Thanatos (mythology)

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Hypnos and Thanatos bed the Sarpedon (Greek lekythos , approx. 440 BC)

Thanatos ( Greek Θάνατος Thanatos , German , Death ' ) is a god of the dead or a Daimon in Greek mythology , it corresponds Mors of Roman mythology . Thanatos is also referred to as Letum and Letus in Roman mythology . Letum lives at the entrance to Tartarus . Mors is half in the mortal world, half in the realm of the dead. Both represent the transition into the realm of the dead. Thanatos is the god of gentle death and is therefore often depicted together with his brother Hypnos , the god of sleep . His sister is Ker , the goddess of violent death.

ancestry

In Hesiod's theogony and in Homer's Iliad he is the son of Nyx . Cicero mentions Erebos as his father , in which the mythographer Hyginus follows him.

According to Hesiod, his siblings are Ker , Moros , Hypnos , the Oneiroi , Momos , Oizys , the Hesperides , the Keren, the Moiren , Nemesis , Apate , Philotes , Geras and Eris .

description

According to Hesiod, Thanatos lives where night and day meet and where Atlas carries the vault of heaven. Here, where the rays of the sun, Helios , never penetrate, sleep also lives, Hypnos , but while the latter undertakes his forays across earth and sea, peaceful and friendly to people, Thanatos has "an iron heart and brazen, merciless sense ”. Once a person has been packed he never releases them again and he is even hostile to the immortal gods. With Homer he still has no definite shape, later he appears with black wings and a scowl that cuts off a curl of the dying with a sacrificial knife. Later again he appears as an ever-sleeper, usually a beautiful winged youth or boy who holds a lowered, still blazing or already extinguished torch in his hand.

myth

Two people each managed to outsmart Thanatos. One of them was Heracles , the other Sisyphus :

  • On the way to Diomedes, Heracles stopped by Admetus , king of Pherai in Thessaly . There Admetos told him about the loss of his wife Alcestis , who had sacrificed herself for Admetus. Heracles therefore decided to pursue Thanatos and free Alcestis. So Heracles challenged Thanatos to a wrestling match and defeated him. Alcestis temporarily returned to her husband.
  • Sisyphus betrayed Zeus by revealing the whereabouts of Aigina, her father Asopos . Zeus then sent Thanatos to Sisyphus to take him to the underworld. But this outwitted Thanatos and tied him up. According to other sources, Sisyphus made him drunk beforehand. No more mortal souls died when Thanatos was overcome. Eventually, the god of war Ares freed death as no one died on the battlefield or on Zeus' orders. Sisyphus was banished to the underworld, but he also outwitted Hades . Before Sisyphus was promoted to the underworld by Ares, he gave his wife the order not to offer a dead sacrifice for him. In the underworld , he persuaded Hades and his wife Persephone to return to the world of the living once more to organize his sacrifice for the dead. The request was granted and he returned to his wife, where he then mocked Hades and the gods. Then Thanatos returned to Sisyphus and kidnapped him into the underworld. This time Sisyphus could not use his ruse again.

In another legend, the twins Hypnos and Thanatos have to bring the body of Sarpedon to Lycia on Zeus' orders so that he is buried there.

The term thanatos and psychoanalysis

The idea of ​​the dialectical pair of opposites Thanatos-Eros first emerged through Freudian psychoanalysis and borrowed from Greek mythology. Thanatos and Eros are viewed as primordial instincts in the sense of an evolution of the instincts. Freud himself spoke only of "Eros" in the pair of opposites of life instinct (s) and death instinct (s) of his later theory. (Freud mentions instinct and instincts alternately, thus using the singular and plural without precise definition.) The term “Thanatos” as an antipole to “Eros” was not introduced by Freud himself, but by Ernst Federn .

Social and media reception

Medially, Thanatos is assigned the color black, Eros the color red.

In terms of society as a whole, the confrontation with Thanatos is rather exposed to a certain degree of repression ; but not in sociology , cf. in addition Émile Durkheim .

Quote from Herbert Marcuse , Drive Structure and Society: A philosophical contribution to Sigmund Freud , 1984 Frankfurt / Main, Suhrkamp, ​​(already published in 1957 under the old title “Eros and Culture”.): “The last relationship between Eros and Thanatos remains dark” ( P. 32). Arthur Schnitzler already took up Freud's psychological theories on Eros and Thanatos in his “Dream Novel” by depicting the relationship of a young couple in whose relationship the love instinct (Eros) was severely neglected in relation to erotic experiences and wishes of lovers . Arthur Schnitzler was a contemporary of Freud and was in lively correspondence with him. (In fact, only one letter exists, namely from S. Freud to A. Schnitzler, dated May 14, 1922)

literature

Web links

Commons : Thanatos  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ THANATOS: Greek God of Death. Theoi Project Copyright © 2000-2011, Aaron J. Atsma, New Zealand, accessed August 16, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Virgil , Aeneid 6,268ff.
  3. ↑ Gaius Valerius Flaccus , Argonautica 8,67ff.
  4. ^ Wilhelm Vollmer: Dictionary of the Mythology of All Nations, p. 313.
  5. ↑ Hesiod , Theogony 212.
  6. ↑ Homer, Iliad 14,231.
  7. ↑ Cicero , De natura deorum 3,17f.
  8. ^ Hyginus , Fabulae Prefatio.
  9. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 211-225.
  10. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 746-766
  11. ↑ Euripides , Alkestis 1140 ff.
  12. ↑ Aeschylus , Sisyphus Drapetes
  13. ↑ Homer, Iliad 16: 419-683.