Thanatos, the Personification of Death

Thanatos

He sends those he strikes with his sword to the realm of Hades. Thanatos is depicted as a winged or black-cloaked man carrying a sword.

The Greek poet Hesiod established in his Theogony that Thanatos is the son of Nyx (Night) and Erebos (Darkness) and twin of Hypnos (Sleep).

Homer also confirmed Hypnos and Thanatos as twin brothers in his epic poem, the Iliad, where they were charged by Zeus via Apollo with the speedy delivery of the dead hero, Sarpedon, to his homeland, Lycia.

• Then (Apollon) gave him [Sarpedon] to the charge of swift messengers to carry him, of Hypnos and Thanatos, who are twin brothers, and these two set him down in the rich field of broad Lycia.

Among Thanatos' siblings were other negative personifications, such as Geras (Old Age), Oizys (Suffering), Moros (Ruin), Apate (Disappointment), Momus (Guilt), Eris (Strife), Nemesis (Retribution), and even Charon, the ferryman of Hades. Thanatos was loosely associated with the three Moirae (for Hesiod, also daughters of Night), particularly Atropos, who was a goddess of death in her own right. He is also occasionally specified as being exclusive to peaceful death, while the bloodthirsty Keres personified violent death. His functions as Guide of the Dead were sometimes replaced by Hermes Psychopompos. On the other hand, Thanatos may have originated as a mere aspect of Hermes before later becoming distinct from him.

Thanatos

The character of the god is established by Hesiod in the following passage from the Theogony:

• And there the sons of the dark night have their dwellings, sleep and death, terrible gods. The bright Sun never looks upon them with his rays, neither when he ascends to heaven, nor when he descends from heaven. And the first of them wanders peacefully over the earth and the broad shores of the sea and is kind to men; but the other has a heart of iron, and his spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whatever man he has once seized, he seizes; and he is hateful even to the immortal gods.

Thanatos was considered ruthless and indiscriminate, hated by—and hateful to—both mortals and gods. But in the myths that feature him, Thanatos could occasionally be tricked, a feat that the cunning King Sisyphus of Corinth accomplished twice. When it was time for Sisyphus to die, Zeus ordered Thanatos to chain Sisyphus in Tartarus. Sisyphus cheated death by tricking Thanatos into his own shackles, thus preventing the death of any mortals while the god was so chained.

Eventually, Ares, the bloodthirsty god of war, grew frustrated with the battles he incited, as neither side could afford to suffer any casualties. He released Thanatos and handed his captor over to the god. Sisyphus would escape Death a second time, convincing Persephone to allow him to return to his wife, stating that she never gave him a proper burial. This time, Sisyphus was forcibly dragged back to the Underworld by Hermes, where he was sentenced to an eternity of frustration in Tartarus, rolling a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down when he reached the top.

Thanatos

As the son of Aeolus (and thus a descendant of the Titan Prometheus), Sisyphus was a more than mortal figure: when it came to ordinary humans, Thanatos was generally considered inexorable. The only time he was successfully prevented from claiming a mortal life was by the intervention of the hero Heracles, son of Zeus. Thanatos came to take the soul of Alkestis, who offered her life in exchange for the continued life of her husband, King Admetos of Pherai. Heracles was an honored guest in the House of Admetos at the time, and offered to repay the king's hospitality by wrestling with Death himself for Alkestis's life. When Thanatos ascended from Hades to claim Alkestis, Heracles leapt upon the god and subdued him, earning the right to have Alkestis remain alive, while Thanatos fled, tricked by his prey.

Thanatos once met Macaria, goddess of good death and daughter of Hades and Persephone. Thanatos was in love with the goddess, and she had also been in love with him. So Macaria and Thanatos swore that even though they could not be together, they would stay close to each other. They both proclaimed on the River Styx: "Then let them dig two graves, if I die I promise I will wake up by your side."

Co-author: Eric Borges