Erebus
place · 4 works · 5 mentions · 8 anchored passages
dark Erebus · hidden places of the earth · loathly Hades · realm of darkness and gloom
in the texts
Odyssey
A dark region of the underworld.
"‘When you shall have thus besought the ghosts with your prayers, offer them a ram and a black ewe, bending their heads towards Erebus;
When I had prayed sufficiently to the dead, I cut the throats of the two sheep and let the blood run into the trench, whereon the ghosts [ psukhai] came trooping up from Erebus - brides, young bachelors, old men worn out with toil, maids who had been crossed in love, and brave men who had been killed in battle, with their armor still smirched with blood;
"He would not answer, but turned away to Erebus and to the other ghosts [ psukhai];
Birds
The primordial realm of darkness in which Night lays the egg from which Eros and the birds' race are born.
At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus, and deep Tartarus.
Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest.
Orestes
The dark underworld region from which Electra summons Night.
O Lady Night, giver of sleep to hard-working mortals, come from Erebus, come, wing your way to the palace of Agamemnon.
Hymn 2 to Demeter
Erebus is the underworld realm where Persephone is taken and to which she must periodically return.
Now when all-seeing Zeus the loud-thunderer heard this, he sent the Slayer of Argus whose wand is of gold to Erebus, so that having won over Hades with soft words, he might lead forth chaste Persephone to the light from the misty gloom to join the gods, and that her mother might see her with her eyes and cease from her anger.
--> “Dark-haired Hades, ruler over the departed, father Zeus bids me bring noble Persephone forth from Erebus unto the gods, that her mother may see her with her eyes and cease from her dread anger with the immortals;
but if you have tasted food, you must go back again beneath the secret places of the earth, there to dwell a third part of the seasons every year: