Moon, Dawn, Night and Day, various winds and stars. A number of abstract qualities
are also included: Destiny, Doom, Dreams, Blame, Woe, Indignation, Deceit, Affec-
tion, Old Age, and Strife; Suffering, Forgetfulness, Hunger, Pain, Combat, Battles,
Murder, Manslaughter, Quarrels, Lies, Disputes, Lawlessness, Folly, and Oath; Per-
suasion, Fortune, Emulation, Victory, Strength, and Force. A few even play a slightly
more substantial role as consorts to Zeus: Cunning thus becomes mother of Athene,
and Memory mother of the Muses. Personifications also appear in Homer’s works,
often in contexts where the poet can exploit the ambiguity between abstraction and
personification, as when Terror, Fear, and Strife take to the battlefield (Iliad4.440–3).
That Homer is quite capable of inventing personifications for didactic purposes is
clear from the allegory of Folly and Prayers (Iliad9.502–12) which Phoenix uses in
his attempt to persuade Achilles to be reconciled with Agamemnon (Yamagata 2005).
In theWorks and Days(11–24) Hesiod likewise can introduce the good Strife –
something like ‘‘Competition’’ or ‘‘Ambition’’ – purely as a rhetorical device to
support the argument that his brother Perses should work harder. It must often
remain debatable, then, whether any one of Homer’s or Hesiod’s personifications is a
‘‘proper’’ god or simply a literary device invented to fill a genealogical gap or to make
a point.
A handful of personifications, however, are more fully realized within epic poetry
and also appear in art. Archaic art lags a little behind literature in its portrayal of
(recognizable) personifications because the practice of inscribing characters’ names
does not become widespread until the late seventh century. The earliest personified
figures to be identified in this way are those on the Chest of Cypselus, an extraordin-
arily ornate cedar-wood chest decorated with carving and inlaid ivory and gold which
was made around 600 BC. This is preserved for us in Pausanias’ detailed description
(5.17.5–19.10) and provides a directory of the most popular mythological characters
of the time, which include a number of personifications. Night holds the children
Sleep and Death, one white and one black, asleep in her arms; Justice is a beautiful
woman throttling and beating the ugly Injustice; Strife, ‘‘most ugly in appearance,’’
stands between the dueling Hector and Ajax; Fear, ‘‘with a lion’s head,’’ appears on
the shield of Agamemnon. All of these figures can also be seen in extant vase-painting
of the later sixth century. Most frequently depicted are Sleep and his brother Death,
in a scene inspired by their role inIliad16, where they are tasked to carry the hero
Sarpedon’s body home to Lycia. The character of Sleep (Hypnos) is more fully
developed inIliad14 (231–90, 352–62), when Hera visits him on Lemnos to seek
his assistance in her plot to distract Zeus’ attention while she helps the Greeks: Sleep
is initially reluctant, because he only narrowly avoided Zeus’ wrath when he helped on
a previous occasion, but, though unmoved by Hera’s initial bribe of a golden throne,
he is won over by her offer of marriage to one of the Graces. This highly personalized
figure bears comparison with Hesiod’s Sleep, child of Night, who shares a dark home
with his brother Death (Theogony211–12, 755–66). The evidence for Sleep actually
being worshiped is thinly scattered and mostly of hellenistic or later date (Stafford
2003), but the substantialness of the character established by Homer and Hesiod and
reflected in art shows that he can already be conceived of as a fully personalized god in
the archaic period.
Progression from a minor role in epic and archaic art to later cult status can be
further demonstrated in the cases of Fear (Phobos) and of Youth (Hebe). We have
Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_004 Revise Proof page 74 30.10.2006 4:25pm74 Emma Stafford