Keres

In Greek mythology, the Keres (/ˈkɪriːz/; Ancient Greek: Κῆρες) were female death-spirits.

They were the goddesses who personified violent death and who were drawn to bloody deaths on battlefields.

Although they were present during death and dying, they did not have the power to kill.

All they could do was wait and then feast on the dead.

The Keres were daughters of Nyx, and as such the sisters of beings such as Moirai, who controlled the fate of souls, and Thanatos, the god of peaceful death.

Some later authorities, such as Cicero, called them by a Latin name, Tenebrae ("the Darknesses"), and named them daughters of Erebus and Nyx.

The singular form of the name is Ker (/ˈkɜr/; Κήρ), which, according to Hesiod, refers to an entity distinct from the Keres.^[3]

Etymology

The Greek word κήρ means "death" or "doom"[citation ^needed] and appears as a proper noun in the singular and plural as Κήρ and Κῆρες to refer to divinities.

Homer uses Κῆρες in the phrase κήρες θανάτοιο, "Keres of death".

By extension the word may mean "plague, disease" and in prose "blemish or defect".

The relative verb κεραΐζω or κείρω means "ravage or plunder".^[4]

Sometimes in Homer the words κήρ and moira have similar meanings.

The older meaning was probably "destruction of the dead", and Hesychius of Alexandria relates the word to the verb κηραινειν "decay".^[5]