Nyx

First Darkness

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.

The House of Night

Hesiod places Night's house at the edge of Tartarus, where Night and Day greet each other at a great bronze threshold as one goes in and the other comes out; the house never holds them both at once. Her sons Sleep and Death live nearby.

A Power Zeus Respects

In Iliad 14 Sleep reminds Hera of the last time he lulled Zeus for her: the enraged god would have hurled him from the sky if Night, 'subduer of gods and men', had not sheltered him, and Zeus held back because he was unwilling to displease swift Night. It is one of the few moments in Homer where Zeus defers to another power.

Night had little public cult; she matters above all as a cosmic power, and later Orphic poetry gives her a still larger place in the origin of the world.