A great obscurity hangs about the name, the origin, and the character of this goddess. The name at least seems to be Greek, and to be an epithet that may signify the ‘far-off one’ or the ‘far-darting one,’ if we consider it as a shortened form of ἑκατηβόλος; but no explanation that has been offered is very certain or significant.

As to her origin, she is usually accepted as a Hellenic divinity, and the question has scarcely been discussed by modern writers. If this view is correct, she was one whose worship must have been obscured in the earliest period among the leading Greek tribes, and have revived later. For there is no mention of her in the Iliad and Odyssey, nor in any fragment of the ‘Homeric’ epic; although, had the epic poets of the eighth or seventh century known of her as she was known to the later Greek, she would probably have been noticed in such a passage, for instance, as Odysseus' descent to Hades. Again, neither early nor late did any real mythology grow up about her: we find nothing but a few stories of little value or credit, invented sometimes to explain some of her obscure titles, such as ῞Αγγελος; and only once does she play some part in a dramatic myth, namely, in the Giganto machy as described by Apollodorus, as the legends of the later period bring all the deities into the action and Hekate is named among them, though she is not found in the early accounts of the battle.