Nyx is Night itself, one of the first beings to emerge from primordial Chaos alongside her brother Erebus, Darkness, with whom she bears Aether and Hemera, the bright air and the day. Hesiod credits her, in the Theogony’s grim catalogue, with bearing on her own a whole lineage of forces no one can escape: Hypnos and Thanatos, Sleep and Death, the Moirai who spin and cut the thread of every life, Nemesis, Eris, and the pains and deceptions that trouble mortal existence.
She lives at the western edge of the world, near Tartarus, in a house where Day and Night greet and pass each other at a shared threshold and never occupy the sky together. Her power is old and vast enough that even Zeus treats her with caution: when he moves to punish Hypnos for lulling him to sleep against his will, he holds back for fear of angering swift Nyx, who could bring worse trouble than the original offense. Artists show her veiled in black or starred robes, driving a chariot drawn by dark horses across the sky.
τὴν ἱκόμην φεύγων, ὁ δ’ ἐπαύσατο χωόμενός περ. ἅζετο γὰρ μὴ Νυκτὶ θοῇ ἀποθύμια ἕρδοι
“To her I came in my flight, and besought her, and Zeus refrained him, albeit he was wroth, for he had awe lest he do aught displeasing to swift Night.” — Homer, Iliad 14.259–261, tr. A. T. Murray
