The Seba library treats Erebos in 8 passages, across 6 authors (including von Franz, Marie-Louise, Kerényi, Karl, Rohde, Erwin).
In the immense clefts of the Erebos — that is, the deeper abyss — night with her dark wings gave birth to a wind egg. From it sprang in the course of time the God Eros
Von Franz identifies Erebos as the deepest generative abyss in Orphic cosmogony, the cleft darkness from which Night produces the primordial wind-egg and, through it, Eros — making Erebos the womb of desire and world-genesis.
, Creation Myths, 1995thesis
the Charites are daughters of Night and Erebos, or daughters of Lethe, the river in the Underworld whose name means
Keréнyi establishes Erebos as a genealogical source, showing that even the grace-goddesses (Charites) carry an underworld lineage descended from Night and Erebos, connecting beauty with primordial darkness.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis
Nor does he give any very lengthy account of the dwellers in Erebos, and what he does say of them keeps well within the limits of the usual Homeric belief. The Souls resemble shadow- or dream-pictures
Rohde treats Erebos as the Homeric underworld proper, populated by shadow-like, unconscious souls — establishing the philological baseline against which later, more elaborate afterlife topographies must be measured.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894thesis
the simple and archaic conception which perpetuates the old Homeric attitude and views without a complaint or a regret the disappearance of the soul of the departed into Erebos, is of the rarest occurrence among these sepulchral verses
Rohde documents the historical recession of the bare Homeric Erebos-conception in popular religious expression, noting its increasing rarity as more consolatory afterlife beliefs displace it.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting
of the perished dead gathered to the place, up out of Erebos, brides, and young unmarried men, and long-suffering elders, virgins, tender and with the sorrows of young hearts upon them
Lattimore’s Odyssey renders the classical locus of Erebos as the source from which the undifferentiated dead stream upward toward the sacrificial blood, defining it as the reservoir of all the departed.
, Odyssey of Homer, 2009supporting
the waters that divide Erebos from the world of the living are already known to Homer
Rohde establishes the geographical boundary function of Erebos — separated from the living world by waters that no soul can re-cross — as a feature already present in the earliest stratum of Greek belief.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting
Erebos, 105
Vernant’s index entry places Erebos structurally alongside Gaia, Hades, and Chaos in the Hesiodic cosmogonical framework, situating it as a recognized coordinate in the Greek thought-map without elaboration.
, The Origins of Greek Thought, 1982aside
Erebus, iii. 44
Cicero’s index records Erebus as a named entity treated in the theological debate of De Natura Deorum, placing it within the Greco-Roman catalogue of underworld powers subject to rationalist critique.
, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), -45aside