Source Verification: Thanatos
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
Who are Thanatos's parents, and who is his twin?
Hesiod names Night as his mother, with no father given - Thanatos is one of the children she bore entirely on her own. His twin brother is Hypnos, Sleep, and the Theogony lists the two of them together as a single pair rather than as separate, unrelated figures.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 211-213
What did Thanatos and his twin do for Sarpedon?
After Sarpedon, a son of Zeus, was killed at Troy, Zeus ordered Apollo to prepare the body and hand it to Sleep and Death, the twin brothers, who carried it swiftly to Sarpedon's homeland of Lycia so he could be buried properly among his own people rather than left where he fell.
Source: Homer, Iliad 16.671-683
Is Thanatos shown as cruel or violent in the Iliad?
No. His one clear appearance in the poem has him carrying out an act of care rather than harm, working alongside Sleep to see a fallen hero home for burial at Zeus's own direction - the scene presents death as final and inevitable, but not as something Thanatos inflicts with malice.
Source: Homer, Iliad 16.671-683
Does Thanatos have his own dwelling, like his twin Hypnos does?
Ancient sources describe the two brothers as living in the same place, near where Night herself dwells at the ends of the earth, close to the gates of Tartarus and the region where Atlas holds up the sky - a shared household befitting twins who so often act as a single pair.
Source: Hesiod, Theogony 744-761
Sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 211-213
- Hesiod, Theogony 744-761
- Homer, Iliad 16.671-683
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)