Erebus was the deep darkness of the underworld, the gloom that lay between the surface of the earth and Tartarus far below. He was a son of Chaos, brother and consort of Nyx, and by her father of Aether the upper bright air and of Hemera the day — for from the union of dark and dark, paradoxically, came the brightness above. Erebus was a place as well as a person: the dim region through which the souls of the dead passed on their way to the realm of Hades, separated from Tartarus by deeper distances. The Greek tongue used the word for both the divine person and the dim region, and the two were not always clearly distinguished even in the texts.
Before thisNyx
Next on the wallTartarus
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Hesiod, Theogony 123–125, gives Erebus as a son of Chaos; the topography of Erebus as a dim place between the earth's surface and Tartarus is mentioned in Homer (Iliad 8.368, Odyssey 11) and elaborated by later writers. As a divine person, Erebus had no cult; he was a cosmogonic and topographical figure only.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
Child ofChaosHe was a son of Chaos, brother and consort of Nyx
- Sibling ofNyx
He was a son of Chaos, brother and consort of Nyx
- Consort ofNyx
He was a son of Chaos, brother and consort of Nyx
Parent ofAetherby her father of Aether the upper bright air and of Hemera the day
Parent ofHemeraby her father of Aether the upper bright air and of Hemera the day
Parent ofCharonHis parents were given variously as Erebus and Nyx, or no parents at all
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.