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Nyx is one of the oldest Immortals ... she was brought forth by the first Immortal, Khaos. From Nyx came a hoard of Immortals, most of which are usually thought of as horrible, painful, cruel, brooding, mocking, and malignant but some of her children are true benefactors of the mortal humans. Thanatos is one of the more feared of Nyx's children.
Thanatos might be poetically called the twin brother of Hypnos (Sleep) but no matter how you describe him, he is a creature of bone chilling darkness. Hypnos goes kindly among the mortals but Thanatos has a heart of pitiless iron ... when he takes hold of you, the world of light ceases to be.
From on high, Helios (Sun) never casts his light on Thanatos because he resides in his mother's house of gloom and only emerges when Helios has stabled his chariot and not riding through the sky.
Thanatos played an important role in the Trojan War when he was summoned by the god Apollon to assist in the return of the body of Sarpedon to his native land of Lykia. Sarpedon was a son of Zeus and thus a demigod. He was an ally of the Trojans and fought bravely until he was killed by the Achaian hero Patroklos in the last year of the war.
Zeus had engineered the Trojan War to rid the earth of the demigods and as much as he regretted it, his son Sarpedon was one of the demigods fated to die. When Patroklos donned Achilles's armor and charged into the Trojan lines, he killed many men and then finally came against Sarpedon. When Patroklos engaged Sarpedon, he first killed Sarpedon's charioteer, Thrasymelos. Sarpedon threw his spear at Patroklos but missed and hit one of Achilles's chariot horses in the right shoulder ... the horse screamed and went down into the dust, dead. Patroklos again charged Sarpedon and killed him.
The fight for the body and armor of Sarpedon was fierce ... Zeus lamented the loss of his son and could not bear to see Sarpedon's body disgraced in the blood and gore of the battlefield ... he summoned Apollon and instructed him to retrieve Sarpedon's body, wash it clean and then instruct Thanatos and Hypnos to transport the body to Lykia so Sarpedon could have a hero's burial and be mourned by his friends and family. Thanatos solemnly did as he was told.
Hypnos (right) and Thanatos carry the dead body of Sarpedon from the battlefield at Troy.
Sympathy and pity are foreign to Thanatos's nature. However, when he heard the story of Admetos and his wife Alkestis, Thanatos released his death-hold and allowed Alkestis to return to the land of the living.
The dark road to Alkestis's death and reanimation began when King Admetos of Pherae in Thessaly was unwittingly drawn into the plots and dramas of the Immortals. The god Apollon killed the Cyclopes who made Zeus's thunderbolts ... Zeus punished Apollon by making him serve as a slave for Admetos for one full year. Admetos was a kind master and treated Apollon with respect ... in repayment for such noble treatment, Apollon arranged for Admetos to marry a lovely woman named Alkestis.
The marriage was doomed from the beginning. Apollon didn't realize until it was too late that Admetos was destined to die immediately after the wedding. Refusing to allow such an injustice, Apollon wooed the Fates with wine until they agreed to allow Admetos to live. The Fates were not easily persuaded ... they would only allow Admetos to live on the condition that someone volunteer to die in his place. Alkestis loved her husband so much she agreed to die for him.
Zeus's son Herakles happened to visit King Admetos shortly after Thanatos took Alkestis. When Herakles heard the story of how Alkestis volunteered to die in Admetos's place, he was so moved by such an act of selflessness he rushed to intercept Thanatos before Alkestis could be delivered to the Underworld. After hearing Herakles's heartfelt explanation, the noble nature of Alkestis was apparent to Thanatos so he returned her to the land of the living to be reunited with Admetos.
Plutarch, the accomplished Greek philosopher and biographer, has an interesting observation about Thanatos in a work entitled Moralia. He tactfully rebuts the idea that death is an end or something denoting finality. Plutarch contends that the very word ‘thanatos’ (theon anô) is indicative of rising upwards. Conversely, ‘birth’ (genesis) is a downward motion. When we say a dead person is “released” or that the end of life is “a release,” we’re implying that a person’s essence is no longer forcibly imprisoned in an earthly “frame” or body. Death allows us to go to our “rest” and escape from the grievous and unnatural constraint of living.
How can those “uplifting” ideas about Thanatos be reconciled with the notion that the dead are escorted to the House of Hades, which is clearly placed below the surface of the earth? If we consider the possibility that Thanatos takes to “soul” upwards after the physical death of the body and Hades imprisons the “shade” or “reflection” of the body under the earth, Plutarch’s observations seem realistic.
The Iliad
The Odyssey
Theogony; lines 212, 756 and 759
Works and Days; line 154
Description of Greece by Pausanias; book 3 (Lakonia), 18.1; book 5 (Elis 1), 18.1
Plutarch, Moralia. Fragments from Other Named Works