Characters
- Artemis — summons allies; grants Styx and her children lasting place
- Athena — father of Styx’s children (Hesiodic; not the Attic epithet of Athena)
- Electra — Oceanid ally; mother of Zeus’s attendant powers; rewarded with honor
- Nike — Emulation / Rivalry; child of Styx
- Olympian gods — opponents in the war Styx joins
- Tethys — father of Styx; counsels her early allegiance
Places
- Field of the Titanomachy — war that earns the honor (cross-ref 01/006)
- Olympus — destination of Styx’s first arrival; seat of her children with Zeus
- Styx — Styx’s parental house
Themes
Narrative
Hesiod recounts that Styx, eldest daughter of Oceanus, bore to Pallas the dread children Zelos, Nike, Kratos, and Bia. When Zeus called the gods to stand against the Titans, Styx brought these four first of all to Olympus, by her father’s counsel. Zeus received them and did not forget the favor: he made Styx the great oath of the gods, and he set her children to dwell with him forever—no path leads them away from Zeus, no seat but his. Victory, Strength, Force, and Rivalry thus become permanent ministers of the new order; the Oceanid who arrived earliest is rewarded with both sacral sanction (the oath, treated in 01/031) and political intimacy (her offspring as Zeus’s inseparable powers).
The vignette explains why Nike and her siblings attend Zeus in art and cult language, and why Aeschylus can send Kratos and Bia to clap Prometheus to the rock without introducing them: they are already Hesiod’s household. This file isolates the alliance and the children’s honor from the long oath-penalty passage, so Styx’s Titanomachy politics sit among Olympian personnel rather than only among cosmogonic rivers.