40 Fun Facts About Hypnos

Which personification of death was the twin brother of Hypnos and shared his home in the underworld?

Thanatos lived next door to Hypnos in a place the sun's rays never reached. Ancient artists rarely showed him without his twin at his side.

Which sleep-inducing flowers were said to grow at the mouth of the cave where Hypnos lived?

Poppies, the source of opium, bloomed at the entrance among other drowsy herbs. Their juices were said to be sprinkled over the darkening earth to bring on sleep.

Which son of Hypnos in Roman poetry takes human form in dreams and later lent his name to a painkiller?

Morpheus could copy the walk, face and voice of any person, and his name was borrowed for morphine. His brothers played the animals and the scenery in dreams.

In which ancient epic does Hypnos lull Zeus to sleep so that the Greeks can gain ground at Troy?

The Iliad gives Hypnos his biggest scene, in a passage ancient editors titled the Deception of Zeus. With the king of the gods asleep, the Greeks regained the upper hand.

Which horror writer's short story Hypnos follows a sculptor who takes drugs to avoid falling asleep?

H. P. Lovecraft wrote the tale in 1922 and dedicated it to his friend Samuel Loveman. Its narrator explores worlds beyond human understanding in dreams and comes back terrified of sleep.

Which country won back the Euphronios Krater, a vase of Sleep and Death lifting a warrior, from New York?

Italy got the vase back because it had been looted from an Etruscan tomb near Cerveteri in 1971. The Metropolitan Museum had paid more than a million dollars for it.

Which underworld river, drunk by souls before rebirth, was said to flow through the cave of Hypnos?

Lethe means forgetfulness, and its murmuring through the cave was said to make listeners drowsy. Souls were believed to drink from it so that they would forget their past lives.

Which author's Camp Half-Blood novels feature Clovis, a demigod son of Hypnos who leads his father's cabin?

Rick Riordan gave Hypnos his own cabin at the camp, with Clovis as its lead counselor. In The Lost Hero another camper consults him about a friend's missing memories.

What kind of object is 14827 Hypnos, found in 1986 by Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker?

An asteroid, it is thought to be a dead comet and is classed as potentially hazardous. In 1958 it passed unusually close to both Earth and Mars.

Which goddess, feared even by Zeus, was the mother of Hypnos and hid him from the king's rage?

Nyx, the goddess of Night, took Hypnos in after he had put Zeus to sleep as a favour to Hera. Zeus gave up the chase rather than anger her.

By which name did the Romans know the sleep god Hypnos, whom their poets housed in a silent cave?

Somnus is simply the Latin word for sleep, which is why English has insomnia and somnolent. His house had no doors, so that no hinge could ever creak.

Before visiting Hypnos, Hera lied to which goddess, who backed the other side at Troy, to borrow a charm?

Aphrodite handed the charm over, believing that Hera wanted to end a family quarrel. Hera used it to make Zeus fall for her while Hypnos waited nearby to put him to sleep.

In the Argonautica, Medea calls on Hypnos to charm the sleepless serpent guarding which treasure?

The Golden Fleece hung on an oak in Colchis, watched by a dragon that never closed its eyes. Medea sang to Hypnos as the highest of the gods, and Jason snatched the prize.

What sprouts from the temples of Hypnos in ancient art, as on a bronze head found near Perugia?

Wings mark Hypnos out in ancient art, usually on his brow or his shoulders. On the bronze head they rise beside elaborately woven locks of hair held in by a band.

On a Greek vase in Boston, Hypnos stands over which sleeping princess as Theseus abandons her?

Ariadne was left behind on the island of Naxos while she slept. The vase painter shows Hypnos dripping water on her head as she sleeps and Theseus slips away.

Where has the bronze Head of Hypnos, a Roman copy of a Greek statue, been kept since the 1860s?

The British Museum bought the head in 1868 with other pieces from the Castellani Collection. Only a handful of similar statues of Hypnos are known in Western Europe.

Hera first had Hypnos put Zeus to sleep so she could send a storm against which hated stepson's ship?

Heracles was sailing home from sacking Troy when the winds struck. Zeus woke in a fury and went looking for Hypnos, which is why the god was so wary when Hera asked again.

Once Zeus was asleep, Hypnos hurried to the Greek ships to tell which god he was free to help them?

Poseidon, god of the sea, was told he could now hand the Greeks a victory while his brother slept. He seized the chance and urged the Greek fighters on from the front rank.

Which youth, also loved by the Moon goddess, did Hypnos let sleep with open eyes in one telling?

Endymion slept with his eyes open so that Hypnos could go on gazing into them, the poet Licymnius of Chios claimed. The better-known story has Selene visiting him every night.

Which of the Graces did Hera promise to Hypnos as a bride to win his help against Zeus?

Pasithea was the bride Hypnos had always wanted, so the offer won him over. He still made Hera swear a binding oath, with the gods of the underworld as witnesses.

On which Aegean island, where the smith god landed when thrown from Olympus, does Hera find Hypnos?

Lemnos is where Homer has Hera find Hypnos, although Hesiod and the Roman poets housed him in the underworld. The islanders were said to have nursed the fallen smith god back to health.

On which mountain overlooking Troy did Hypnos send Zeus to sleep in the arms of Hera?

Mount Ida rises to a peak called Gargarus, where Hera went to find Zeus. The pair lay hidden inside a cloud on the summit while Hypnos did his work.

Which gift did Hypnos turn down when Hera first tried to bribe him into putting Zeus to sleep?

A golden seat that could never fall apart, with a footstool to match, was Hera's opening offer. Hypnos remembered how badly his last trick on Zeus had ended and said no.

Hypnos hid in a tall pine while Zeus fell asleep nearby, disguised in Homer as what kind of creature?

A bird with a sweet song was his disguise, one the gods called chalcis and mortals called cymindis. He perched in the tallest pine on the mountain until his moment came.

Zeus had Sleep and Death carry the body of which fallen son home from Troy to Lycia?

Sarpedon was a son of Zeus who died fighting for the Trojans. The twin gods laid him down in his homeland for burial, a scene painted on several famous Greek vases.

Which Roman poet gave Hypnos a silent doorless cave and a thousand shape-shifting sons?

Ovid tells the story in the Metamorphoses, and no earlier writer names any of the god's sons. Some scholars suspect that he simply made the names up.

Which messenger goddess did Juno send to wake the Roman sleep god so that he would dispatch a dream?

Iris had to brush sleeping dreams out of her way, and the gleam of her robes woke the god. She left at once, before the drowsiness of the cave could overcome her too.

In which Roman epic does the god of sleep drug the helmsman Palinurus and tip him into the sea?

The Aeneid has the god pose as a shipmate named Phorbas and offer to take the helm. When Palinurus refuses, the god shakes a dripping branch over him and pushes him overboard.

Which early Greek poet wrote that Hypnos and his twin were born to their mother alone, with no father?

Hesiod lists Hypnos in the Theogony among a brood that also includes Doom, Blame, Old Age and Strife. Roman writers later supplied a father for the whole family.

Which father of Hypnos in Roman sources shares his name with an Antarctic volcano and a lost ship?

Erebus was darkness itself, the gloom of the underworld. HMS Erebus gave his name to the volcano in 1841 and was later lost in the Arctic on the Franklin expedition.

Which painter of The Lady of Shalott made his Royal Academy debut with Sleep and His Half-Brother Death?

J. W. Waterhouse painted it in 1874, after both of his younger brothers had died of tuberculosis. Sleep is bathed in light and clasps his flowers, while Death is shrouded in darkness behind him.

Which Scottish surgeon made hypnotism, a word built on the name of Hypnos, popular in English in the 1840s?

James Braid is often wrongly credited with inventing the word, which a French writer had coined about twenty years earlier. He used it to set his work apart from mesmerism.

Pausanias saw a statue at Sicyon of Hypnos, surnamed the Bountiful, lulling which animal to sleep?

A lion was the beast, in a sanctuary of the healing god Asclepius, whose patients hoped for a cure in their dreams. A second statue of Hypnos there had lost everything but its head.

At Troezen, Hypnos shared an altar with which goddesses, who were said to hold him dearest of the gods?

The Muses and Hypnos received sacrifices together on one ancient altar. The traveller Pausanias, who saw it in the second century AD, was told that they were particular friends.

In Roman poetry, the couch where the sleep god Hypnos dozes in his cave is made of which material?

Ebony suits a cave that no light ever enters, and the black couch is piled with downy-soft coverings. Around it lie empty dreams as countless as ears of grain at harvest.

A bronze statue of Hypnos came to light in the late 1980s at a Roman villa in Almedinilla, in which country?

Spain has also yielded a bronze torso of Hypnos, found at Jumilla and now in Berlin. The Almedinilla figure was dug up in pieces and put back together by restorers.

In Roman poetry, the cave of Hypnos lies near which mythical people, said to live in endless gloom?

The Cimmerians lived, in Homer's telling, at the entrance to the land of the dead under constant mist and cloud. Greeks even linked their name to a word for mist.

Which name, meaning frightener, did mortals give the son of Hypnos whom the gods called Icelos?

Phobetor filled dreams with beasts and serpents, which explains the name. It comes from phobos, the Greek word for fear that also gave English the word phobia.

Which Greek spirits of dreams were brothers of Hypnos in the oldest genealogy and his sons in later ones?

The Oneiroi take their name from oneiros, the Greek for dream. Homer has Zeus send one of them to trick Agamemnon by taking the shape of his trusted adviser Nestor.

Which Greek city kept statues of Sleep and Death beside its temple of Athena of the Bronze House?

Sparta set the pair side by side because its people held them to be brothers, on the authority of Homer's verses. The traveller Pausanias saw them there in the second century AD.