|
Eteocles 1: Suppose we
fall on them by night from ambush?
Creon 2: Yes, if in the event of defeat you
can return safely here.
Eteocles 1: Night equalizes
risks, though it rather favors daring.
Creon 2: The darkness of night is a terrible
time to suffer disaster.
Eteocles 1: Well, shall I
attack them as they sit at dinner?
[Euripides,
Phoenician
Women 725]
"Who are these who come
near my couch in the night? ... Is there some
midnight ambush?"
[Hector 1. Euripides,
Rhesus
14ff.]
"Starry night does not
remain constant with men, nor does tribulation, nor
wealth; in a moment it is gone from us, and to
another in his turn come both gladness and
bereavement." [The Trachinian women to
Deianira 1. Sophocles,
Trachinian
Women 135]
"...tous les
événements d'importance doivent avoir
lieu la nuit... Quand le manteaux des
ténèbres recouvre l'univers, les
esprits et toutes les forces mystérieuses,
qui ne veulent pas être
dérangées par la présence des
hommes, entrent en action." [Styn Streuvels,
1871-1969]
|
|
Nyx is Night.
|
|
|
|
|
Powerful goddess
|
Nyx is Night, a powerful goddess whose dark
light falls from the stars, and who dictates not
only to men but also to gods. Even
Zeus does not wish to upset
Night:
It happened that Hera
bribed Hypnos in order to
make Zeus fall asleep, so
that she could have it her way during the
Trojan War.
Hypnos obeyed the goddess
in spite of his fears; for once he had performed a
similar task, and when Zeus
woke up in anger, he sought him everywhere, and
would have hurled him from heaven into the deep,
had Nyx not saved him. For
Zeus stopped and thought
twice before doing anything that could displease
Nyx.
|
|
Night and Day
|
Some seem to think that Nyx appears because
light is gone as if anything could be and yet do
not exist on its own right. But when counting the
days, not seldom the nights are mentioned first as
when it is said:
"... a brazen
anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days
would reach the earth upon the tenth: and again, a
brazen anvil falling from earth nine nights and
days would reach Tartarus upon the tenth."
[Hesiod,
Theogony
725]
|
|
Nyx's home
|
In Tartarus, both a place and her brother, Nyx
has her home and spreads around him in triple line
like a necklace. At the gates of Tartarus and above
it are the sources and ends of heaven, earth and
sea, and it is told that if a man should find
himself inside the gates, he would not reach the
bottom for one year, being carried by blasts in all
directions.
|
|
Portion of Time
|
But although it could be said that the days
could not be counted if this dark-robed goddess,
giver of sleep, would not come between them, night
and day are, in a certain way, equals:
"... night's
sightless eye, and radiant sun proceed upon their
yearly course on equal terms and neither of them is
envious when it has to yield." [Jocasta to
her sons. Euripides,
Phoenician
Women 543]
For the world, they say, is the movable image of
Eternity, and when the heavens were constructed,
there appeared after them Night and Day, the months
and the years, being all portions of
Time, which imitates
Eternity.
|
|
Meetings of Night and Day
|
Both Day and Night live in the same home behind
the brazen threshold of Tartarus, never being there
at the same time, for when one of them crosses the
earth the other waits at home. But they greet each
other at the threshold as they cross in front of
the place where Atlas
holds up heaven.
|
|
Disputed origins and offspring
|
Black winged Nyx, some say, laid a germless egg
in the infinite bosom of Erebus, the Darkness of
the Underworld, and
after long ages, sprang golden-winged
Eros. But others have said
that Nyx is the daughter of
Eros, whereas others called
both of them children of
Chaos.
|
|
Favours mischief
|
Nyx is highly appreciated and revered by those
who cast snares, for mischief and treachery not
seldom arise from night-time, when things are often
unexpected, although Destruction is believed to
make its way in any case:
"If night
leaves anything undone in the working of
destruction, day follows to accomplish it."
[Sophocles,
Oedipus
the King 196]
|
|
Cronos and
Heracles 1 acted by
night
|
So Cronos, protected
by the darkness of the night, attacked his father
Uranus from an ambush,
castrating him with the sickle of the jagged teeth.
And it was in night-time that
Heracles 1 surprised
his enemies and took the island of Cos, which is
off the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, slaying
King Eurypylus 4.
|
|
Trojan nights
|
During the Trojan
War it was Night who protected the comings and
goings of spies, for it was protected by the
darkness of immortal Night that
Odysseus entered,
disguised as a beggar, the city of
Troy; and it was during the
night that the Thracian
Rhesus 2 met his death
attacked by Odysseus
and Diomedes 2. And it
was also in night-time that the Achaeans pretended
to return home, burning their own tents and waiting
with their fleet off the island of Tenedos, which
is opposite the coast of the Troad, in order to
stealthily sail back disguised by the shades of the
following night.
This time true beacon lamps, lighted by
Sinon, and some say by
Helen, guided them, so
that they could land and take
Troy, which fell by night,
but on another night during their returns, the
ACHAEAN LEADERS
suffered shipwreck because of the false beacon
lamps, lighted by Nauplius 1, the father of
Palamedes.
|
|
Fugitives like her
|
Also those who escape, commit thefts and other
crimes, prefer to do it by night, for this is the
time for Deceit, Sleep, Doom,
Madness and
Death, although no one
knows how the children of Nyx will play. That is
why Medea guided
Jason to the Golden Fleece
by night, lulling to sleep the guardian dragon by
drugs, and by night the
ARGONAUTS left
Colchis, taking with them the king's daughter.
|
|
Helen appreciated her
|
When Helen and
Paris left
Sparta as lovers and
sailed to Troy, they
started their fateful journey by night, and when
she returned after the war, they say that she
waited for the night to go out in order to avoid
being stoned, if she went out by day, by the
parents whose sons had perished at
Troy. For
Helen was called 'Lady of
Sorrows' for having caused, as they saw it, that
great war. But during the night she was safe, not
only because Night provides hiding but also because
the others mourned, for tears are shed mostly in
night-time.
|
|
Remembered meeting
|
It was on one certain night that
Tydeus 2 and Polynices
had a fight in front of the house of King Adrastus
1, waking him up; and from the meeting of these
three men came out the alliance of the
SEVEN AGAINST
THEBES, an unforgettable moment for those
involved:
"It was night
when I reached the porch of Adrastus."
[Polynices to Jocasta. Euripides,
Phoenician
Women 415]
|
|
Love and Deceit
|
The DANAIDS deemed
their wedding night to be the best moment to murder
their husbands, for Love
and Deceit, being both children of Night, cannot be
properly distinguished from each other when
darkness has come, since night-time distorts
perception.
|
|
Heracles 1's night
blindness
|
That experienced
Heracles 1, who
mistook at night for living the portrait statue
that Daedalus had made
of him in return for having buried the body of his
son Icarus 1, and throwing a stone, hit it.
|
|
Night covers shame
|
And the guilty love of
Adonis' mother Smyrna for
her father could not have occurred without Night,
for only her dark power and her child Deceit could
prevent her father from knowing that he was sharing
his bed with his daughter, which he did no less
than twelve times.
|
|
Nyx may spare lives
|
And even if war does not need to stop in
night-time, Nyx is also known for parting warriors,
thus sparing lives, for the heralds interrupted the
duel between Ajax 1 and
Hector 1 when it became
dark, saying:
"... night is
now upon us, and it is well to yield obedience to
night's behest." [Homer,
Iliad
7.282]
|
|
Night welcome or rejected
|
And those who are fortunate do not wish the day
to end, but those who are endangered during the
hours of light welcome Night as a blessed relief:
"Sorely
against the will of the Trojans sank the daylight,
but over the Achaeans welcome, aye,
thrice-prayed-for, came the darkness of
night." [Homer,
Iliad
7.487]
|
|
For some is Day as dark as Night
|
And to those who are utterly unhappy it
does not make any difference whether it is day or
night, and that is why
Demeter, when looking
for her abducted daughter, carried torches during
daytime as well.
|
|
Night restores what Day undid and destroys what
Day did
|
Night, they say, carries
Hypnos in her arms, but
if he refuses his comfort, the night-long vigils
make the eyes of mortals sore. For in night-time
most things and beings are restored so that they
might enjoy or suffer the following day. And even
Zeus could not have
punished Prometheus
1 for so many years if his liver had been eaten
up by the eagle on a single day, but as things are,
the lobes of his liver grew by night, so that they
could be picked at again the next morning. So what
is done by day is undone by night, which was known
by Odysseus' wife
Penelope, who wove by
day the shroud of her father-in-law Laertes and
undid it by night, thus deceiving her
SUITORS, for she
had promised to wed one of them when her work was
finished.
|
|
Death and Madness are
best at night
|
Night is also an adequate time for her child
Death, and that is why
the seer Tiresias chose
to die in the night-time after drinking water from
the spring at Tilphussa. And the same may be said
of her child Madness,
for this seized Ajax 1 by
night, and made him slaughter the cattle with the
herdsmen in the Achaean camp, taking them for the
Achaeans, whom he hated for having adjudged to
Odysseus the arms of
the dead Achilles.
|
|
Night and Love
|
As Night opens the gates of her child
Love, mortal lovers prefer
to meet by night, as do the gods, for when
Zeus visited
Alcmena he not only did
it by night, but duly prolonged that particular
night threefold. And the results of these meetings
not seldom are recorded in nights, for it is said
that when Alcmena bore
Heracles 1, whom she
had by Zeus, he became the
elder by one night and Iphicles, whom she had by
Amphitryon, was born
the night after. But whereas
Alcmena consorted with
Zeus and
Amphitryon in two
consecutive nights, Leda
consorted with Zeus and
with Tyndareus on the
same night, giving birth to both mortals and
immortals. And the same did
Theseus' mother Aethra
2, for she was loved by
Aegeus 1 and by
Poseidon during the
same night.
|
|
Nights count, days do not
|
When Heracles 1
visited Thespius and was entertained by him, the
number of days of the visit was made to match the
number of Thespius' daughters, for it was them who
entertained Heracles 1
by night. And the number of days of the visit were
fifty, but the memorable were the fifty nights, for
almost nothing has been recorded of
Heracles 1's
activities during daytime, except that he was there
to catch a lion in Mount Cithaeron, whose scalp he
later used as a helmet. But there are those who
found fit to think that
Heracles 1 could not
tell the difference between one girl and the other,
and that he thought that his bed-fellow was always
the same.
|
|
Divine manipulations
|
Some divine manipulations are done in the
night-time while mortals sleep, and that is why
Thetis used to hide little
Achilles in the fire by
night, in order to make him immortal, but by day
she anointed him with ambrosia, and it was also by
night that Demeter put
the little Demophon 2 into the fire, with identical
purpose.
|
|
Time of inspiration
|
Night is also a time of inspiration, and that is
why it is told that the
MUSES sing during
night-time their praises to the gods and Nyx on
Mount Helicon, and they themselves are the result
of the nine nights that
Zeus spent with
Mnemosyne.
|
|
|
|
|