In Homer, the word achlys (ἀχλύς, 'mist'), is frequently used to describe a mist that is "shed" upon a mortal's eyes, often while dying.
[2] For example in the Iliad, the hero Sarpedon while grieviously wounded: While in the Odyssey, Eurymachus, one of the suitors of Penelope, hit in the chest by an arrow from Odysseus: In the Shield of Heracles, an archaic Greek epic poem (early sixth century BC?
), that was attributed to Hesiod, Achlys is one of the figures described as being depicted on Heracles' shield, where she is understood as being the personification of sorrow or grief:[5] Beside them [Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos (the Moirai), and the Keres] stood Death-Mist [Ἀχλὺς], gloomy and dread, pallid, parched, cowering in hunger, thick-kneed; long claws were under her hands.
The first-century BC Roman mythographer Hyginus, in the Preface of his Fabulae, has Caligo being the mother of Chaos (for Hesiod the first being who existed), and, with Chaos, was the mother of Night (Nox), Day (Dies), Darkness (Erebus) and Ether (Aether), possibly drawing on an otherwise unknown Greek cosmological myth.
[8] According to Nonnus, Hera—angry with the guardians of the infant Dionysus (the sons of the Naiad nurses of Dionysus)—"procured from Thessalian Achlys [Ἀχλύος] treacherous flowers of the field", which she used to sprinkle a sleeping charm over their heads, then "she distilled poisoned drugs over their hair and smeared a magical ointment over their faces", changing their human shape into that of horned Centaurs.