The Primordial God of Darkness

Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Erebus, one of the primordial deities and the personification of darkness in Greek Mythology.

Alright, let's get into it.

As the personification of darkness, it isn't surprising that Erebus became synonymous with the underworld, even becoming a byword for it, as can be seen in Hesiod's Theogony ("Zeus struck him [the Titan Menoetius] with a lurid thunderbolt and sent him down to Erebus"), and in the Homeric Hymns, ("[Hermes came] bidding me [Persephone] come back from Erebus.), and many other works. Similarly, Hades name was also used as an appellation for the underworld; however, there were differences between the two. Erebus more so pertained to the dark and shadow of the underworld, while Hades invariably pertained to the totality of the underworld itself. Here's a passage from Edith Hamilton's book Mythology A to Z that elaborates on this:

"As the darkness under the earth, he was sometimes called Erebus, the personification of darkness and shadow, and sometimes the chasm or pit that separated the world of the living from the underworld. He was a god, but he had no cult, no following. He was simply there, the personification of something that is always there, a part of the underworld and of the world above it, like the atmosphere around the earth"

Though Erebus' name was used on occasion, Hades' name was the true name of the underworld, and because of this, Hades' name would transcend Greek Mythology and find its way into Jewish and Christian scripture.

The Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), is the holy text from which the Old Testament is derived. It was originally written in Hebrew, of course, but the first language it was translated to was Ancient Greek in the 3rd century BC.