Keres

In Hesiod's genealogy the Keres are daughters of Nyx (Night), placing them among a primordial, chthonic family that includes figures such as Moros (Doom), Thanatos (Death), Hypnos (Sleep), the Oneiroi (Dreams), and the Moirai (Fates). Later authors and commentators sometimes apply alternative labels (for example Latin Tenebrae) or variant parentages in later reinterpretations, but primary Greek sources present them as night-born hostile death-spirits.

Literary descriptions depict them as dark or black, grim-eyed female spirits with white gnashing teeth, fierce, bloody, and clawed—hungry for blood (as in the Shield of Heracles). Parallel iconographic evidence reported by modern commentators shows some vase‑paintings representing small winged sprites, indicating variation between monstrous clawed figures in epic poetry and smaller winged depictions in visual art.

The Keres hover over battlefields, search for the wounded and newly fallen, seize and feast on the dead and dying, and are associated with pestilence and ruin. Poetically, the term κήρ also carries meanings of death or doom and can function in narrative moments (e.g., Homeric weighing of keres) to indicate allotments of death or the impending fate of individuals. Sources describe them collectively as a vast host though some later or fragmentary poets speak of just two or twin Keres.