Somnus

Somnus
God of sleep
Somnus and Mors, Sleep and His Half-Brother Death by John William Waterhouse
Abode	Underworld
Personal information
Children	The Somnia, which included Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos
Equivalents
Greek equivalent	Hypnos

In Roman mythology, Somnus ("sleep") is the personification of sleep.^[1] His Greek counterpart is Hypnos. Somnus resided in the underworld. According to Virgil, Somnus was the brother of Death (Mors),^[2] and according to Ovid, Somnus had a 'thousand' sons,^[3] the Somnia ('dream shapes'), who appear in dreams 'mimicking many forms'.^[4] 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.^[5]

Greek tradition

In the Greek tradition,

Following the Greek tradition, Virgil makes Sleep and Death brothers, and locates their dwellings next to each other, near the entrance of the underworld:

In the first courts and entrances of Hell

Sorrows and vengeful Cares on couches lie :

There sad Old Age abides, Diseases pale,

And Fear, and Hunger, temptress to all crime;

Want, base and vile, and, two dread shapes to see,

Bondage and Death : then Sleep, Death's next of kin;^[10]

Somnus makes a brief appearance in Virgil's Aeneid. Virgil has Somnus cause Palinurus, the helmsman of Aeneas's ship, to fall asleep while steering the ship at night.^[11] Somnus, in the guise of Phorbas, a shipmate, appears to Palinurus and offers to take over, so that Palinurus might rest awhile. But Palinurus refused the offer, so Somnus uses a branch, "imbued" with the power of underworld's river Styx, to sprinkle Palinurus with water from the river Lethe, the underworld's river of forgetfulness. Palinurus then falls asleep, and Somnus pushes him overboard.

Ovid

Somnus, and his sons the Somnia appear in Ovid's poem Metamorphoses.^[12] Ovid, like Virgil before him, followed Hesiod in making Sleep a denizen of the underworld.^[13] However, recalling the location of the 'land of dreams' in the Odyssey, Ovid also locates the dwelling of Somnus "near the land of the Cimmerians".^[14] Ovid has Somnus live in a cave, describing "the home and chamber of sluggish Sleep"^[15] as a place where:

Phoebus [the Sun] can never enter ... with his rising, noontide, or setting rays. Clouds of vapour breathe forth from the earth, and dusky twilight shadows. There no wakeful, crested cock with his loud crowing summons the dawn; no watch-dog breaks the deep silence with his baying, or goose, more watchful than the dog. There is no sound of wild beast or of cattle, of branches rustling in the breeze, no clamorous tongues of men. There mute silence dwells.^[16]

In keeping with this theme of "silence", Ovid says that Somnus' house has no doors, "lest some turning hinge should creak".^[17]

Like Virgil, Ovid associates Somnus with the underworld's river Lethe, which Ovid has flowing from the bottom of Somnus' cave, and "whose waves, gently murmuring over the gravelly bed, invite to slumber."^[18] Near the entrance bloom sleep-inducing poppies and other herbs, which Nox (Night) uses to spread sleep over "the darkened lands."^[19] Although Ovid connects Night with Sleep, he makes no mention of Night being Sleep's mother as she is in Hesiod.^[20]

In the center of the main chamber, Somnus lies "in languorous repose" on a "downy-soft" black couch, surrounded by his innumerable sons, the "empty dream-shapes [Somnia vana], mimicking many forms, many as ears of grain in harvest-time, as leaves upon the trees, as sands cast on the shore."^[21] Ovid names three of these form-mimicking "dream shapes": Morpheus, Icelos/Phobetor, and Phantasos. About Morpheus, Ovid says "no other is more skilled than he in representing the gait, the features, and the speech of men; the clothing also and the accustomed words of each he represents."^[22] Another son called Icelos by the gods, but Phobetor by men, "takes the form of beast or bird or the long serpent", and a third son named Phantasos "puts on deceptive shapes of earth, rocks, water, trees, all lifeless things".^[23]

In Book 11 of the