Anyone who knows anything about Greek Mythology knows that Zeus is the all-powerful lord of Mt. Olympus and that no other god is above him, right? However, I’ve heard that there’s one deity whom he fears and is terrified to face in a fight. Nyx, the goddess of the night.
So…………………..is she more powerful than he is?
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Generally speaking, most Greek gods on Zeus’s level aren’t omnipotent or omniscient. They’re arguably only considered immortal because they’re just really hard to kill.
Nyx is a primordial deity, like Gaia and Tartarus.
This is an entirely different level of godhood were talking about. These do not control or oversee an aspect of their portfolio, they are the very personification it.
Nyx is the night. She is omniscient because the night is everywhere. She can’t be killed because the night will always returns after the sun goes down. To say she is omnipotent would be an insult to her, as that implies the night could ever have a limit.
Zeus does not fear Nyx, he is in awe of her majesty.
She plays a more important role in creation in the Orphic Cosmology, but the part you probably hint at is from Homer’s Iliad:
>”There [in Lemnos] she [Hera] encountered Hypnos (Hypnus, Sleep), the brother of Thanatos (Thanatus, Death) . . . [Hypnos addresses Hera :] ‘That time I laid to sleep the brain in Zeus of the aegis and drifted upon him still and soft, but your mind was devising evil, and you raised along the sea the blasts of the racking winds, and on these swept him away to Kos (Cos), the strong-founded, with all his friends lost, but Zeus awakened in anger and beat the gods up and down his house, looking beyond all others for me, and would have sunk me out of sight in the sea from the bright sky had not Nyx (Night) who has power over gods and men rescued me. I reached her in my flight, and Zeus let be, though he was angry, in awe of doing anything to swift Nyx’ displeasure.’”
This means she had the means to rescue Hypnos from Zeus’ wrath, and he deemed her dangerous enough not to provoke her. Why that is remains a mystery. Nyx is a primordial being, a mother of gods and daemons, and not the kind ones. Maybe he feared them more than her. Another possibility: That time when Demeter abandoned her duties and plunged Earth into misery should give us an idea of what it could have looked like if the literal night had stopped her work.
It’s like comparing someone who can wipe out a mountain range to an omnipotent deity.
No. She’s the night. You can’t punch the night. A thunderstorm can’t make the night go away any more than the night can make a thunderstorm go away. Even if Zeus could attack Nyx she’s a fundamental component of the order of the universe without which everything dies.
In terms of raw power Nyx takes this. As other have said she’s higher on the power scale, in line with Gaia (earth). However the primordials despite their power have much less agency than the gods. They are what they embody.
Primordial aspects of creation.