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====The story of the Greek God of Death====

The Greek poet Hesiod (7th century BC) wrote in the epic poem the Theogony that Thanatos was the son of Nyx (night) and that his father was Erebos (Dark). Both Nyx and Erebos were immensely powerful elemental deities who were even feared by the Olympians. In some accounts, this deity was a fragment of the essence of the Night and Dark, who had emerged from them at some time in the primeval past. Thanatos was the brother of Hypnos (Sleep) and many other primordial powers. Much of what we know about this god comes from Homer, and he seems to have been an incredibly old deity. He was often the subject of poets and artists, but few actual references to him in the Greek or Roman mythologies.

Thanatos was thought to inhabit and rule the underworld. This was the realm of death where individuals' psyche (similar to souls) descended after they died. Thanatos oversaw the dying process and, therefore, one of the most powerful of all the pantheon deities. The god was associated with his sisters, the three Morai, who are better known as the ‘Fates.’ They were the personifications of destiny, and they were thought to control the thread of individuals fates. When a person was going to die, the Morai would cut the thread of life. Once the fates had decreed that a person’s life had ended, Thanatos would go to the world of the living and carry them off to the underworld, where they would join the realm of the dead. He took their psyche or life-force and left their bodies.

In some myths, the god was generally associated with peaceful deaths such as those who died of old age or natural causes. In contrast, the female death spirits known as the Keres, would collect the souls of the dead who died on the field of battle. These are often depicted in mythology as bloodthirsty beings, who revealed in bloodshed and who were Thanatos' sisters. The Greeks presented the god as fearsome and immensely powerful, and none could overpower him.