Mortals fear Night chiefly because she brings darkness, and with it inability to see that is frustrating and terrifying. As portrayed by Homer, these ancients are not terribly philosophic people. They emphasize duty, honor, loyalty, and action. Achilles briefly lets his own musings about death interfere with his willingness to act, but for the most part, the Greeks do not probe death s mystery. Unlike the eastern philosophers of the same period, who delighted in subtleties and complexities, they view life and death as black and white.
Night is a kind of boundary.
As a symbol of death, she is the boundary of a man s life, because the world sprang from darkness, she might be called a boundary to the universe, and of course, she demarcates a man s day. He feels he must accomplish his objective in one day. That daily sense of urgency is carried over into the Greek concept of a lifespan. That urgency, combined with a newfound sense of the futility of man s efforts when the end is inevitable, drives Achilles mad. Night also bridges boundaries, specifically the boundary between life and death.