Moros

Q: Who was Moros?

Moros (Doom) was a spirit of fate and death in Greek mythology, one of the children of Night. He is named in Hesiod’s Theogony, together with Ker and Thanatos, and no ancient source tells a myth about him or describes a cult.

Moros (Doom) was a spirit of fate and death in Greek mythology, one of the children of Night. He is named in Hesiod’s Theogony, together with Ker and Thanatos, and no ancient source tells a myth about him or describes a cult. Beyond the Theogony, the word moros means a person’s fated end.

Parents and Siblings

Hesiod says that Night, without lying with anyone, bore hateful Moros, the black Ker and Thanatos (Death), and then Hypnos (Sleep) and the tribe of Dreams; after them Momus (Blame), painful Oizys (Distress), and the Hesperides who guard the golden apples beyond Ocean (Theogony 211–216). She also bore the Moirai (Fates) and the pitiless Keres, then Nemesis, Apate (Deceit), Philotes (Love), Geras (Old Age) and Eris (Strife) (Theogony 217–225). In Hesiod, then, Moros is a brother of the Moirai, Thanatos and Ker, since all are children of Night. He is not the father of the Moirai and is not a Moira himself. No ancient source names a wife or children for Moros.

Family of Moros

Parents: Nyx
Siblings: Apate, Eris, Hypnos, Keres, Thanatos, The Fates

See the full family tree

Moros, Thanatos and the Moirai

The Theogony lists Moros beside Thanatos, but gives no more than their names and common mother. The Moirai are named separately: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, who give people good and evil at birth and punish transgressions of men and gods (Theogony 217–222). Hesiod elsewhere says that the Moirai were also the daughters of Zeus and Themis, honoured above all by Zeus (Theogony 901–906). The two traditions in the same poem give the Moirai different parents.

Moros and the Power of Fate

Homer uses the word in the sense of a fated end. In the Odyssey, Zeus complains that mortals blame the gods for their troubles, when in fact they suffer “beyond their fate” (hyper moron) through their own recklessness, as Aegisthus did (Odyssey 1.32–35). The Iliad shows how Zeus treats fate. When he sees his son Sarpedon about to be killed by Patroclus, he considers snatching him from the battle, but Hera objects: would he rescue a mortal man long doomed by fate (aisa) from death? The other gods will not approve, and Zeus gives way, shedding bloody raindrops for his son (Iliad 16.431–461). In this scene fate is not a person: neither Moros nor the Moirai is named, and it is Hera who reminds Zeus of what is fated.