Momus was the daimon of blame, mockery, and unjust criticism — the personification of the carping fault-finder. Hesiod listed him among the children of Nyx; later mythography gave him a small comic role in the Olympian assembly, where he criticized the gods for the imperfections of their respective creations (Athena's house, because it lacked wheels for moving; Poseidon's bull, because it ought to have had its horns set lower; Zeus's man, because his heart was hidden behind ribs and could not be inspected for honesty). For his impudence Momus was at length expelled from Olympus; he became a stock figure in later satirical literature, and his name passed into Renaissance Latin as a synonym for the ill-tempered critic.
Before thisDolos
Next on the wallMoros
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Hesiod, Theogony 214; Aesop, Fable 102 (Perry index). Lucian (Icaromenippus, Dialogues of the Gods) makes considerable comic use of Momus. The figure was revived in the Renaissance by Leon Battista Alberti's Latin satirical novel Momus (c. 1450), and the name has had a long subsequent literary life as the personification of carping criticism.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
Child ofNyxHesiod listed him among the children of Nyx
Rival ofAthenahe criticized the gods for the imperfections of their respective creations (Athena's house, because it lacked wheels for moving
Rival ofPoseidonPoseidon's bull, because it ought to have had its horns set lower
Rival ofZeusZeus's man, because his heart was hidden behind ribs and could not be inspected for honesty
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.