![]() ![]() 480), and was thus applied to Apollo and Thanatos, or Death, who are conceived as delivering men from the pains and sorrows of life. PAEAN (Paian, Paiêôn or Paiôn), that is, "the healing." The name was used in the more general sense of deliverer from any evil or calamity (Pind. ![]() 4), but no temples are mentioned anywhere. There are traces of sacrifices having been offered to Death (Serv. § 1.) Both were usually represented as slumbering youths, or as genii with torches turned upside down. § 1), and at Sparta there were statues of both Death and Sleep. On the chest of Cypselus, Night was represented with two boys, one black and the other white (Paus. and represented Death under a more pleasing aspect. 58), but the best artists of the Greeks, avoiding any thing that might be displeasing, abandoned the ideas suggested to them by the poets. 75, 843, 845.) On the whole, later poets describe Death as a sad or terrific being (Horat. 277.) In the Alcestis of Euripides, where Death cones upon the stage, he appears as an austere priest of Hades in a dark robe and with the sacrificial sword, with which he cuts off a lock of a dying person, and devotes it to the lower world. 756) he is a son of Night and a brother of Ker and Sleep, and Death and Sleep reside in the lower world. In the Homeric poems Death does not appear as a distinct divinity, though he is described as the brother of Sleep, together with whom he carries the body of Sarpedon from the field of battle to the country of the Lycians. THA′NATOS (Thanatos), Latin Mors, a personification of Death. EREBOS & NYX (Hyginus Preface, Cicero De Natura Deorum 3.17) NYX (no father) ( Hesiod Theogony 212, Homer Iliad 14.250, Pausanias 5.18.1, Seneca Hercules Fur. In Roman sculptural reliefs he was portrayed as a youth holding a down-turned torch and wreath or butterfly which symbolised the soul of the dead. He often appears in a scene from the Iliad, opposite his brother Hypnos (Sleep) carrying off the body of Sarpedon. In Greek vase painting Thanatos was depicted as a winged, bearded older man, or more rarely as a beardless youth. Another time he was captured by the criminal Sisyphos (Sisyphus) who trapped him in a sack so as to avoid death. Once when he was sent to fetch Alkestis (Alcestis) to the underworld, he was driven off by Herakles in a fight. Thanatos plays a prominent role in two myths. Violent death was the domain of Thanatos' blood-craving sisters, the Keres, spirits of slaughter and disease. His touch was gentle, likened to that of his twin brother Hypnos (Sleep). THANATOS was the god or personified spirit ( daimon) of non-violent death. ![]() Death ( thanatos) Thanatos and the body of Sarpedon, Athenian red-figure lekythos C5th B.C., British Museum ![]()
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