Dear friends of ancient mythology! The beautiful image of death as the brother of sleep already occurs in Homer's Iliad, where death is described as "brazen sleep", or in the Odyssey, where the Phaiaks "bring their husband home in a deep sleep quite similar to death". This is in accordance with the Homeric doctrine of the soul, according to which the soul, as a double of the living human being, leaves the body during sleep and death. The only difference is that during sleep it returns to the body, whereas at death it leaves it for good. The ancients imagined the soul as a "soul bird". In the drawing of the Piot Amphora from Capua (today in the Louvre in Paris), the body of Memnos is carried away from Troy by two warriors, whom the artist has given wings as a reminiscence of the twins Thanatos and Hypnos. Above the mouth of the dead man rises the "soul bird". A conception that existed similarly with the soul bird Ba in ancient Egypt. This pre-Homeric ghost of the soul was originally probably the soul of someone else coming to take that of someone else (Roscher). Later the soul was seen as a butterfly, and in representations it was given into the hand of Thanatos, which is often seen in vase paintings. This may come from the fact that in Greek the butterfly is called psyche. In fact, Thanatos (Latin mors, feminine by the way!) is not a mythological figure. He belongs to a group of pre-Olympic deities, such as Moira, Ate, Ker (the doom of death) or Nemesis, who were regarded by the Greeks as more powerful than the gods and whom the gods also had to obey. The great Wilamowitz writes: "Thanatos is not a person of faith, neither as the twin brother of Sleep, nor as the henchman of Hades who wrests Alcestis from Heracles, nor as the comic person in the tale of Sisyphus." Only Hesiod invents a lineage so that everything has its order. He gives Nyx (the Night) as mother to Death and Hypnos, who brings forth evil fortune from within herself, as well as Moros (the male form of Moira) and Ker. Hyginus gives him Erebos ín addition as father, and Sleep and Death receive Tartarus as their home. They were δεινοί θεοί (terrible gods) whom the shining sun never looks upon; but while the one walks over the earth calm and friendly to men, the mind of the other is of iron. Whom he has once seized, he holds fast without pity. Therefore he is also hateful to the immortal gods. Since Homer said that his twin brother was Hypnos, sleep, they are depicted side by side on statues (Pausanias). Thanatos with black wings and in black clothing (Horace), Sleep in white. In his hand he has a wreath and a butterfly. An actual cult is not known. According to Pausanias, there was a temple only in Sparta, and a temple is known from Gades where animal sacrifices were also made to him. In the dramatists, Thanatos also became the redeemer from suffering, for example in Sophocles' "Philoktetes", who longed for death. And even in the death of Sokrates, he did not frighten him, but was seen almost as a friend. Life is illness, death is recovery. Nevertheless, Thanatos, probably "because of the transparency of his name", always retained "something of a pale abstraction, something wavering and, as it were, bloodless" (Heinemann). He writes of the dramatists: "it is as if the process of personification in Thanatos had to be carried out anew by the poet in each individual case, and he never becomes a truly formed figure to such a degree as even Nike and Eros". In popular belief, Thanatos increasingly takes a back seat to Charon. In mythology, Charon was originally the ferryman across the Acheron. In later times he became the Greek god of death par excellence. It is he who is found in large numbers on the sarcophagi. Outsmarting death: The outwitting of death, which has fairy-tale features, occurs in all the fairy tales of the world. In Greek mythology there are the following tales: Asklepios was so well instructed in healing by Cheiron that he was even able to bring the dead back to life. Among them were Glaukos and Lykurgos. This angered Hades, who saw his kingdom threatened, so that he complained to Zeus about him. And Zeus killed Asklepios with his thunderbolt. Angered by the murder of his son, Apollo then killed the KyKlopes from whom Zeus had received his thunderbolt. The tragedy "Alkestis" by Euripides is about vicarious death for another and being brought back from the underworld. After the murder of the KyKlopes, Apollo had been condemned by Zeus to tend the flocks with King Admetes. Since Admetes proved to be benevolent, Apollo rewarded him with being able to postpone his death by having a deputy go to his death for him. When Death goes to fetch his beloved consort Alkestis, Apollo announces to him that Herakles will free Alkestis again. Despite reproaching Admetes for not having gone to her death himself instead of Alkestis, Herakles succeeds in bringing Alkestis back from the underworld. Euripides tells how Herakles defeats Thanatos in a wrestling match at Alkestis' grave. Sisyphos is said to have entered the underworld twice. It is said that before his death he asked his wife not to bury him. After his death, he then complained about this injustice to Hades, who finally allowed him to return to the upper world to call his wife to account. Sisyphos, however, did not think of going back to Hades, so Hades had to commission Hermes to bring Sisyphos back. Thereupon he was punished to roll a stone up a high mountain for eternity, which then rolled down again. According to Eukleides of Megara, Thanatos is said to have been deaf and blind so that he could not be dissuaded from his duty by beauty or entreaty. This was also true of Charon, who once spared a beautiful girl on Lesbos and was therefore punished by Zeus with blindness, deafness and lameness. Art history: (1) Vase images of Thanatos were numerous in antiquity, where death was man's constant companion. One of the most famous images is found on the so-called, "Euphronios krater", a red-figure calyx krater signed by Euxitheos, the potter, and Euphronios, the painter, ca, 515 BC, formerly in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, now back in Cerveteri, the original site. It shows a scene from the Trojan War in which the body of the Lykian king Sarpedon is carried away by Hypnos (left) and Thanatos (right) while Hermes looks on. This scene from Homer's Iliad Book XVI, is the source for the idea of sleep and death as twin brothers. (2) Something special is found on the column relief of the Artemision of Ephesus. Thanatos is depicted on the left with his sword sheathed and a butterfly(?) in his right hand, and Hermes Psychopompos (the soul guide) on the right with his kerykeion lowered, both escorting Alkestis between them into the underworld. Here Thanatos is depicted for the first time as a youth in the pose of Eros! This depiction takes up the beautiful coin from Berytos in the collection of featherz (Forum Ancient Coins). Thanatos in the depiction of the youth from the Ephesian Artemision and Hermes Psychopompos have accompanied a soul to the underworld and are now resting. This is the only coin that actually depicts Death. 1st coin: Phoenicia, Berytos, Elagabal, 218-222 AE 30 Obv.: IMP CAES M AVR - ANTONINVS AVG Bust, draped and cuirassed, seen from behind laureate, r. Rev.: COL - IVL - AVG FEL BER Thanatos, nude, winged, standing r., left foot on rock, holding burning torch down in right hand, left resting on left thigh, facing Hermes standing left, nude, right foot on rock, holding kerykeion down in left hand coll. featherz, Forum Ancient Coins (3) The numerous genii of the imperial period with the torch lowered or extinguished and the putto-like representations of Eros on coins no longer have anything to do with the Thanatos of legend and popular belief (Pauly). 2nd coin: Moesia inferior, Nicopolis ad Istrum, Septimius Severus, 193-211. AE 16, 2.24g, 16.09mm, 225°. Obv.: AV KAI - CEVHPOC Laureate head r. Rev.: NIKOΠOΛI - T ΠPOC ICTP. Eros, winged, with crossed legs stg. r., leaning on an upturned torch. Ref.: a) not in AMNG: Rev. AMNG I/1, 1368 (depiction) AMNG I/1, 1384 (legend) Obv. e.g. AMNG I/1, 1348 b) not in Varbanov c) Hristova/Hoeft/Jekov (2021) No. 8.14.16.11 Francis Jarman: Eros and Thanatos A major annoyance is that the figure of the putto-like Eros with the torch is still referred to as Thanatos or the Genius of Death, even by eminent numismatists. Francis Jarman, to whom we owe the fundamental work on Eros on coins, has traced the history of this misunderstanding. And in doing so, he has come across the German classical period, which had developed an idealised idea of ancient Greece since Winckelmann's "Edle Einfalt und stille Größe (= noble simplicity and quiet grandeur)". The significance of the prevailing aestheticism played a major role in this. The idea of death as the twin brother of sleep was so fascinating that it pushed aside the brutal reality of death. Important personalities such as Lessing and Herder ensured the widespread dissemination of this reception, which then radiated through German Romanticism, and not only in Germany. But Death is not a cherubic angel, apart from the fact that his representation on the Severan coins would make no sense. Superstitions: An interesting side note: Θ (theta = 9) was an abbreviation for the Greek thanatos, it was subject to a taboo, like 13 in our days, which also does not exist as the number of a hotel room. So on this coin from Antioch the Θ, the 9th letter of the Greek alphabet, was replaced by ΔE, which as 4+5 also makes 9. But there were also AH and IX, or N (for novem) in Rome. 3rd coin: Constantine I the Great, 307-337 AE 3, 2.63g, 18.56mm, 330°. Antioch, 9th Offizin, 329-30 Obv.: CONSTANT - INVS MAX AV Bust, draped and cuirassed, wearing rosette diadem, r. Rev.: PROVIDEN - TIAE AVG So-called. Camp gate, with 2 towers and without gate above star in l. and r. field Δ - E (for officina 9!) in ex. SMANT Ref.: RIC VII, Antioch 84 Very rare (R5), almost VF, sand patina, patina damage on top of Rev. Notes: (1) The Aithiopis was an epic poem describing events at the end of the Trojan War that Homer had not covered. These include the battles of the Amazons before Troy, Penthesilea's fight with Achilles, the intervention of the Aithiopians under King Memnon in the war, and the quarrel between Ajas and Odysseus after the death of Achilles. Unfortunately, it has not been preserved. (2) Eukleides of Megara (c. 450 - between 369/367 BC) was a Greek philosopher and founder of the Megarian school. He was a student of Sokrates and is said to have been present at his death. The central theme of his philosophy seems to have been goodness, but his writings are lost. Sources: (1) Homer, Iliad (2) Homer, Odyssey (3) Aithiopis (4) Hesiod, Theogony (5) Hyginus, Fabulae (6) Pausanias, Periegesis (7) Cicero, De Natura Deorum Literature: (1) Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (also online) (2) Benjamin Hederich, Gründliches mythologisches Lexikon, Leipzig 1770 (also online) (3) The Kleiner Pauly (4) Patricia Lawrence, Wings, Daimonia, Asomata: The Embodiment of the Bodiless (more relevant to numismatics than they may seem) (5) Francis Jarman, Eros and Thanatos, 2011 Best regards Jochen
Very informative and interesting write-up, as always, @Jochen1. The coin of Berytos is absolutely fascinating. I, too, was puzzled by the conflation of Eros with Thanatos in the numismatic and art history literature when I wrote this article. Here's my Severan Eros who has been identified as Thanatos by many numismatic references: Caracalla, AD 198-217. Roman provincial AE 17.1 mm, 3.44 g, 12 h. Thrace, Hadrianopolis, AD 198-217. Obv: AVT K M AVP CE ANTΩNEINOC, laureate head, right. Rev: AΔΡIANOΠOΛEITΩN, Nude Eros standing right, left leg crossed over right, leaning with right hand and left elbow on inverted lit torch. Refs: Varbanov 3526; Jurukova, Hadrianople 390.2; CN 5217; Moushmov 2615; cf. SNG Cop 271. Notes: Reverse die match to CN 5217 specimen (Nacionalen Arheologičeski Institut s Muzej, Sofia, no. 1566).
Another Eros/Thanatos City/Mint Markianopolis Size (mm) 16 Weight (g) 2.99 Ob. Leg. M OPELLIOC ANTWNINOC Ob. Desc. Bare headed and draped bust of Diadumenian, right Meaning Marcus Opellius Antonius Rev. Leg. MARKIANO-POLEITWN Rev. Desc. Eros/Thanatos standing left, resting chin on palm, leaning on (extinguished) inverted brand Meaning (Coin) of the people of Markianopolis – A prince crowned by the gods
Fascinating article, @Jochen1 - here's my Eros-Thanatos (or whatever he is) issued for Caracalla, like the one posted by @Roman Collector above: Caracalla Æ 17 (c. 198-217 A.D.) Thrace, Hadrianopolis AVT K M AVP CE ANTΩNEINOC, laureate head, right / AΔΡIANOΠOΛEITΩN, Nude Eros-Thanatos standing right, left leg crossed over right, leaning on inverted lit torch. (3.52 grams / 17 x 16 mm) eBay July 2021 Attribution: Varbanov 3526 (R4); Jurukova Hadrianopolis 390 (V199/R379); CN 5217; Moushmov 2615; cf. SNG Cop 271. Mine is a die-match to these two, I think: Possible Die Matches: Roma Numismatics E-Sale 84, Lot 1178, 21.02.2021 Classical Numismatic Group, Auction 88, Lot 743, 14.09.2011
Wow, nice write-up @Jochen1 ! I always enjoy learning with your posts. Hmmm... Thanatos, et al... nary a one. The closest I can get to Sleep, is to COUNT MY SHEEP: RR L Rustius 76 BCE AR Den 19mm 3.6g Mars SC Rome - Ram L RVSTI Cr 389-1 Sear 320 Kebren AR Obol Archaic hd Apollo Left - Hd Ram in Incuse sq 5th C BCE 7.65mm 0.64g SNG Ash 1086 TROAS Neandria AR Obol 4thC BCE 0.56g 8mm Laur hd Apollo r - NEA N Ram stdng right within incuse sq SNG Cop 446 Egypt (??) Pharaoh Nektanebo II 361-343 BCE Ram Scales Weiser 1 - Butcher 11 uncertain: no, Syria
