Erebus

Overview

Grim Erebus was the personification of darkness. He was often imagined as one of the primordial gods, inhabiting the dark recesses of the earth near the Underworld. In the common tradition, Erebus was one of the two children of Chaos, the first entity of creation. He married his sister Nyx (“Night”), with whom he had numerous children, including Aether (“Upper Air”), Hemera (“Day”), and various other personifications and abstractions.

Etymology

The name “Erebus” (Greek Ἔρεβος, translit. Erebos) is usually thought to be derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₁regʷ-os-, meaning “darkness” (similar to the Sanskrit rájas, Gothic riqiz, and Old Norse røkkr).^[1]

Some scholars, however, have connected “Erebus” with the Semitic root ‘rb, meaning “to set as the sun, become dark” (compare to the Akkadian erebu and Hebrew erev, meaning “sunset”).^[2]

Attributes

Erebus was associated primarily with darkness, especially the darkness of the Underworld. Indeed, Erebus’ name was often used as a term for the Underworld, more or less interchangeable with Hades or Tartarus.

Family

In the common account, known from Hesiod’s Theogony, Erebus was the child of Chaos, who begot him and his sister Nyx (“Night”) without a consort.^[4] Some traditions, however, made Erebus the son of Chaos and Caligo (“Mist”),^[5] while others made him the son of Chronos (“Time”) and Ananke (“Necessity”).^[6]

Mythology

According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Erebus and his sister Nyx were born to Chaos at the beginning of the cosmos:

In truth at first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night.^[12]

Erebus, the personification of darkness, then married Nyx, the personification of night, and fathered two children with her:

but of Night were born Aether and Day [Hemera], whom she conceived and bore from union in love with Erebus.^[13]

According to Hesiod, Nyx went on to have many more children on her own, without the help of her consort Erebus (among them the grim personifications Nemesis, Thanatos, and the Moirae).^[14] According to other sources, however, Erebus was the father of these children as well (see above).