His duties as a Guide of the Dead were sometimes superseded by Hermes Psychopompos. He is also occasionally specified as being exclusive to peaceful death, while the bloodthirsty Keres embodied violent death. Thanatos was loosely associated with the three Moirai (for Hesiod, also daughters of Night), particularly Atropos, who was a goddess of death in her own right. Attic red-figured calyx- krater, 515 BC.Ĭounted among Thanatos' siblings were other negative personifications such as Geras (Old Age), Oizys (Suffering), Moros (Doom), Apate (Deception), Momus (Blame), Eris (Strife), Nemesis (Retribution) and even the Acherousian/ Stygian boatman Charon. Inscriptions in ancient Greek read HVPNOS-HERMES-θΑΝΑΤΟS (here written vice versa). Hypnos (left) and Thanatos (right) carrying dead Sarpedon, while Hermes watches. "Then (Apollon) gave him into the charge of swift messengers to carry him, of Hypnos and Thanatos, who are twin brothers, and these two presently laid him down within the rich countryside of broad Lycia." 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 swift delivery of the slain hero Sarpedon to his homeland of Lycia. The Greek poet Hesiod established in his Theogony that Thánatos is a son of Nyx (Night) and Erebos (Darkness) and twin of Hypnos (Sleep). His name is transliterated in Latin as Thanatus, but his equivalent in Roman mythology is Mors or Letum/ Letus, and he is sometimes identified erroneously with Orcus (Orcus himself had a Greek equivalent in the form of Horkos, God of the Oath). He was a minor figure in Greek mythology, often referred to, but rarely appearing in person.
In Greek mythology, Thanatos / ˈ θ æ n ə t ɒ s/ ( Greek : Θάνατος ] " Death", from θνῄσκω thnēskō "to die, be dying" ) was the personification of death.
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