Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Cross-referenced catalogue index

Oizys: Distress, Child of Night (Hesiod)

Catalogue ID: 01-cosmogony-theogony/048-oizys-distress-nyx-hesiodic

Cycle: Cosmogony / Theogony — Night’s brood / personified distress

Version line: Hesiodic — Oizys (Distress/Woe) among Nyx’s children

Sources: Hesiod, *Theogony* 214

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/01-cosmogony-theogony/048-oizys-distress-nyx-hesiodic.md

Characters

Places

Themes

Narrative

Hesiod names painful Oizys (Distress, Woe, Misery) among Night’s children, pairing her with Momos (Blame) in the same line of the *Theogony*. She has no separate myth in Hesiod: she is the personified condition of human anguish—grief, hardship, and wretchedness—born from Night without a narrative of deeds. Later moral and tragic language may invoke woe as a daimonic presence, but the Hesiodic fact is genealogical. Catalogue Oizys apart from the collective Nyx list (01/020) and from Eris’s children (Toil, Pains, and the rest in 01/039): here isolate Night’s own daughter Distress as a named power of misery.