Apate

Apate is the personification of deceit in Greek myth. In Hesiod’s Theogony she is one of the children of Night, born without a father, and a sister of Doom, Death, Sleep, Blame, Strife and Old Age. She has no myths of her own: she is named in genealogies and her Latin equivalent, Fraus, appears in the same company.

Parents and Siblings

Hesiod lists Apate among the children Night bore “sleeping with no one”: Doom (Moros), black Fate (Ker), Death (Thanatos), Sleep (Hypnos) and the tribe of Dreams; then Blame (Momus), painful Misery (Oizys), the Hesperides, the Fates (Moirai) and the Keres who punish; and Nemesis, “a plague for mortal men”. “After her,” says Hesiod, “deadly Night bore Apate (Deceit) and Philotes (Affection), and baneful Old Age (Geras), and stubborn-hearted Eris (Strife)” (Hesiod, Theogony 211–225). In this account Apate has no father.

Erebus appears as father in other lists. Cicero reports that the old genealogists made Love, Guile (Dolus), Labor, Envy (Invidentia), Fate, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Complaint, Favour, Fraud (Fraus), Obstinacy, the Fates, the Hesperides and the Dreams all children of Erebus and Night (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.44). Fraus, the Latin word for fraud or deceit, is the Roman name that corresponds to Apate; Cicero lists Guile (Dolus) and Fraud (Fraus) as two separate figures.

Eris and Her Children

Apate’s sister Eris bore a second generation of figures, among them Toil, Forgetfulness, Famine, Tearful Pains, Battles, Murders, Lies, Disputes, Lawlessness, Ruin and Oath (Hesiod, Theogony 226–232). Hesiod does not make Apate the mother of any of them; the Lies (Pseudea) are children of Eris, not of Apate.

Deceit in Hesiod and Homer

The word apate is also used as an ordinary noun for trickery. In the Odyssey, Athena calls Odysseus insatiable in guile and says that not even in his own land would he stop his deceits (apatai) (Homer, Odyssey 13.291–295). In Hesiod, Zeus deceives the mind of his wife Metis with cunning, flattering words before swallowing her, so that she will not bear a child to overthrow him (Hesiod, Theogony 886–900). The poem uses the verb “deceive” and the noun dolos (trick) there, and does not name the goddess Apate in the scene. In the Works and Days, Hermes puts lies, wheedling words and a deceitful nature in Pandora’s heart; Apate is not named among the evils of the story (Hesiod, Works and Days 77–78).

Apate Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 211–232, 886–900; Hesiod, Works and Days 77–78; Homer, Odyssey 13.291–295; Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.44.

See Also: Nyx, Erebos, Oizys, Geras, Nemesis, Eris, Thanatos