with none, bare Momos (Blame) and painful Oizys (Misery), and the Hesperides . . . Also she bare the Moirai (Moirae, Fates) and the ruthless avenging Keres (Death-Fates) . . . Also deadly Nyx bare Nemesis (Envy) to afflict mortal men, and after her, Apate (Deceit) and Philotes (Friendship) and hateful Geras (Old Age) and hard-hearted Eris (Strife)."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Preface (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"From Nox (Night) and Erebus [were born] : Fatum (Fate), Senectus (Old Age), Mors (Death) [i.e. Thanatos], Letum (Dissolution) [i.e. Ker], Continentia (Moderation), Somnus (Sleep), Somnia (Dreams), Amor (Love)--that is Lysimeles, Epiphron (Prudence), Porphyrion, Epaphus, Discordia (Discord), Miseria (Misery), Petulantia (Wantonness), Nemesis (Envy), Euphrosyne (Good Cheer), Amicitia (Friendship), Misericordia (Compassion), Styx (Hatred); the three Parcae (Fates), namely Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos; the Hesperides."
[N.B. In Latin Thanatos is translated as Mors, and Ker (the other death daimon) as Letum.]
Cicero, De Natura Deorum 3. 17 (trans. Rackham) (Roman rhetorician C1st B.C.) :
"Their [Aether and Hemera's] brothers and sisters, whom the ancient genealogists name Amor (Love), Dolus (Guile), Metus (Fear), Labor (Toil), Invidentia (Envy), Fatum (Fate), Senectus (Old Age), Mors (Death) [i.e. Thanatos], Tenebrae (Darkness) [i.e. Keres], Miseria (Misery), Querella (Complaint), Gratia (Favour), Fraus (Fraud), Pertinacia (Obstinacy), the Parcae (Fates), the Hesperides, the Somnia (Dreams): all of these are fabled to be the children of Erebus (Darkness) and Nox (Night)."
[N.B. Cicero translates Thanatos as Mors and Keres as Tenebrae.]
SYMBOLISM
POPPIES
BUTTERFLIES
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