Nyx vs Thanatos

Night, one of the first powers in Hesiod's account of creation: born from Chaos, she bears Day and Aether and, on her own, a long brood of forces that trouble mortals, among them Death, Sleep, Doom and Nemesis. Even Zeus, in the Iliad, hesitates to anger her.

Night is born from Chaos alongside Erebus, at the very beginning of Hesiod's account of the world (Theogony 123). With Erebus she bears Aether and Day; alone, she bears Doom, Death, Sleep, Nemesis, Strife and many other powers (Theogony 211-225).

In the *Theogony* Night comes out of Chaos together with Erebus, the darkness below. Joined with Erebus she bears the bright Aether and Day, and Hesiod then lists the children she bore with no partner at all: Moros (Doom), black Ker, Thanatos (Death), Hypnos (Sleep) and the tribe of Dreams, Blame and Woe, the Hesperides who tend the golden apples beyond the ocean, the Fates, Nemesis, Deceit, Friendship, Old Age and Strife.

Death personified, son of Night and twin brother of Sleep (Hypnos). Hesiod gives him a heart of iron, hated even by the gods; in the Iliad the twins carry the fallen Sarpedon home to Lycia, and in Euripides Heracles wrestles him for the life of Alcestis.

Thanatos is one of the children Night bore without a partner, twin of Hypnos, Sleep (Hesiod, Theogony 211-212).

Hesiod names Thanatos among the children of Night, together with his brother Hypnos, Sleep. The two live in Night's house near Tartarus, where the sun never looks on them. Sleep goes gently over land and sea, but Death has a heart of iron and a pitiless spirit of bronze; whoever he seizes he holds, and he is hateful even to the immortal gods.