Thanatos

**Thanatos**, also called **Letum**, is the God of Peaceful Death from Greco-Roman Mythology, and the twin brother of Hypnos. He is considered Hades' most trusted servant and the Grim Reaper of the Greco-Roman Underworld.

## Overview

In Greek mythology, **Thanatos** was the personification of death. He was a minor figure in Greek mythology, often referred to but rarely appearing in person. His name is transliterated in Latin as *Thanatus*, but his counterpart in Roman mythology is **Mors** or **Letum**.

## Appearance

Thanatos appears as a breathtakingly handsome man with short white hair and haunting golden eyes. His frame is lean yet well-built, with defined muscles covering his whole body, and his skin has a corpse-like tint to it. He wears ornate black robes with gold accessories and skull-like designs.

Located on his back is a pair of large feathered-wings in multiple shades of black and dark-gray, with freckles of gold scattered across them.

## Personality

Believed as indiscriminate and merciless, Thanatos is detested and feared by most gods and humans, though for the most parts, he doesn't care much about what people think of him. Like other [Gods of Death], he is dedicated to his divine duties and strives to be nothing but perfect when it comes to his work.

As the embodiment of [Death], he knows more than anyone else that death isn't fair, despite popular belief, but it's his duty to collect shades of the dead and prevent them from returning to the mortal world. He has a dark sense of humor, enjoying freaking out the shades he's collecting for personal amusement, though he'd just pretend it as him doing his job.

This doesn't mean he doesn't like mortals, however, as he does care about them, in his own deadpan and snarky way. He sees it as part of his duties to reassure mortals in their dying moments that death is not truly the end for them before heralding them away. Not to mention, despite being the embodiment of Death, he mainly works with those who died a peaceful or remorseless death, since these shades are less stressful to deal with.

According to Hypnos, he is a "professional *tsundere*, with god-tier experience of being emotionally constipated". In spite of his abrasive manners, he genuinely means well and wants to help others. He has trouble expressing his feelings, whether it's to his friends or family or to his partners, as most of the time, he'd just bite his own tongue, get embarrassed, and immediately teleport away out of shame.

## History

### Early Years

Thanatos is among the many gods created by Nyx and Erebus. He is the older twin brother of Hypnos, the God of Sleep, while he himself is the God of Death. When humans were created and the reapers were born, he was tasked to be the Grim Reaper of the Greek Underworld, in-charge with keeping the reapers in line and harvesting the shades of deceased mortals within Greek Pantheon's territory.

### The Titanomachy

During the Titanomachy, he and the rest of the chthonic gods swore an oath of servitude to Hades and the Olympian dynasty, and as such, he became Hades' bodyguard and right-hand man. After the war, he continued his original duties, though much like his mother and many of his siblings, he moved from Tartarus to live in the House of Hades.

### Captured by Sisyphus

Sisyphus was a witch, the founder and first King of Ephyra, and a descendant of the Titan God Prometheus. Despite his promotion of navigation and commerce, he was an avaricious and deceitful man who violated *xenia*, killing guests and travelers in his palace to practice his witchcraft. Angered by his heinous action, Zeus ordered Thanatos to come and drag him to the Underworld for eternal punishment.

However, when he arrived at Sisyphus' palace, the witch-king had already prepared for him and bound him with demonic chains made of infernal energy. With Thanatos' imprisonment, the reapers started to slack off and shades of the dead began to roam the mortal world, terrorizing humans all across the Mediterranean Basin. Because of this, Ares, who had harboring an unrequited crush toward Thanatos, noticed something was wrong and decided to deal with it himself.

Ares bashed into Sisyphus' palace and defeated the witch-king, freeing the captured Sisyphus, and the two then dragged the bound and chained Sisyphus down to the underworld. There, the man was sentenced to eternal torments - regardless of his inherent immortality - though he managed to sneak back to the mortal world once more by killing one of Persephone's handmaidens. After his escape, Sisyphus disguised himself as **Laërtes** and became King of the Ithaca and the Cephallenians. Several years after his son Odysseus' return, his identity was finally discovered by the chthonic gods and his shade was dragged down to the underworld.

On his second capture, he was met with the wrath of not only Hades and Thanatos, but also Persephone, whose handmaiden was killed by him. As a punishment for his trickery, Hades made Sisyphus roll a huge boulder endlessly up a steep hill. The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to his hubristic belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus himself. Hades then enchanted the boulder into rolling away from Sisyphus before he reached the top, which ended up consigning Sisyphus to an eternity of useless efforts and unending frustration.

### Wrestling with Heracles

When King Admetus of Pherae was doomed to die, Apollo was able to extract a promise from the Moirai that the king would be able to live if someone agreed to exchange their life for his. However, when asked, no one dared to agree to this deal, not even his own parents, and when all hope seemed to be lost, Admetus' loving wife Alcestis came forth and agreed to exchange her life for his.

Several days later, Admetus' friend Heracles came for a visit and, upon hearing his friend's tale, became determined to help him. When Thanatos came to the palace to collect Alcestis' shade, Heracles jumped out of his hiding space and wrestled him, keeping him in a headlock until he agreed to return Alcestis' shade to her body. While he couldn't resurrect her since her soul had already been absorbed by Metempsychosis, Thanatos was able to reanimate her body and linked it to Admetus' life-force, allowing Admetus and Alcestis to spend their remaining years together.

## Equipment

**Shade Harvester(Glimmering Silver Scythe of Souls)**: Thanatos' personal weapon of choice. It is a large death scythe made of Stygian Iron which radiates immense dark energy, and the blade is charmed so that, not only it would damage both the body and the soul, it would also immediately send them into the depths of Tartarus, the darkest section in the Greco-Roman Underworld where the vilest of monsters are born and imprisoned.

**Black iPad**: Thanatos owns a leather-cased black iPad that contains all the shades within the Greco-Roman Underworld's authority, list of all dying and soon-to-die mortals, and all escaped shades. He also has the Skype addresses of all the chthonic gods.

## Quotes

**Thanatos**: "*Hypnos, really, that is the worst idea I think I've ever heard. Do you understand how little sense that makes?*"
**Hypnos**: "*I'm just saying, maybe if you just, I don't know, had all the mortals die at the same time, it'd save you a bunch of trips, and then we'd have more time to spend together, huh?*"
**Thanatos**: "*I don't know why I bother with you, honestly. Get back to work, and let me do the same.*"
— Thanatos to Hypnos

**Thanatos**: "*Still running from yourself, I see. How's that been working out for you thus far?*"
**Zagreus**: "*I'm searching for my mother. You still live at home with yours. You don't know what it's like.*"
**Thanatos**: "*Mother Nyx was like a mother to you, too. And this is how you repay her. You should be ashamed of yourself, and learn your place.*"
**Zagreus**: "*Wait, I...*"
— Thanatos to Zagreus

## Trivia

* His name "Thanatos" literally means "death", deriving from θνῄσκω "(I) die, am dying".
* His attributes are butterflies, poppies, the sword, and an upside down torch.
* While his name is translated as *Thanatus* in Latin, his Roman name is Letum.
* While he claims to be the God of Peaceful Death, he is an incarnation of Death itself, which includes the peaceful, violent, and unnatural death. The reason he chooses "peaceful death" as his main domain is purely due to personal preference.
* He is rarely depicted in art without his twin brother Hypnos.
* Originally, ancient Greek art depicted him as a bearded man, though as he began to be more associated with a mild death than a tragic death, he started to be portrayed as a beautiful *ephebe*, with many Roman sarcophagi depicting him as a Cupid-like figure.
* His depiction as carrying a scythe and being 'the Reaper of Souls' is similar to many folklores' description of the Grim Reaper; a hooded skeleton who carries a scythe to 'mow down' the dead.
* According to Hazel Levesque, when it comes to Death, the Romans let Thanatos stay Greek.
	+ Despite this, he does have a Roman form called Letum, though according to him, other than some cosmetic changes, he mostly stays the same, as "love and death are universal".
* In many translations of the Book of Revelation, the Pale Rider is named *Thanatos*.
* Thanatophobia, the fear of death, is named after him.
	+ Thanatology, the scientific study of death, is named after him.
	+ Thanatophoric dysplasia, a severe skeletal disorder, derived its name from him.
	+ "Lethal", the English word meaning "Causing death" came from his Roman name, Letum.