The so-called “Euphronios Krater,” an Attic red-figure calyx-krater signed by Euxitheos (potter) and Euphronios (painter) showing Hypnos (left) and Thanatos (right) carrying away the body of Sarpedon (center bottom) as Hermes (center top) presides But Thanatos was also represented as the escort of other deceased heroes or mortals. One of the most famous of all Athenian vases, the so-called “Euphornios Krater,” depicts this scene. In the beginning, he was usually depicted as a winged young man in the company of his twin brother Hypnos but over time, Thanatos took on a more frightful appearance, with shaggy hair and beard and a hooked nose.Įspecially popular among artists was the scene from the Iliad in which Thanatos and Hypnos were sent by Zeus to carry the body of the hero Sarpedon from the battlefield. He seems to have been especially prominent in Classical Athenian vase painting. Thanatos appeared in ancient art from an early period. Thanatos seems to have been above all a symbolic entity, representing the inexorable approach of death. But his exact purpose and function is unclear, as it was more often the god Hermes who was considered responsible for bringing souls to the Underworld, while Hades was the ruler of the dead. In literature and art, Thanatos was sometimes represented carrying away the deceased or bringing them to the Underworld. Thanatos lived together with his twin brother Hypnos (“Sleep”) beyond the edge of the earth, in the murky Underworld home of their mother Nyx (“Night”). Occasionally, Thanatos was viewed in a more optimistic light, as a gentle liberator and giver of eternal sleep to weary souls. He could not be swayed by gifts or speeches. Įver relentless, Thanatos always claimed his prize in the end. The poet Hesiod described him as havingĪ heart of iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whomever of men he has once seized he holds fast: and he is hateful even to the deathless gods. A deity without a cult, he was usually met with dread or even hatred. Thanatos was the Greek god or daemon who personified death. Thanatos’ Roman counterpart was called Mors or Letum (Latin words for “death”). Thánatos), appropriately enough, is the Greek word for “death” and is related to verbs such as θνῄσκω ( thnḗ(i)skō), meaning “to die.” It is thought to derive from the Indo-European * dʰ(u)enh₂-, also meaning “to die.” ![]() Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology (First ed.). Online version at Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1916. Spawforth (eds.), Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd rev. ed.), Oxford, ISBN 9780198661726. Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, ISBN 9780631201021.(1997), A Commentary on Ovid, Metamorphoses XI, Hermathena, vol. 162/163, Dublin: Trinity College Dublin, pp. 1–290, JSTOR 23041237. However, Griffin suggests that this division of dream forms between Morpheus and his brothers, possibly including their names, may have been of Hellenistic origin. Tripp calls these three figures "literary, not mythical concepts". The three brothers' names are found nowhere earlier than Ovid, and are perhaps Ovidian inventions. One called Icelos ('Like'), by the gods, but Phobetor ('Frightener') by men, "takes the form of beast or bird or the long serpent", and Phantasos ('Fantasy'), who "puts on deceptive shapes of earth, rocks, water, trees, all lifeless things". ![]() Ovid gives names to two more of these sons of Sleep. Ovid called Morpheus and his brothers, the other sons of Somnus, the Somnia ("dream shapes"), saying that they appear in dreams "mimicking many forms". According to Ovid "no other is more skilled than he in representing the gait, the features, and the speech of men the clothing also and the accustomed words of each he represents." Like other gods associated with sleep, Ovid presents Morpheus as winged. His name derives from the Greek word for form (μορφή), and his function was apparently to appear in dreams in human guise. Ovid makes Morpheus one of the thousand sons of Somnus (Sleep). In Ovid's account, Juno, (via the messenger goddess Iris) sends Morpheus to appear to Alcyone in a dream, as her husband Ceyx, to tell her of his death. The only mention of Morpheus occurs in Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Ovid tells of the story of Ceyx and his wife Alcyone who were transformed into birds. From the Middle Ages, the name began to stand more generally for the god of dreams, or of sleep. In Ovid's Metamorphoses he is the son of Somnus and appears in dreams in human form. Morpheus ('Fashioner', derived from the Ancient Greek: μορφή meaning 'form, shape') is a god associated with sleep and dreams. Morpheus, painted by Jean-Bernard Restout
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