In Greek mythology, the Phonoi (Ancient Greek: Φόνοι) are the personifications of murder and slaughter. They are counted among the children of Eris (Strife), born without a father, and like the rest of her brood they are personified abstractions whose identity is exhausted by the meaning of their name. Hesiod lists them in the Theogony alongside their warlike siblings, the Hysminai, Machai, and Androktasiai, and the singular Phonos appears in the Hesiodic Shield of Heracles among the violent figures wrought on the hero's shield.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Phonoi" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Family
The Phonoi are listed by Hesiod in the Theogony among the offspring of Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, who was herself a daughter of Nyx (Night). In this account Eris bears her children alone, with no father named.
Their siblings, the other children of Eris, include Ponos (Toil), Lethe (Forgetfulness), Limos (Famine), the Algea (Pains), the Hysminai (Combats), the Machai (Battles), the Androktasiai (Manslaughters), the Neikea (Quarrels), the Pseudea (Lies), the Logoi (Tales), the Amphilogiai (Disputes), Dysnomia (Lawlessness), Ate (Ruin), and Horkos (Oath).
II.Character
Like all the children of Eris given by Hesiod, the Phonoi are personified abstractions, with no distinct individual identity beyond the allegorization of the harm thought to result from discord and strife. They have virtually no narrative or attributes apart from the sense of their name.
In the Theogony (line 228) they appear grouped with their kindred war abstractions in a single verse, "the Hysminai and the Machai, the Phonoi and the Androktasiai" (Combats, Battles, Murders, and Slaughters), a cluster of personifications embodying the violence of conflict.
III.Mythology
As members of the brood of Eris, the Phonoi belong to a group of personifications that embody the harmful and destructive aspects of human life, and they are not personified individually in narrative myth.
The singular form, Phonos (Murder), does appear in the Hesiodic Shield of Heracles (lines 144-319), where it is depicted among the violent figures wrought upon Heracles' shield, gathered with martial abstractions such as Homados (Tumult) and Kydoimos (Battle-Din). Aeschylus likewise invokes Phonos in his tragedies Seven Against Thebes and the Libation Bearers.