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Hercules Furens

A Roman tragedy play, Hercules Furens is created by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, also known as Seneca the Younger.

This play is based on Euripides' play that is of the same title, but is often known as simply Heracles.

Near the beginning of the play, Nyx is noted in the first appearance of the Chorus as she departs from the sky.

"Behold! The stars now scarcely perceptible are shining but feebly in the setting sky, and night [Nyx] drawing in slowly calls together the scattering luminaries (planets)."

Around three-fourths of the play, Herakles has suddenly crashed into unconsciousness while before Amphitryon after he has murdered his own children and wife due to being driven mad. The chorus then pleads to Hypnos to keep Herakles asleep until he is not longer plagued with madness. In it as descriptions of Hypnos do they use reference to Nyx and Thanatos.

"Somnus (Hypnos)! the dissipator of sensorial disturbance, the donor of tranquil thought and the better portion of human life (namely sleep)--Oh! winged Somnus (Hypnos), claiming Astraea for his maternal decent (Nyx), Oh! thou gentle brother or implacable Mors (Thanatos)! mingling the mental conceptions--the possible with the impossible--sometimes in the form of enlightening impressions revealing the truth, sometimes keeping back from our knowledge evils which are impending!"

Book sources:
Seneca. The ten tragedies of Seneca: With notes : rendered into English prose as equivalently as the idioms of both languages permit. Translation by Watson Bradshaw. London: S. Sonnenschein & Co. 1902.

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