(from ἐρεβόμενος, night), in Mythology, a term denoting darkness. According to Hesiod, Erebus was the son of Chaos and the night, and the father of the day. This was also the name of part of the inferi among the ancients; they had a peculiar expiation for those who were detained in Erebus.

Erebus was properly the gloomy region, and distinguished both from Tartarus the place of torment, and Elysium the region of bliss; according to the account given of it by Virgil, it forms the third grand division of the invisible world beyond the Styx, and comprehends several particular districts, as the limbus infans, or the receptacle for infants; the limbus for those who have destroyed themselves; the fields of mourning, full of dark groves and woods, inhabited by those who died for love; and beyond these, an open champaign country for departed warriors.