Moros was Doom personified — the irrevocable destiny of death that lies upon every mortal. He was a son of Nyx, brother of the Fates and of Death itself, and he stood for the unalterable element of mortal destiny: not the manner or hour of one's death (which the Fates wove), but the bare necessity of dying, the doom that no human escapes. He had no cult and no narrative; he was an abstract personification of the most universal of mortal facts.
Before thisMomus
Next on the wallGeras
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Hesiod, Theogony 211. Moros appears as a literary personification chiefly in tragedy.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
Child ofNyxHe was a son of Nyx, brother of the Fates and of Death itself
Sibling ofThe MoiraiHe was a son of Nyx, brother of the Fates and of Death itself
Sibling ofThanatosHe was a son of Nyx, brother of the Fates and of Death itself
- Sibling ofGeras
He was a son of Nyx in Hesiod's catalogue, brother of Death and Sleep and Doom
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.