Somnus
Sign in to saveIn Roman mythology, Somnus ("sleep") is the personification of sleep. His Greek counterpart is Hypnos. Somnus resided in the underworld. According to Virgil, Somnus was the brother of Death (Mors), and according to Ovid, Somnus had a 'thousand' sons, the Somnia ('dream shapes'), who appear in dreams 'mimicking many forms'. Ovid named three of the sons of Somnus: Morpheus, who appears in human guise, Icelos / Phobetor, who appears as beasts, and Phantasos, who appears as inanimate objects.
Key facts
- Deity.type
- Roman
- Deity.name
- Somnus
- Deity.image
- Waterhouse-sleep and his half-brother death-1874.jpg
- Deity.caption
- Somnus and Mors, Sleep and His Half-Brother Death by John William Waterhouse
- Deity.god_of
- God of sleep
- Deity.abode
- Underworld
- Deity.children
- The Somnia, which included Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Image
- Waterhouse-sleep and his half-brother death-1874.jpg
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~7 min read
Article
5 sectionsContents
- Greek tradition
- Virgil
- Ovid
- Notes
- References
In Roman mythology, Somnus ("sleep") is the personification of sleep. His Greek counterpart is Hypnos. Somnus resided in the underworld. According to Virgil, Somnus was the brother of Death (Mors), and according to Ovid, Somnus had a 'thousand' sons, the Somnia ('dream shapes'), who appear in dreams 'mimicking many forms'. Ovid named three of the sons of Somnus: Morpheus, who appears in human guise, Icelos / Phobetor, who appears as beasts, and Phantasos, who appears as inanimate objects.
==Greek tradition== In the Greek tradition, Hypnos (Sleep) was the brother of Thanatos (Death), and the son of Nyx (Night). According to Hesiod, Sleep, along with Death, live in the underworld, while in the Homeric tradition, although "the land of dreams" was located on the road to the underworld, near the great world-encircling river Oceanus, nearby the city of Cimmerians, Sleep himself lived on the island of Lemnos.