Aether was the upper bright air, the pure shining atmosphere of the divine heights, distinguished from the lower thicker air (aer) that mortals breathe. He was the son of Erebus and Nyx, brother of Hemera the day. The Greek philosophical tradition would later make of Aether a fifth element, distinct from earth, water, air, and fire — the substance of the heavens themselves, in which the celestial bodies moved — and Aristotle gave this conception its mature philosophical form. As a personified cosmogonic figure, Aether had no cult; he was a poetic and cosmological postulate rather than an object of worship.
Before thisEros (Primordial)
Next on the wallHemera
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Hesiod, Theogony 124, gives Aether's parentage. The Aristotelian doctrine of aether as the fifth element (the quintessence) is in De Caelo 1.2–3 and was the dominant view in Greek and medieval cosmology until the Scientific Revolution. The conflation of cosmogonic Aether (a personified primordial) with elemental aether (a physical substance) is a long-running ambiguity in Greek thought.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
Child ofErebusHe was the son of Erebus and Nyx, brother of Hemera the day
Child ofNyxHe was the son of Erebus and Nyx, brother of Hemera the day
- Sibling ofHemera
He was the son of Erebus and Nyx, brother of Hemera the day
When the sources speak
Dated witnesses for The Primordial Powers. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline
- c. 1600–1100 BCE
- Mycenaean palace tablets in Linear B record offerings and divine names, but little continuous myth.
- c. 1100–800 BCE
- Post-palatial oral traditions and changing cult landscapes precede the surviving alphabetic epics.
- late 8th–7th centuries BCE
- The Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days give influential but non-exclusive divine orders.
- 7th–6th centuries BCE
- Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, colonization, and local sanctuary traditions multiply regional narratives.
- 6th–5th centuries BCE
- Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystery materials develop alternative cosmogonies and afterlife doctrines.
- 5th century BCE
- Athenian tragedy and comedy recast heroic houses and divine justice for civic audiences.
- 4th century BCE
- Philosophers, antiquarians, and local historians interpret or criticize inherited myth.
- 323–31 BCE
- Hellenistic poets and scholars systematize variants across an enlarged Greek world.