Thanatos

Thanatos was the Greek personification of death, a divine being who came to take a mortal to the house of Hades. Hesiod counts him among the children of Night and calls him and his brother Sleep “dread gods”; in Homer he is the twin of Sleep (Hesiod, Theogony 211–212, 758–766; Homer, Iliad 16.672). He appears in only a few stories, among them the death of Sarpedon, the myth of Alcestis and the cunning of Sisyphus.

Thanatos and Hades

Thanatos is not the ruler of the dead. Hades is the god of the Underworld and its king, while Thanatos is the figure who brings a person there. In Euripides’ Alcestis Apollo calls him the priest of the dead who is about to take Alcestis down to the house of Hades, and he is described as the black-robed lord of the dead (Euripides, Alcestis 24–27, 843). He carries a sword, with which he cuts a lock of hair from the head of the person he is taking, as a first offering to the gods below (Alcestis 74–76).

Hesiod describes the home of Sleep and Death in the Underworld, where the sun never looks upon them. Sleep goes quietly and gently over the earth and the sea, but Death has a heart of iron and a pitiless bronze spirit in his chest: he keeps whomever he first catches, and he is hated even by the immortal gods (Hesiod, Theogony 758–766). In the Alcestis he says as much himself, that his ways are hateful to mortals and gods (Alcestis 62).

Thanatos' Family

In Hesiod, Thanatos is a child of Nyx (Night), who bore her children without lying with any god. Night bore Moros (Doom), the black Ker, and Thanatos; she also bore Hypnos (Sleep) and the tribe of Dreams, and later Momus, Oizys, the Hesperides, the Moirai (Fates), the Keres, Nemesis (Retribution), Apate (Deceit), Philotes (Love), Geras (Old Age), and Eris (Strife) (Theogony 211–225). His twin brother was Hypnos: Homer calls Sleep and Death twins (Iliad 16.672) and when Hera goes to Sleep for help the poet calls him “brother of Death” (Iliad 14.231). Hesiod names no father. A later genealogy, which Cicero reports from the old genealogists, makes Death (Mors) one of the children of Erebus and Night, together with Old Age, Fate, Dreams, the Fates and the Hesperides (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.44).

The same pair appears in Pausanias’ description of the chest of Cypselus at Olympia, where a woman, Night, holds a white child asleep on her right arm and a black child on her left, and the inscriptions say that they are Death and Sleep (Pausanias 5.18.1).

Thanatos in the Iliad

When Sarpedon, the son of Zeus, is killed at Troy, Zeus tells Apollo to cleanse the body, bathe it in a river, anoint it with ambrosia and give it to the swift escorts Sleep and Death, twin brothers, who carry it to the rich land of Lycia, where his kinsmen will bury it with a mound and a stele (Iliad 16.666–683; cf. 16.454–457).

Thanatos and Alcestis

In Euripides’ Alcestis, Apollo tricked the Fates so that Admetus could escape his own death if someone else died in his place, and only his wife Alcestis agreed (Alcestis 10–21). Thanatos arrives at the palace to take her, and Apollo, who is there, tries to persuade him to allow her to live to old age. Thanatos refuses: he wins a greater prize when the young die (Alcestis 52–55). Apollo warns him that a man will come to the house of Admetus and take Alcestis from him by force (Alcestis 64–69). That man is Heracles, who stops at the house as a guest, learns what has happened and goes to wait at the tomb. He plans to lie in ambush and seize Thanatos when he comes to drink the blood of the offerings, and not to let him go until he releases the woman (Alcestis 843–860). Heracles returns with Alcestis and says that he wrestled the lord of the spirits at the tomb (Alcestis 1140–1142).

Thanatos outsmarted

Thanatos was believed to be merciless, and both mortals and gods hated him (Hesiod, Theogony 764–766). However, he could sometimes be outsmarted. According to a scholion on the Iliad that cites Pherecydes, Zeus was angry at Sisyphus, who had shown the river god Asopus where his daughter Aegina had been taken, and so he sent Thanatos to him. Sisyphus saw him coming and bound him in strong chains. As a result no one died, until Ares freed Thanatos and handed Sisyphus over to him (Scholiast on Homer, Iliad 6.153, citing Pherecydes). See the page on Sisyphus for the rest of that story.

Thanatos Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 211–225, 758–766; Homer, Iliad 14.231, 16.454–457, 16.666–683; Euripides, Alcestis 24–76, 843–860, 1140–1142; Pausanias 5.18.1; Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.44; the scholion on Iliad 6.153 (citing Pherecydes).

See Also: Hades, Nyx, Hypnos, Eris, Nemesis, Sisyphus, Alcestis, Heracles