Who Decides Your Time to Die? Fate and Doom in Early Greek Literature
‘Moira = death is common to all men; Moira destroys man, snuffs him out as a light.’ (B.C. Dietrich, Death, Fate and the Gods: The Development of a Religious Idea in Greek Popular Belief and in Homer (London: The Athlone Press, 1965), 75.)
Cast into the role of divinities of fate or destiny, the literal role of the Moirai lays in the apportioning of men’s lives – and from this function their strong association with death was derived. Like many other death agents or underworld gods, they are divinities with a shady past; numerous origin stories, relatively late cultic integration, and literary appearances in both the singular and plural, as well as confusion in later scholarship over their role and function in early texts. Most famously known for their role in cutting the thread of men’s lives, this act means it is these goddesses who not only hold the decision of life and death but that they hold the divine power to inflict death upon man. But the Moirai are not the only fate-goddesses who can inflict death. The Keres, personifications of each man’s individual doom who may act as agents of the Moirai, rip men away from the battlefield and drag them into the house of Haides. Where the Moirai are responsible for the apportioning out of life and death, the Keres are only concerned with man’s death, most commonly in the context of violent and bloody battle. This paper shall explore characterisation of both the Moirai and the Keres within the context of early Greek literature in order to illuminate the shadowy path of predestination and death, with particular emphasis on the Homeric epics.
Cast into the role of divinities of fate or destiny, the literal role of the Moirai lays in the apportioning of men’s lives – and from this function their strong association with death was derived. Like many other death agents or underworld gods, they are divinities with a shady past; numerous origin stories, relatively late cultic integration, and literary appearances in both the singular and plural, as well as confusion in later scholarship over their role and function in early texts. Most famously known for their role in cutting the thread of men’s lives, this act means it is these goddesses who not only hold the decision of life and death but that they hold the divine power to inflict death upon man. But the Moirai are not the only fate-goddesses who can inflict death. The Keres, personifications of each man’s individual doom who may act as agents of the Moirai, rip men away from the battlefield and drag them into the house of Haides. Where the Moirai are responsible for the apportioning out of life and death, the Keres are only concerned with man’s death, most commonly in the context of violent and bloody battle. This paper shall explore characterisation of both the Moirai and the Keres within the context of early Greek literature in order to illuminate the shadowy path of predestination and death, with particular emphasis on the Homeric epics.