In Greek mythology, the Makhai (Ancient Greek: Μάχαι, Máchai), also rendered Machai, are the personifications of battle and combat. They are counted among the children of Eris (Strife), and like their siblings they are personified abstractions whose identity is exhausted by the meaning of their name. Hesiod lists them in the Theogony, and the same figures recur in Homer among the grim attendants of war.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Machai" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Family
The Makhai are listed by Hesiod in the Theogony (line 228) among the offspring of Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, who was herself a daughter of Nyx (Night). As with the rest of this brood, no father is named.
Their closest siblings, repeatedly grouped with them, are the Hysminai (Combats), the Phonoi (Murders or Killings), and the Androktasiai (Manslaughters or Slaughters). Together these four form a tight cluster of war-related personifications within the larger family of Eris's children.
II.Character
The Makhai have no independent narrative identity. They are personified abstractions that allegorize the meaning of their name, representing one of the many harmful things thought to issue from discord and strife rather than gods with stories of their own.
No individual cult or distinct worship of the Makhai is recorded; they appear only as part of the catalogue of evils that strife brings into the world.
III.Attestations
Beyond Hesiod's Theogony, the same quartet of abstractions appears in Homer's Odyssey (11.612), where the Hysminai, Makhai, Phonoi, and Androktasiai are depicted on the golden belt of Heracles seen in the underworld.
In Homer's Iliad the Makhai are associated with the Androktasiai (7.237 and 24.548), and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (5) links them with the Hysminai. Related singular forms, Phonos (Murder) and Androktasia (Slaughter), are paired in the Hesiodic Shield of Heracles (155), reflecting how these war abstractions were habitually invoked together.