- This article is about the Titan. For the river, see Styx (river).
In Greek mythology, Styx (Ancient Greek: Στύξ; lit. "Shuddering") is a Titan goddess and one of the Oceanids. She is the daughter of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, She is the personification of the Underworld river named after her, and is the embodiment of hatred and detestation.
Styx represented and controlled hatred. This made her one of the most feared Titans.
Family[]
According to the usual account, Styx was the eldest of the Oceanids, the many daughters of the Titan Oceanus, the great world-encircling river, and his sister-wife, the Titaness Tethys, making her a sister of Metis, the mother of Athena and Invictus by Zeus.
She married the Titan Pallas and by him gave birth to the personifications Zelus, Nike, Kratos , and Bia. The geographer Pausanias tells us that, according to Epimenides of Crete, Styx was the mother of the monster Echidna, by an otherwise unknown Perias.
Although usually Demeter was the mother, by Zeus, of the underworld-goddess Persephone, according to the mythographer Apollodorus, it was Styx. However, when Apollodorus relates the famous story of the abduction of Persephone, and the search for her by her angry and distraught mother, as usual, it is Demeter who conducts the search.
However, according to the Roman mythographer Hyginus, he made Styx the daughter of Erebus, god of darkness & Nox, goddess of night. Hyginus also further stated that Styx married Pallas the Giant and not the Titan, and with him gave birth to Scylla, Vis, Invidia, Potestas, Victoria, Fontes, and Lacus.
Mythology[]
Oath of the Gods[]
During the "Golden Age" of the Titans, she was the guardian of the Underworld. Before the war, she was married to her cousin Pallas, son of Crius and Eurybia. However, Pallas was killed during the war. Throughout most of the war, she was neutral, like her parents and siblings, the River gods and Ocean nymphs. During the last battle of the Titan War, she chose to side with Zeus and the Olympians, giving her four children, Bia (goddess of force), Cratus (god of Power), Zelus (god of Zeal), and Nike (goddess of Victory) in her service. She was greatly rewarded for her allegiance. And so in return Zeus appointed Styx to be "the great oath of the gods, and her children to live with him always."
"Iris Carrying the Water of the River Styx to Olympus for the Gods to Swear" by Guy Head (c. 1793)
According to Hesiod in his Theogony, Styx lived at the entrance to Hades, in a cave "propped up to heaven all round with silver pillars". Hesiod also tells us that Zeus would send Iris, the messenger of the gods, to fetch the "famous cold water" of Styx for the gods to swear by, and describes the punishments which would follow the breaking of such an oath:
| “ | For whoever of the deathless gods that hold the peaks of snowy Olympus pours a libation of her water and is forsworn, must lie breathless until a full year is completed, and never come near to taste ambrosia and nectar, but lie spiritless and voiceless on a strewn bed: and a heavy trance overshadows him. But when he has spent a long year in his sickness, another penance more hard follows after the first. For nine years he is cut off from the eternal gods and never joins their councils or their feasts, nine full years. But in the tenth year he comes again to join the assemblies of the deathless gods who live in the house of Olympus. | ” |
–Hesiod, Theogony | ||
Homer calls Styx the "dread river of oath". In both the Iliad and the Odyssey, it is said that swearing by the water of Styx, is "the greatest and most dread oath for the blessed gods". Homer has Hera (in the Iliad) say this when she swears by Styx to Zeus, that she is not to blame for Poseidon's intervention on the side of the Greeks in the Trojan War, and he has Calypso (in the Odyssey) use the same words when she swears by Styx to Odysseus that she will cease to plot against him. Also Hypnos (in the Iliad) makes Hera swear to him "by the inviolable water of Styx".
Examples of oaths sworn by Styx also occur in the Homeric Hymns. Demeter asks the "implacable" water of Styx to be her witness, as she swears to Metaneira, Leto swears to the personified Delos by the water of Styx, calling it the "most powerful and dreadful oath that the blessed gods can swear", while Apollo asks Hermes to swear to him on the "dread" water of Styx.
The Roman poet Ovid has Jove (the Roman equivalent of Zeus) swear by the waters of Styx when he promises Semele:
| “ | Whatever thy wish, it shall not be denied, and that thy heart shall suffer no distrust, |
” |
–Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 3 | ||
and was then obliged to follow through even though he realized to his horror that Semele's request would lead to her death. Similarly Sol (the Roman equivalent of the Greek Helios) promised his son Phaethon whatever he desired, which also resulted in the boy's death after he asked to drive his father's chariot for a day.
River[]
- Main article: Styx (river)
The River Styx by Gustave Doré from Dante's Inferno (1861)
The goddess Styx, like her father Oceanus, and his sons the river gods, was also a river, in her case, a river of the Underworld. According to Hesiod, Styx was given one-tenth of her father's water, which flowed far underground, and came up to the surface to pour out from a high rock:
| “ | the famous cold water ... trickles down from a high and beetling rock. Far under the wide-pathed earth a branch of Oceanus flows through the dark night out of the holy stream, and a tenth part of his water is allotted to her. | ” |
–Hesiod, Theogony | ||
In the Iliad the river Styx forms a boundary of Hades, the abode of the dead, in the Underworld. Athena mentions the "sheer-falling waters of Styx" needing to be crossed when Heracles returned from Hades after capturing Cerberus, and Patroclus' shade begs Achilles to bury his corpse quickly so that he might "pass within the gates of Hades" and join the other dead "beyond the River". So too in Virgil's Aeneid, where the Styx winds nine times around the borders of Hades, and the boatman Charon is in charge of ferrying the dead across it. More usually, however, Acheron is the river (or lake) which separates the world of the living from the world of the dead.
In the Odyssey, Circe says that the Underworld river Cocytus is a branch of the Styx. In Dante's Inferno, Phlegyas ferries Virgil and Dante across the foul waters of the river Styx which is portrayed as a marsh comprising the Hell's Fifth Circle, where the angry and sullen are punished.
By metonymy, the adjective stygian (/ˈstɪdʒiən/) came to refer to anything unpleasantly dark, gloomy, or forbidding.
Other[]
In the Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter Persephone names Styx as one of her "frolicking" Oceanid-companions when she was abducted by Hades.
Detail of Thetis dips Achilles in Styx, 4th century AD ivory relief depicting the life of Achilles.
According to the Achilleid, written by the Roman poet Statius in the 1st century AD, when Achilles was born his mother Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx; however, he was left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him: his left heel. And so Paris was able to kill Achilles during the Trojan War by shooting an arrow into his heel.
In the second-century Metamorphoses of Apuleius, one of the impossible trials which Venus imposed on Psyche was to fetch water from the Styx. Apuleius has the water guarded by fierce dragons (dracones), and from the water itself came fearsome cries of deadly warning. The sheer impossibility of her task caused Psyche to become senseless, as if turned into stone. Jupiter's eagle admonishes Psyche saying:
| “ | Do you ... really expect to be able to steal, or even touch, a single drop from that holiest—and cruelest—of springs? Even the gods and Jupiter himself are frightened of these Stygian waters. You must know that, at least by hearsay, and that, as you swear by the powers of the gods, so the gods always swear by the majesty of the Styx. | ” |
–Apuleius, Metamorphoses | ||
Gallery[]
[]
| Titans | |
|---|---|
| Parents | Ouranós • Gaîa |
| Elder Titans | Coeus • Crius • Cronus • Hyperion • Iapetus • Oceanus |
| Elder Titanesses | Phoebe • Mnemosyne • Rhea • Theia • Themis • Tethys |
| Coeonides | Asteria • Leto |
| Crionides | Astraeus • Pallas • Perses |
| Hyperionides | Eos • Hḗlios • Selene |
| Iapetonides | Atlas • Epimetheus • Menoetius • Prometheus |
| Oceanides | Oceanids (Clymene • Metis • Styx • Rhode) • Potamoi |
| Third Generation | Hecate • Astraea • Anemoi • Astra Planeta • Kratos • Nike • Bia • Zelus |
| Miscellaneous Titans | Dione • Anytos • Ophion • Eurynome (wife of Ophion) • Lelantos • Melisseus • Titan (brother of Helios) • Olymbros • Syceus • Titanic Muses |
| Topics | Overthrowing of Ouranós • Titanomachy |