Aether (mythology)

Aether
Primordial god of the upper air
Aether in battle with a lion-headed Giant
Consort	Hemera, Gaia
Parents	Erebus and Nyx (Hesiod) or Chronos and Ananke (Orphic Hymns) or Chaos (Ovid, Hyginus)
Children	Gaia, Thalassa, Uranus, Aergia, Pontus, Tartarus

Aether /ˈiːθər/ or Aither (Æthere, Ancient Greek: Αἰθήρ, pronounced [aitʰɛ̌ːr]), in ancient Greece, was one of the primordial deities. Aether is the personification of the upper air. He embodies the pure upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to the normal air (, ) breathed by mortals. Like Tartarus and Erebus, Aether may have had shrines in ancient Greece, but he had no temples and is unlikely to have had a cult.

In Hesiod's Theogony, Aether (Light), was the son of Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night), and the brother of Hemera (Day).

The Roman mythographer Hyginus, says Aether was the son of Chaos and Caligo (Darkness). According to Jan Bremmer,

Hyginus ... started his Fabulae with a strange hodgepodge of Greek and Roman cosmogonies and early genealogies. It begins as follows: Ex Caligine Chaos. Ex Chao et Caligine Nox Dies Erebus Aether (Praefatio 1). His genealogy looks like a derivation from Hesiod, but it starts with the un-Hesiodic and un-Roman Caligo, ‘Darkness’. Darkness probably did occur in a cosmogonic poem of Alcman, but it seems only fair to say that it was not prominent in Greek cosmogonies.

Hyginus says further that the children of Aether and Day were Earth, Heaven, and Sea, while the children of Aether and Earth were "Grief, Deceit, Wrath, Lamentation, Falsehood, Oath, Vengeance, Intemperance, Altercation, Forgetfulness, Sloth, Fear, Pride, Incest, Combat, Ocean, Themis, Tartarus, Pontus; and the Titans, Briareus, Gyges, Steropes, Atlas, Hyperion, and Polus, Saturn, Ops, Moneta, Dione; and three Furies – namely, Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone."

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