She appears relatively rarely in ancient art, and is often difficult to identify because of her resemblance to other celestial goddesses such as Eos and Selene. The Cypselus Chest, a celebrated ancient artifact known today only from ancient descriptions, represented a maternal Nyx cradling her children Hypnos (“Sleep”) and Thanatos (“Death”). Sometimes she had a kind of dark, misty halo above her head or wore a veil. In ancient art (as well as literature), Nyx was represented as either winged or riding a chariot, stretching a cloak of night and stars across the sky. Nyx was usually said to live with her daughter Hemera (“Day”) in the darkness of the Underworld, somewhere in the far west in a region sometimes considered interchangeable with Nyx’s consort Erebus alternatively, her home was sometimes placed in the far north. Poets often imagined her clad in finery symbolizing her nocturnal dominion: a black robe studded with stars, a wreath of poppy, or with black wings growing from her shoulders. Nyx rode through the heavens on a chariot drawn by black horses after Helios (the sun) had completed his daytime journey in some accounts, she was accompanied by Sleep personified, who held the reins, and the dreams and stars moved in her baggage train. The Romans associated Nyx with the hellish realm of death, magic, and witchcraft. She was viewed as an extremely powerful goddess or cosmic force: Homer described her as she who “bends to her sway both gods and men,” a goddess feared even by Zeus. Attributes Functions and CharacteristicsĪs the personification of night, Nyx was associated with darkness (similar to her husband Erebus, himself the personification of darkness). The Roman equivalent of Nyx was called Nox (from the Latin word for “night”). ![]() Nyx was sometimes also known by names such as Euphrone or Euphrosyne, from Greek words meaning “kindly” or “cheerful.” Such euphemistic names were often applied to sinister powers as a way to placate them and neutralize their malignancy: compare the gentle title Eumenides, “Kindly Ones,” that was frequently used to invoke the grim Erinyes (“Furies”). ![]() Some of these epithets emphasized Nyx’s nocturnal aspect: epithets such as κελαινή ( kelainḗ), μέλαινα ( mélaina), and ἐρεβεννή ( erebennḗ), all of which mean “dark” or “black ” some epithets, such as ἱερά ( hierá, “holy”) and ἀμβροσίη ( ambrosíē, “ambrosial, divine”), highlighted Nyx’s importance as a goddess, while other epithets, such as ὀλοή ( oloḗ, “ruinous”), highlighted the dread that the Greeks (like many others) associated with the night. Nyx had a handful of epithets and alternative names. Almost all Indo-European languages employ a similar word for night (e.g., the Latin nox, the Gothic nahts, the Sanskrit nák, and the Lithuanian naktìs). Nýx) is simply the Greek word meaning “night.” The word itself is derived from the Proto-Indo-European * nekwt-/ nokwt- (“night”) or * negwh- (“become dark”).
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