Oceanus

To Do

• Fontenrose, p. 232ff.
• D'Alessio, p. 29 re Plato, Kratylos 402b, also other pp.
• Look at Bremmer [in folder]
• Fowler pp. 10ff.
• LIMC
• Brill
• Iliad search
• Look at Nonnus
• See West 1966 index

Current text

New text

Achelous

Fowler 2013, pp. 12–13

References

Sources

Ancient

Acusilaus

fr. 1 Fowler [=

]

• Fowler 2000, p. 4

**1

Ὠκεανὸς δὲ γαμεῖ Τηθὺν ἑαυτοῦ ἀδελφήν· τῶν δὲ γίνονται τρισχίλιοι ποταμοί· Ἀχελῶιος δὲ αὐτῶν πρεσβύτατος καὶ τετίμηται μάλιστα.

Macrob. Sat. 5.18.9 (322.3 Willis). Didymus enim (p. 85 Schmidt), grammaticorum omnium facile eruditissimus, posita causa quam superius Ephorus (FGrHist 70 F 20) dixit, alteram quoque adiecit his verbis: ἄμεινον δὲ ἐκεῖνο λέγειν ὅτι διὰ τὸ πάντων τῶν ποταμῶν πρεσβύτατον εἶναι Ἀχελῷον τιμὴν ἀπονέμοντας αὐτῷ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους πάντα ἁπλῶς τὰ νάματα τῷ ἐκείνου ὀνόματι προσαγορεύειν. ὁ γοῦν Ἀκουσίλαος διὰ τῆς πρώτης ἱστορίας δεδήλωκεν ὅτι Ἀχελῷος πάντων τῶν ποταμῶν πρεσβύτατος. ἔφη γάρ: "Ὠκεανὸς—μάλιστα."

• Macrobius, Saturnalia 5.18.9–10

9. ... Didymus enim grammaticorum omnium facile eruditissimus, posita causa quam superius Ephorus dixit, alteram quoque adiecit his verbis:

10. ἄμεινον δὲ ἐκεῖνο λέγειν ὅτι διὰ τὸ πάντων τῶν ποταμῶν πρεσβύτατον εἶναι Ἀχελῷον τιμὴν ἀπονέμοντας αὐτῷ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους πάντα ἁπλῶς τὰ νάματα τῷ ἐκείνου ὀνόματι προσαγορεύειν. ὁ γοῦν Ἀγησίλαος²³⁴ διὰ τῆς πρώτης ἱστορίας δεδήλωκεν ὅτι Ἀχελῷος πάντων τῶν ποταμῶν πρεσβύτατος. ἔφη γαρ· Ὠκεανὸς δὲ γαμεῖ Τηθὺν ἑαυτοῦ ἀδελφήν, τῶν δὲ γίνονται τρισχίλιοι ποταμοί, Ἀχελῷος δὲ αὐτῶν πρεσβύτατος καὶ τετίμηται μάλιστα.

²³⁴ Ἀγησίλαος] Ἀκουσίλαος ed. Lugd. Bat. 1670

9. ... For Didymus—easily the most learned of all grammarians—cited the explanation given by Ephorus above and added a second, as follows (Tragic Diction fr. 2):

10. "Better to say that humankind honors Akheloös for being the oldest of all rivers by addressing simply all rivers with his name; Agêsilaos,74 at any rate, in Book 1 of his History, makes it plain that the Akheloös is the oldest river, saying, “Ôkean wed his own sister, Têthys, and from them were born 3,000 rivers, with Akheloös oldest among them and much the most honored."

• Andolfi, Book 1 fr. *1, pp. 34–38

Book 1

fr. *1

Ὠκεανὸς δὲ γαμεῖ Τηθὺν ἑαυτοῦ ἀδελφήν· τῶν δὲ γίνονται τρισχίλιοι ποταμοί ·

Ἀχελῶιος δὲ αὐτῶν πρεσβύτατος καὶ τετίμηται μάλιστα.

Macr. Sat. 5.18.9 (322.3 Willis). Didymus enim (p. 85 Schmidt), grammaticorum omnium facile eruditissimus, posita causa quam superius Ephorus (FGrHist 70 F 20a) adiecit his verbis: ἄμεινον δὲ ἐκεῖνο ... ἔφη γάρ^. «Ὠκεανὸς—μάλιστα».

• Freeman, p. 16

21 (Achelôo is the oldest of rivers): Ocean marries Tethys his own sister; from them spring three thousand rivers, but Achelôos is the oldest and most honoured.

• Fowler 2013, p. 12

Akousilaos fr. 1 reports the marriage of Okeanos to his own sister Tethys; unfortunately nothing indicates to which generation the couple might have belonged. As he follows Hesiod (Th. 367) in giving 3,000 as the number of rivers, it is probable that he follows him also for the genealogy. In the same fragment Akousilaos says that Acheloos is eldest, and most honoured; he is perhaps expanding a hint from Homer (Il. 21.194), ...

Aeschylus (?)

Prometheus Bound

286–299

Enter Oceanus on a winged steed

Oceanus

I have come to the end of a long journey in my passage to you, Prometheus, guiding by my own will, without a bridle, this swift-winged bird. [290] For your fate, you may be sure, I feel compassion. Kinship, I think, constrains me to this; and, apart from blood ties, there is none to whom I should pay greater respect than to you. [295] You shall know this for simple truth and that it is not in me to utter vain and empty words; come, tell me; what aid can I render you? For you shall never say that you have a friend more loyal than Oceanus.

300–331

Prometheus

[300] Ha! What have we here? So then you too have come to stare upon my sufferings? How did you summon courage to quit the stream that bears your name and the rock-roofed caves you yourself have made and come to this land, the mother of iron? Is it that you have come [305] to gaze upon my state and join your grief to my distress? Look upon me here—a spectacle, the friend of Zeus, who helped him to establish his sovereign power, by what anguish I am bent by him!

Oceanus

I see, Prometheus; and I want to give you [310] the best advice, although you yourself are wily. Learn to know yourself and adapt yourself to new ways; for new also is the ruler among the gods. If you hurl forth words so harsh and of such whetted edge, perhaps Zeus may hear you, [315] though throned far off, high in the heavens, and then your present multitude of sorrows shall seem but childish sport. Oh wretched sufferer! Put away your wrathful mood and try to find release from these miseries. Perhaps this advice may seem to you old and dull; [320] but your plight, Prometheus, is only the wages of too boastful speech. You still have not learned humility, nor do you bend before misfortune, but would rather add even more miseries to those you have. Therefore take me as your teacher [325] and do not add insult to injury, seeing that a harsh monarch now rules who is accountable to no one. So now I will depart and see whether I can release you from these sufferings. And may you hold your peace and be not too blustering of speech. [330] Or, can it be that for all your exceeding wisdom, you do not know that chastisement is inflicted on a wagging tongue?

332–333

Prometheus

I envy you because you have escaped blame for having dared to share with me in my troubles.¹ So now leave me alone and let it not concern you. [335] Do what you want, you cannot persuade him; for he is not easy to persuade. Beware that you do not do yourself harm by the mission you take.

Oceanus

In truth, you are far better able to admonish others than yourself. It is by fact, not by hearsay, that I judge. [340] So do not hold back one who is eager to go. For I am confident, yes, confident, that Zeus will grant me this favor, to free you from your sufferings.

¹ The reading of the MSS can only mean that Oceanus had participated throughout in the rebellion of Prometheus; whereas, in l. 236, Prometheus expressly declares that he had no confederate in his opposition to Zeus.

343–378

Prometheus

I thank you for all this and shall never cease to thank you; in zeal you lack nothing, but do not trouble yourself; for your trouble will be vain and [345] not helpful to me—if indeed you want to take the pain. No, keep quiet and keep yourself clear of harm. ...

[375] But you are not inexperienced, and do not need me to teach you. Save yourself, as you know best; while I exhaust my present lot until the time comes when the mind of Zeus shall abandon its wrath.

379–398

Oceanus

Do you not know then, Prometheus, that [380] words are the physicians of a disordered temper?

Prometheus

If one softens the soul in season, and does not hasten to reduce its swelling rage by violence.

Oceanus

What lurking mischief do you see when daring joins to zeal? Teach me this.

Prometheus

[385] Lost labor and thoughtless simplicity.

Oceanus

Leave me to be affected by this, since it is most advantageous, when truly wise, to be deemed a fool.

Prometheus

This fault will be seen to be my own.

Oceanus

Clearly the manner of your speech orders me back home.

Prometheus

[390] So that you won't win enmity for yourself by lamenting for me.

Oceanus

In the eyes of the one who is newly seated on his omnipotent throne?

Prometheus

Beware lest the time come when his heart is angered with you.

Oceanus

Your plight, Prometheus, is my instructor.

Prometheus

Go away, depart, keep your present purpose.

Oceanus

[395] Your urging meets my eagerness; for my four-footed winged beast fans with his wings the smooth pathway of the air; and truly he will be glad to rest his knees in his stall at home. Exit

Apollodorus

1.1.3

And again he begat children by Earth, to wit, the Titans as they are named: Ocean, Coeus, Hyperion, Crius, Iapetus, and, youngest of all, Cronus; also daughters, the Titanides as they are called: Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Dione, Thia.¹

1.1.4

But Earth, grieved at the destruction of her children, who had been cast into Tartarus, persuaded the Titans to attack their father and gave Cronus an adamantine sickle. And they, all but Ocean, attacked him, ...

1.2.2

Now to the Titans were born offspring: to Ocean and Tethys were born Oceanids, to wit, Asia, Styx, Electra, Doris, Eurynome, Amphitrite, and Metis;1 to Coeus and Phoebe were born Asteria and Latona;2 to Hyperion and Thia were born Dawn, Sun, and Moon;3 to Crius and Eurybia, daughter of Sea （ Pontus）, were born Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses;4

1.5.2 [= Pherecydes fr. 53 Fowler]

But for Triptolemus, the elder of Metanira's children, she made a chariot of winged dragons, and gave him wheat, with which, wafted through the sky, he sowed the whole inhabited earth.1 But Panyasis affirms that Triptolemus was a son of Eleusis, for he says that Demeter came to him. Pherecydes, however, says that he was a son of Ocean and Earth.²

² The accounts given of the parentage of Triptolemus were very various （Paus. 1.14.2ff.）, which we need not wonder at when we remember that he was probably a purely mythical personage.

2.5.10

...But being heated by the Sun on his journey, he bent his bow at the god, who in admiration of his hardihood, gave him a golden goblet in which he crossed the ocean.⁷ ...

⁷ Apollodorus seems to be here following Pherecydes, as we learn from a passage which Athenaeus xi.39, p. 470 CD quotes from the third book of Pherecydes as follows: “And Herakles drew his bow at him as if he would shoot, and the Sun bade him give over; so Herakles feared and gave over. And in return the Sun bestowed on him the golden goblet which carried him with his horses, when he set, through the Ocean all night to the east, where the Sun rises. Then Herakles journeyed in that goblet to Erythia. And when he was on the open sea, Ocean, to make trial of him, caused the goblet to heave wildly on the waves. Herakles was about to shoot him with an arrow; and the Ocean was afraid, and bade him give over.” Stesichorus described the Sun embarking in a golden goblet that he might cross the ocean in the darkness of night and come to his mother, his wedded wife, and children dear. See Athenaeus xi.38, p. 468 E; compare Athenaeus xi.16, p. 781 D. The voyage of Herakles in the golden goblet was also related by the early poets Pisander and Panyasis in the poems, both called Heraclia, which they devoted to the exploits of the great hero. See Athenaeus xi.38, p. 469 D; compare Macrobius, Sat. v.21.16, 19. Another poet, Mimnermus, supposed that at night the weary Sun slept in a golden bed, which floated across the sea to Ethiopia, where a chariot with fresh horses stood ready for him to mount and resume his daily journey across the sky. See Athenaeus xi.39, p. 470 A.

Euripides

Orestes

1375–1379

[1377] ... Ὠκεανὸς ὃν

[1378] ταυρόκρανος ...

[1375] Alas! You foreign women, where can I escape, flying through the clear sky or over the sea, which bull-headed Ocean rolls about as he circles the world in his embrace?

Hesiod

Theogony

133–138

But afterwards she lay with Heaven and bore deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, [135] Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, and he hated his lusty sire.

139–172

And again, she bore the Cyclopes, overbearing in spirit, [140] Brontes, and Steropes and stubborn-hearted Arges,1who gave Zeus the thunder and made the thunderbolt: in all else they were like the gods, [145] but one eye only was set in the midst of their foreheads. And they were surnamed Cyclopes （Orb-eyed） because one orbed eye was set in their foreheads. Strength and might and craft were in their works. And again, three other sons were born of Earth and Heaven, great and doughty beyond telling, Cottus and Briareos and Gyes, presumptuous children. [150] From their shoulders sprang a hundred arms, not to be approached, and fifty heads grew from the shoulders upon the strong limbs of each, and irresistible was the stubborn strength that was in their great forms. For of all the children that were born of Earth and Heaven, [155] these were the most terrible, and they were hated by their own father from the first. And he used to hide them all away in a secret place of Earth so soon as each was born, and would not suffer them to come up into the light: and Heaven rejoiced in his evil doing. But vast Earth [160] groaned within, being straitened, and she thought a crafty and an evil wile. Forthwith she made the element of grey flint and shaped a great sickle, and told her plan to her dear sons. And she spoke, cheering them, while she was vexed in her dear heart: [165] “My children, gotten of a sinful father, if you will obey me, we should punish the vile outrage of your father; for he first thought of doing shameful things.” So she said; but fear seized them all, and none of them uttered a word. But great Cronos the wily took courage and answered his dear mother: [170] “Mother, I will undertake to do this deed, for I reverence not our father of evil name, for he first thought of doing shameful things.”

173–181

So he said: and vast Earth rejoiced greatly in spirit, and set and hid him in an ambush, and put in his hands [175] a jagged sickle, and revealed to him the whole plot. And Heaven came, bringing on night and longing for love, and he lay about Earth spreading himself full upon her.1Then the son from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle [180] with jagged teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father's members and cast them away to fall behind him.

215–216

[215] and the Hesperides who guard the rich, golden apples and the trees bearing fruit beyond glorious Ocean.

242

Ὠκεανοῖο, τελήεντος ποταμοῖο

Ocean the perfect river

274

and the Gorgons who dwell beyond glorious Ocean [275]

287–299

Geryones. Him mighty Heracles slew [290] in sea-girt Erythea by his shambling oxen on that day when he drove the wide-browed oxen to holy Tiryns, and had crossed the ford of Ocean and killed Orthus and Eurytion the herdsman in the dim stead out beyond glorious Ocean. [300]

337–370.

And Tethys bore to Ocean eddying rivers, Nilus, and Alpheus, and deep-swirling Eridanus, Strymon, and Meander, and the fair stream of Ister, [340] and Phasis, and Rhesus, and the silver eddies of Achelous, Nessus, and Rhodius, Haliacmon, and Heptaporus, Granicus, and Aesepus, and holy Simois, and Peneus, and Hermus, and Caicus' fair stream, and great Sangarius, Ladon, Parthenius, [345] Euenus, Ardescus, and divine Scamander. Also she brought forth a holy company of daughters who with the lord Apollo and the Rivers have youths in their keeping—to this charge Zeus appointed them—Peitho, and Admete, and Ianthe, and Electra, [350] and Doris, and Prymno, and Urania divine in form, Hippo, Clymene, Rhodea, and Callirrhoe, Zeuxo and Clytie, and Idyia, and Pasithoe, Plexaura, and Galaxaura, and lovely Dione, Melobosis and Thoe and handsome Polydora, [355] Cerceis lovely of form, and soft eyed Pluto, Perseis, Ianeira, Acaste, Xanthe, Petraea the fair, Menestho, and Europa, Metis, and Eurynome, and Telesto saffron-clad, Chryseis and Asia and charming Calypso, [360] Eudora, and Tyche, Amphirho, and Ocyrrhoe, and Styx who is the chiefest of them all. These are the eldest daughters that sprang from Ocean and Tethys; but there are many besides. For there are three thousand neat-ankled daughters of Ocean who are dispersed far and wide, [365] and in every place alike serve the earth and the deep waters, children who are glorious among goddesses. And as many other rivers are there, babbling as they flow, sons of Ocean, whom queenly Tethys bare, but their names it is hard for a mortal man to tell, [370] but people know those by which they severally dwell.

729 ff.

There [in Tartarus] by the counsel of Zeus who drives the clouds the Titan gods [730] are hidden under misty gloom, in a dank place where are the ends of the huge earth. And they may not go out; for Poseidon fixed gates of bronze upon it, and a wall runs all round it on every side. There Gyes and Cottus and great-souled Obriareus [735] live, trusty warders of Zeus who holds the aegis. And there, all in their order, are the sources and ends of gloomy earth and misty Tartarus and the unfruitful sea and starry heaven, loathsome and dank, which even the gods abhor. [740] ...

767

There, in front, stand the echoing halls of the god of the lower-world, strong Hades, and of awful Persephone. A fearful hound guards the house in front, [770] pitiless, and he has a cruel trick. On those who go in he fawns with his tail and both his ears, but suffers them not to go out back again, but keeps watch and devours whomever he catches going out of the gates of strong Hades and awful Persephone. [775] And there dwells the goddess loathed by the deathless gods, terrible Styx, eldest daughter of backflowing¹ Ocean [ἀψορρόου Ὠκεανοῖο]. She lives apart from the gods in her glorious house vaulted over with great rocks and propped up to heaven all round with silver pillars. [780] Rarely does the daughter of Thaumas, swift-footed Iris, come to her with a message over the sea's wide back. But when strife and quarrel arise among the deathless gods, and when any one of them who live in the house of Olympus lies, then Zeus sends Iris to bring in a golden jug the great oath of the gods [785] from far away, the famous cold water which trickles down from a high and beetling rock. Far under the wide-pathed earth a branch of Oceanus flows through the dark night out of the holy stream, and a tenth part of his water is allotted to her. [790] With nine silver-swirling streams he winds about the earth and the sea's wide back, and then falls into the main2; but the tenth flows out from a rock, a sore trouble to the gods.

¹ Oceanus is here regarded as a continuous stream enclosing the earth and the seas, and so as flowing back upon himself.

807–819

And there, all in their order, are the sources and ends of the dark earth and misty Tartarus and the unfruitful sea and starry heaven, [810] loathsome and dank, which even the gods abhor. And there are shining gates and an immovable threshold of bronze having unending roots, and it is grown of itself.1And beyond, away from all the gods, live the Titans, beyond gloomy Chaos. [815] But the glorious allies of loud-crashing Zeus have their dwelling upon Ocean's foundations, even Cottus and Gyes; but Briareos, being goodly, the deep-roaring Earth-Shaker made his son-in-law, giving him Cymopolea his daughter to wed.

959

Ὠκεανοῖο τελήεντος ποταμοῖο

Ocean the perfect stream

Shield of Heracles [=Sc. = Scotum]

314–317

And round the rim Ocean was flowing, with a full stream as it seemed, [315] and enclosed all the cunning work of the shield.

Homer

Iliad

1.5–6

and with clamour fly toward the streams of Ocean, bearing slaughter and death to Pigmy men,

5.5–6

like to the star of harvesttime that shineth bright above all others when he hath bathed him in the stream of Ocean.

7.421–422

The sun was now just striking on the fields, as he rose from softly-gliding, deep-flowing Oceanus,

8.485

[485] Then into Oceanus fell the bright light of the sun

14.200–210

For I am faring to visit the limits of the all-nurturing earth, and Oceanus, from whom the gods are sprung, and mother Tethys, even them that lovingly nursed and cherished me in their halls, when they had taken me from Rhea, what time Zeus, whose voice is borne afar, thrust Cronos down to dwell beneath earth and the unresting sea. [205] Them am I faring to visit, and will loose for them their endless strife, since now for a long time's space they hold aloof one from the other from the marriage-bed and from love, for that wrath hath come upon their hearts. If by words I might but persuade the hearts of these twain, and bring them back to be joined together in love, [210] ever should I be called dear by them and worthy of reverence.”

14.245–246

the river Oceanus, from whom they all are sprung;

14.300–311

Then with crafty mind the queenly Hera spake unto him:“I am faring to visit the limits of the all-nurturing earth, and Oceanus, from whom the gods are sprung, and mother Tethys, even them that lovingly nursed me and cherished me in their halls. Them am I faring to visit, and will loose for them their endless strife, [305] since now for long time's apace they hold aloof one from the other from the marriage-bed and from love, for that wrath hath fallen upon their hearts. And my horses stand at the foot of many-fountained Ida, my horses that shall bear me both over the solid land and the waters of the sea. But now it is because of thee that I am come hither down from Olympus, [310] lest haply thou mightest wax wroth with me hereafter, if without a word I depart to the house of deep-flowing Oceanus.”

18.239–240

Then was the unwearying sun sent by ox-eyed, queenly Hera [240] to go his way, full loath, to the stream of Ocean. So the sun set and the goodly Achaeans stayed them from the fierce strife and the evil war.

18.399

backward-flowing [ἀψορρόου] Oceanus.

18.485–489

[485] and therein all the constellations wherewith heaven is crowned—the Pleiades, and the Hyades and the mighty Orion, and the Bear, that men call also the Wain, that circleth ever in her place, and watcheth Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean.

18.607–608

Therein [on the shield of Achilles, Hephaestus] set also the great might of the river Oceanus, around the uttermost rim of the strongly-wrought shield.

West 1966, p. 201

OCD s.v. Oceanus

20.4–9

But Zeus bade Themis summon the gods to the place of gathering from the [5] brow of many-ribbed Olympus; and she sped everywhither, and bade them come to the house of Zeus. There was no river that came not, save only Oceanus, nor any nymph, of all that haunt the fair copses, the springs that feed the rivers, and the grassy meadows. [10]

21.195–197

[195] nor the great might of deep-flowing Ocean, from whom all rivers flow and every sea, and all the springs and deep wells; howbeit even he hath fear of the lightning of great Zeus, and his dread thunder, whenso it crasheth from heaven.

West 1966, p. 201

23.205–206

[205] “I [Iris] may not sit, for I must go back unto the streams of Oceanus, unto the land of the Ethiopians,

Odyssey

1.22–24

Howbeit Poseidon had gone among the far-off Ethiopians—the Ethiopians who dwell sundered in twain, the farthermost of men, some where Hyperion sets and some where he rises,

4.563–568

but to the Elysian plain and the bounds of the earth will the immortals convey thee, where dwells fair-haired Rhadamanthus, [565] and where life is easiest for men. No snow is there, nor heavy storm, nor ever rain, but ever does Ocean send up blasts of the shrill-blowing West Wind that they may give cooling to men;

10.508–512

But when in thy ship thou hast now crossed the stream of Oceanus, where is a level shore and the groves of Persephone— [510] tall poplars, and willows that shed their fruit—there do thou beach thy ship by the deep eddying Oceanus, but go thyself to the dank house of Hades.

11.13–22

"She [Odysseus' ship] came to deep-flowing Oceanus, that bounds the Earth, where is the land and city of the Cimmerians, [15] wrapped in mist and cloud. Never does the bright sun look down on them with his rays either when he mounts the starry heaven or when he turns again to earth from heaven, but baneful night is spread over wretched mortals. [20] Thither we came and beached our ship, and took out the sheep, and ourselves went beside the stream of Oceanus until we came to the place of which Circe had told us.

11.639–640

And the ship was borne down the stream Oceanus by the swelling flood, [640] first with our rowing, and afterwards the wind was fair.

12.1–4

[1] “Now after our ship had left the stream of the river Oceanus [ποταμοῖο λίπεν ῥόον Ὠκεανοῖο] and had come to the wave of the broad sea, and the Aeaean isle, where is the dwelling of early Dawn and her dancing-lawns, and the risings of the sun,

19.433–434

The sun was now just striking on the fields, as he rose from softly-gliding, deep-flowing Oceanus, [435]

20.65

backward-flowing Oceanus

Hyginus

Theogony 3

From Ether and Earth came ... Ocean, Themis, Tartarus, and Pontus; and the Titans, Briareus [two of the Hundred-Handers], Gyges, Steropes [one of the Cyclopes], Atlas, Hyperion and Polus [Coeus], Saturn [Cronus], Ops [Rhea], Moneta [Mnemosyne], Dione, and the three Furies (Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone)."

Lycophron

Alexandra

231 (Mair, pp. 514–515)

Titanid bride^a of Ogenus

^a Tethys (the sea), wife of Ogenus=Oceanus.

Nonnus

Dionysiaca

[249] Now the barriers of the sevenzoned watery sky were opened, when Zeus poured down his showers. The mountain-torrents roared with fuller fountains of the loudsplashing gulf. The lakes, liquid daughters cut off from Oceanos, raised their surface.

Pausanias

1.14.3

Some extant verses of Musaeus, if indeed they are to be included among his works, say that Triptolemus was the son of Oceanus and Earth; while those ascribed to Orpheus （though in my opinion the received authorship is again incorrect） say that Eubuleus and Triptolemus were sons of Dysaules, and that because they gave Demeter information about her daughter the sowing of seed was her reward to them. But Choerilus, an Athenian, who wrote a play called Alope, says that Cercyon and Triptolemus were brothers, that their mother was the daughter of Amphictyon, while the father of Triptolemus was Rarus, of Cercyon, Poseidon. After I had intended to go further into this story, and to describe the contents of the sanctuary at Athens, called the Eleusinium, I was stayed by a vision in a dream. I shall therefore turn to those things it is lawful to write of to all men.

9.10.5

Higher up than the Ismenian sanctuary you may see the fountain which they say is sacred to Ares, and they add that a dragon was posted by Ares as a sentry over the spring. By this fountain is the grave of Caanthus. They say that he was brother to Melia and son to Ocean,

Pherecydes

18a Fowler [=

11.39, p. 470c]

Frazer's note 7 to Apollodorus 2.5.10

And Herakles drew his bow at him as if he would shoot, and the Sun bade him give over; so Herakles feared and gave over. And in return the Sun bestowed on him the golden goblet which carried him with his horses, when he set, through the Ocean all night to the east, where the Sun rises. Then Herakles journeyed in that goblet to Erythia. And when he was on the open sea, Ocean, to make trial of him, caused the goblet to heave wildly on the waves. Herakles was about to shoot him with an arrow; and the Ocean was afraid, and bade him give over.

Gantz, p. 404

Pherekydes offers his own version of these events, although our summary, courtesy of Athenaios, begins rather ambiguously. After telling us that Pherekydes speaks of Okeanos, Athenaios quotes as follows: "And Herakles took aim at him with his bow, in order to shoot him, but Helios commanded him to stop, and he in fear did so" (3F18a). By this juxtaposition of paraphrase and quote we are left uncertain whether Herakles means to threaten Okeanos or Helios. Given the wording one might naturally assume the former, but as the quote continues Helios gives Herakles the cup that carries him and his horses in exchange for the latter's forbearance, and Herakles uses it to reach Erytheia. In the course of the voyage Okeanos then makes trial of him by sending high waves to rock the cup; Herakles again threatens with his bow, and a fearful Okeanos desists. Since Herakles is not likely to have threatened the same god twice, we should probably take the opening of all this to mean that in the first instance he threatend Helios, not Okeanos, in order to secure transport.

53 Fowler

Apollodorus, 1.5.2

But for Triptolemus, the elder of Metanira's children, she made a chariot of winged dragons, and gave him wheat, with which, wafted through the sky, he sowed the whole inhabited earth.1 But Panyasis affirms that Triptolemus was a son of Eleusis, for he says that Demeter came to him. Pherecydes, however, says that he was a son of Ocean and Earth.²

² The accounts given of the parentage of Triptolemus were very various （Paus. 1.14.2ff.）, which we need not wonder at when we remember that he was probably a purely mythical personage.

Plato

Timaeus

40e

It is, as I say, impossible to disbelieve the children of gods, even though their statements lack either probable or necessary demonstration; and inasmuch as they profess to speak of family matters, we must follow custom and believe them. Therefore let the generation of these gods be stated by us, following their account, in this wise: Of Ge and Uranus were born the children Oceanus and Tethys; and of these, Phorkys, Cronos, Rhea, and all that go with them;

Proclus

Commentary on Plato's "Timaeus"

= Orphic fr. 135 Kern

• West 1983, p. 130

Oceanus then tarried in his abode,

...

• Gantz, p, 12

One other point of interest comes to us from Proklos' comments on the Timaios: he cites seven lines of a hexameter poem, probably of Orphic origin, in which Okeanos ponders whether to join Kronos and his other brothers in the attack on his father, as their mother desires, or to remain safely at home (fr. 135 Kern). As the fragment breaks off we leave Okeanos in his halls, brooding and angry with his mother and especially his brothers; Proklos tells us that he did not in fact join them.

Orphic fr. 220 Kern

Modern

Caldwell

p. 36 on lines 133-137

... Tethys is the wife of Okeanos (and, like him, perhaps one of the primal couple in a variant theogony), and Iapetos (whose name resmbles that of Noah's son Japheth in Genesis) will be the father of Prometheus and his brothers (507-511). Besides Okeanos, the only Titans to have much of a story connected with them are Kronos and Rhea, who succeed Ouranos and Gaia as the ruling couple.

Fowler 2013

p. 7

In Epimenides (fr. 6ab), Night and Aer are the first entities.

p. 8

Epimenides next said that Night and Aer produced Tartaros; from him (by an unnamed mother—it would have to be Night—or by no mother at all)¹⁹ came (uniquely) only two Titans, and from them the world-egg. Who are the Titans? ... Okeanos and Tethys are another possibility (cf. Plato Tim. 40e).²⁰ The evidence for these gods as fountainheads of a rival theogony begins with Homer Il. 14.201 ...

p. 10

§1.3 Okeanos and his children

§1.3.1 OKEANOS (Akous. fr. 1)

In mainstream Greek myth, Okeanos is concieved of as a freswater stream

p. 11

As mentioned above, however an intriguing line in the Iliad (14.201=302) suggests an alternative theogony, according to which Okeanos and Tethys were the original parents; and again at 14.246, where Hypnos refers to Okeanos ... [Hera's] remarks also imply that the couple took no part in the Titanomachy; certainly Okeanos could never be sent to Tartaros, and at Hesiod Th. 389–98, he advises his daughter Styx to assist Zeus.

... and a Semitic derivation has also been suggested for Okeanos;³⁴ that Pherekydes of Syros calls him Ogenos also suggests that the name is a loan-word (see also §3.3 n. 19).

³⁴ Schwabl, ...; Fauth, ... ; West, EFH 146 f. Beekes, however, considers it a loan-word from the Aegean pre-Greek (non-IE) substrate (Etym. Dict. s.v.).

p. 12

Akousilaos' fr. 1 reports the marriage of Okeanos to his own sister Tethys; unfortunately nothing indicates to what generation the couple might have belonged. As he follows Hesiod (Th. 367) in giving 3,000 as the number of rivers, it is probable that he follows him also for the genealogy. In the same fragment Akousilaos says that Acheloos is eldest, and most honoured; he is perhaps expanding a hint from Homer (Il. 21.194), where Acheloos is singled out from all rivers for his might. Indeed, it is possible that Akousilaos knew a text lacking l. 195, thus:

...

The scholia on these lines (5.165-70 Erbse) reveal that Zenodotos athetized l. 195, and that the pre-Alexandrian critic Megakleides³⁵ did not have it in his text. The effect of the omission is to promote Acheloos to the standing of Okeanos. The greatest of the Greek rivers, he was much honoured in cult at the persistent behest of Dodona, that ancient oracle, and his name is often used in poetry as an equivalent of 'water'.³⁶ Particularly relevant are archaic verses quoted by Seleukos in P.Oxy. 221 ix 8-11 (from a commentary on this passage of the Iliad; Erbse 5.93-4), in which Acheloos and Okeanos are simply equated. Wilamowitz, who attributed the lines to Panyassls (fr. 13), could well be right that Acheloos was the original, Hellenic god, Okeanos the parvenu.³⁷. Servius on Verg. Georg. 1.8 reports a tradition that Acheloos was actually son of Ge, not Okeanos; one would like to know how old the tradition was.

Gantz

p. 1

Homer speaks only rarely of the period before Zeus; ... to Okeanos as the genesis of all the gods (whatever that means), ...

p. 10

...To Ouranos [Gaia] bears first twelve relatively normal children, six male six female, whom Hesiod will later call "Titans": Okeanos, ...

p. 11

Homer, as we have seen, relates none of this; indeed, in Iliad 14, Okeanos and Tethys seem elevated to the status accorded Ouranos and Gaia in Hesiod (Il. 14.200-210, 245-46), while Aphrodite ... The first of these points is especially difficult to assess: Hera tells Zeus as part of her Trugrede that she is on her way to the ends of the earth to visit "Okeanos the genesis of gods and mother Tethys, they who raised me well in their home, receiving me from Rheia when Zeus cast Kronos down beneath the earth and the barren sea." Mother Tethys here need be no more than a stepmother to Hera herself, and the phrase "genesis of gods" might be simply a formulaic epithet indicating the numberless rivers and springs descended from Okeanos; so for example, at Iliad 21.195-97 he is that from which all rivers and springs and the whole sea derive. But in Hera's subsequent interview with Hypnos, the latter describes the great river as the "genesis for all," leaving us to wonder whether Homer could have supposed Okeanos and Tethys the parents of the Titans (Kronos' father is never specified), for how else can they fit this description? ...

From a later time we have Plato's Timaios, where the genealogy offered looks very much like an attempt to bridge a presumed Homer/Hesiod divergence in Iliad 14: Ouranos and Gaia here beget Okeanos and Tethys who in turn beget Kronos, Rheia, and the others, plus Phorkys (Tim 40d-e). Just possibly, of course, it is instead an early tradition, and the basis for Homer's [cont.]

p. 12

description of Okeanos.¹⁷ ...

... One other point of interest comes to us from Proklos' comments on the Timaios: he cites seven lines of a hexameter poem, probably of Orphic origin, in which Okeanos ponders whether to join Kronos and his other brothers in the attack on his father, as their mother desires, or to remain safely at home (fr. 135 Kern). As the fragment breaks off we leave Okeanos in his halls, brooding and angry with his mother and especially his brothers; Proklos tells us that he did not in fact join them.

p. 18

The

Harpuiai

would appear to share parentage with Iris on the basis of tremendous speed; the Epimenides Theogony, however, calls them daughters of Okeanos and Gaia (3B7), while Pherekydes of Syros assigns their father Boreas (and as sister Thyella: 7B5).

p. 27

Okeanos, whatever his Homeric role in fathering the gods, is clearly in all accounts the great stream surrounding the world, to be found at the ends of the earth (Th 791–792) and in Homer somehow crossed in order to arrive at the entrance to Hades (Od 11.13–19). Later writes tell us the sun sails at night from west to east through his waters (Mim 12 W; Stes 185 PMG; probably Tit fr. 8 PEG). Homer also gives Okeanos an encircling role on the the shield of Achilles (Il 18.607-8), and calls him in Iliad 21 the source of all rivers and springs and wells and the whole sea (thalassa: Il 21.195-97; Pontos never appears in Homer). At other early points, too, the distinction between fresh and salt water fails to assert [cont.]

p. 28

itself: in the Theogony, we have seen two sons of Pontos (Nereus and Thaumas) marry Okeanids, while Iliad 18 presents Thetis and the Okeanid Eurynome dwelling together (Il 18.398-99).

Hera’s deception speech in ‘’Iliad’’ 14 involves the story that Okeanos and his consort Tethys are quarreling and refrain from love, a detail that may or may not be part of the deception (‘’Il’’ 14.205-7). Otherwise the god is normally a place rather than a person, the major exception being in Aischylos' Prometheus Demotes. Here Okeanos visits the bound Prometheus on a winged griffin or hippocamp and offers some rather feeble advice (PD 284-396). At one point, Prometheus appears to imply that his fellow Titan aided him in putting Zeus on the thrown (PD 330-32) but the lines are questionable and may simply reflect sarcasm at Okeanos' present "daring"³⁷ Earlier in the chapter we considered the Orphic fragment in which Okeanus hesitated and demurred when the other Titans made their attack on Ouranos (fr. 135 Kern). Though it may be simply a stock formula, the Theogony does say that Styx and her children went over to Zeus' side on the advice of her father (Th 397-98). In one way or another all storytellers (or rather, all those who made Okeanos a Titan) had of course to explain Okeanos' continuing liberty (a cosmological necessity) when his brother Titans were imprisoned in Tartaros or otherwise punished. ... Artistic representations appear in the illustrations of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis on the Francois Krater (Florence 4209) and Erskine Dinos (London 1971.11-1.1), where Okeanos and Tethys form part of the procession as invited guests; in both cases, Okeanos is presented as human in form (albeit with bull's head or horns) from the waist up, but with a fish's body from the waist down.

pp. 28–30 (children of Tethys)

The children of Okeanos and Tethys are …

p. 30

If Athenaios and his sources are to be trusted, the Titanomachia provided the first description of the cauldron or cup in which the god travels from west to east at night (fr. 8 PEG). Mimnermos, whose lines on the subject Athenaios preserves, calls it a hollow bed, made by Hephaistos and golden with wings, in which Helios rides through Okeanos at night to the land of the Aithopes, where his horses stand witing (12 W). This cup is the same one loaned by Helios to Herakles for his journey to the far west (either for the cattle of Geryoneus or the apples of the Hesperides) in a story noted by Perisandros, Aischlos, and Stesichoros, among others; the latter mentions that on recovering the cup, Helios prepares for his mighty voyage to his mother and wife and children (185 PMG).

p. 46

Okeanos and Hyperion, who also seem at liberty in Homer (if the latter is in any way the sun), and Okeanos again in Aischylos are probably special cases, since they represent physical elements of the cosmos from which they can hardly be separated. Apart from all these Atlas, ...

p. 123

The hero receives before he departs Aiaia sailing instructions from Kirke: the ship is to sail before the north wind across Okeanos to the far shore, where Odysseus will find the grove of Persephone, with its willows and poplars (Od 10.504-40).

p. 124

when Odysseus' mother Antikleia sees him, she wonders how he could have arrived, noting that to reach the Underworld great rivers and terrible streams—Okeanos first of all—must be crossed (Od 11.157–58). Actually Odysseus has traversed only Okeanos in our preserved account, but we surely have vestiges of a tradition in which rivers in the Underworld itself constituted a barrier, at least to the living;

p. 126

The crew casts off, and this time the craft appears to travel along, not across Okeanos, and perhaps follow the river back to Kirke; in any case, once they have left Oceanos, both the sea and Aiaia come into view quickly.

p. 229

and the

François Krater of Sophilos and Kleitas

, respectively commemorate the [Wedding of Thetis and Peleus] in the first half of the sixth century (London 1971.11-1.1; Florence; cf. Athens Akr 587, fragments of a second such pot by Sophilos). Obviously, if all the Olypmian gods are to attend there will not be much variation in th guest list, but even so, the choice of figures on these vases, and the order in which they appear are surprisingly simi- [cont.]

p. 230

lar, and it has been suggested that a detailed literary source such as Stesichoros may be responsible.³³ ... More surprisingly, the procession concludes on both preserved pots and the fragments with Okeanos (shown with a fish tail) and Hephaistos on his donkey.

p. 362

But already in the Ehoiai [the Argonauts on the return trip sail] up the

Phasis River

until they reach Okeanos, then following Okeanos around to the south until they come to Libya (i.e. some part of Africa: Hes fr 241 MW).

p. 403

We have seen that as early as the Theogony Geryoneus dwells somewhere beyond Okeanos, thus creating problems in the logistics of finding him and bringing back the cattle.

p. 404 (and Herakles)

Already in Peisandros we find reference to the cup of Helios, which Heracles receives not from Helios himself but from Okeanos (fr. 5 PEG). Peisandros also says that Herakles crosses Okeanos in it, but not where he is going when he does so. In Stesichoros, the cup is clearly used to journey to Erytheia, since a fragment from the Geryoneis relates how Helios gets into the cup, now restored to him, in order to be taken to the depths of night, while Herakles proceeds into a laurel grove. (185 PMG = 17 SLG). Either the hero has just arrived on Erytheia or (more likely) he has come back across Okeanos to Tartessos with the cattle before returning the cup. We will see below that in many of our sources this journey begins in the far east at the sun's risings, and follows the stream of Okeanos round some part of the earth much as Odysseus in the Odyssey and Iason in the Ehoiai seem to have done. In Apollodorus, however ... ApB 2.5.10), and not impossibly some early accounts had Herakles making the bulk of the trip on foot and borrowing the cup soley for the last leg, the crossing of Okeanos to Erytheia (which might explain too why in Peisandros he obtains the cup from Okeanos).

Pherekydes offers his own version of these events, although our summary, courtesy of Athenaios, begins rather ambiguously. After telling us that Pherekydes speaks of Okeanos, Athenaios quotes as follows: "And Herakles took aim at him with his bow, in order to shoot him, but Helios commanded him to stop, and he in fear did so" (3F18a). By this juxtaposition of paraphrase and quote we are left uncertain whether Herakles means to threaten Okeanos or Helios. Given the wording one might naturally assume the former, but as the quote continues Helios gives Herakles the cup that carries him and his horses in exchange for the latter's forbearance, and Herakles uses it to reach Erytheia. In the course of the voyage Okeanos then makes trial of him by sending high waves to rock the cup; Herakles again threatens with his bow, and a fearful Okeanos desists. Since Herakles is not likely to have threatened the same god twice, we should probably take the opening of all this to mean that in the first instance he threatend Helios, not Okeanos, in order to secure transport. Strabo adds that in Pherekydes Gadeira itself, not the island opposite, is the site for the encounter with Geryoneus (Str. 3.5.4). If he has understood his source properly, Herakles' voyage is here not across Okeanos from Spain to an island, but rather along the great river stream from a point far away, very likely in the east where he can most readily confront Helios and [cont.]

p. 405

bargain for the cup.

p. 742

In the Protogonos Theogony (as represented by the Derveni papyrus) ... as the Derveni ctations end [Zeus] has created Okeanos and Acheloos (and probably everthing else) and desires to be in love with his mother.

p. 743

By contrast, for the second branch of tradition, that called the Eudemian, we know for certain only that Nyx had absolute primacy, appearing first of all (fr. 28 Kern). West proceeds on the assumption that Plato's Timaios order of succession, in which Okeanos occupies an intermediate genealogy between Ouranos and Kronos (Tim 40e), come from this poem, and that we only need to Nyx at the head of it. Phorkys' mention as a brother of Kronos there may mean that he and Dione (a thiteenth Titan in Apollodorus) assume the place of Okeanos and Tethys to make up the canonical twelve Titans, in which case Dione is probably Aphrodite's mother as in the Iliad; the castration of Ouranos is omitted.

Grimal

p. 315

s.v. Oceanus

Oceanus (Ὠκεανός) The personification of the water that according to early Greek thought surrounded the world. Oceanus is represented as a river flowing around the flat disk of Earth and marking its furthest limits to the North, South, West, and East.

p. 457

s.v. Titans

After the castration of Uranus by Cronus, the Titans, who had been removed from Heaven by their father, siezed power. Oceanus refused to help Cronus, however, and remained independent. He later helped Zeus dethrown Cronus.

Hanfmann

Oxford Classical Dictionary s.v. Oceanus

Oceanus begins at the columns of Heracles, borders on the Elysian fields and Hades, and has its sources in the west where the sun sets. Monsters such as tGorgons, Hecatonchires, Hesperides, Geryoneus, and Eurytion, and outlandish tribes such as the Cimmerians, Aethiopians, and pigmies, live by the waters of Oceanus (Od. 1.22; 11.13; Il. 3.3). Those regions of Oceanus are the land where reality ends and everything is fabulous. ...

In art ... become really common in Roman times, especially on sarcophagi, with earth as a counterpart.

Hard

p. 36

Okeanos was the god of the outer Ocean, the great river that supposedly encircled the earth and was the source of all other waters, salt and sweet alike.⁸⁰ It could obviously be assumed that the lord of these waters must have been a very ancient deity who had been at his post from the very earliest times. According to a passage in the Iliad, indeed, he and his consort Tethys were none other than the first couple [cont.]

p. 37

from whom all the gods had sprung (an idea that was apparently derived from a Babylonian myth in which Apsu and Tiamat, representing the sweet and salt waters respectively, were portrayed as the first couple). Even if they could not be regarded as the first gods of all in the succession myth, Hesiod accords them only a slightly lower status by including them among the Titans, as would be fitting for venerable deities whose union could account for the origin of all the lesser streams of the world. Okeanos seems ill-fitted, on the other hand, to share in the collective actions of and fate of the Titans, since his streams are a permanent feature of the world and one might suppose that he would be obligated to remain in them at the edges of the earth. The story of the latter part of the Theogony in which he tells his daughter Styx to assist Zeus against the Ttitans⁸² (see p. 49) is consistent with the thought that he did not join with the other Titans in fighting against Zeus; and in Apollodorus' theogony, in which the Titans are presented as attacking Ouranis as a collective body, it is explicitly stated that Okeanus took no part in the enterprise.⁸³

p. 40

OKEANOS was the god of the Ocean (Okeanos, a word of non-Greek origin), a great river that was thought to encircle the lands of the earth on every side. The goddess TETHYS was traditionally regarded as his wife; indeed in one tradition, as we have just seen, the pair were regarded as the first couple and the ancestors of the other gods. Hesiod, who has other ideas on the matter, acknowledges the venerable status of Okeanos, at least as the source of all the rivers and springs of the earth, by classing him as the eldest of the Titans.⁹⁸ Even if he was not a nonentity like some of his brothers and sisters, he lived too far away and was too closely identified with his streams to make many appearances in mythical narratives. The Iliad reports that Rhea entrusted her daughter Hera to Okeanos and Tehtys to be reared in their palace in the Ocean while Zeus was confronting Kronos and the Titans; and Pherecydes recounts a tale in which Okeanos tried to intimidate Herakles by raising his waves while the hero was crossing his waters to fetch the cattle of Geryoneus (see p. 264).⁹⁹ The god appears on stage in the Prometheus Bound, arriving on a griffin or some creature of the kind to offer sympathy and advice to the enchained Prometheus.¹⁰⁰ ...

Okeanos and Tehthys produced 3,000 (i.e. innumerable) sons, comprising al the RIVERS of the world (Potamoi, which are masculine in Greek), and 3,000 daughters, Ocean-nymphs of OKEANIDS ... The functions of the latter were by no means confined to water; Hesiod remarks that they are scattered everywhere, haunting the earth and deep waters alike, and observes in particular that they watch over the young.

p. 41

On the male side of the family, Hesiod names only a few of the most notable RIVERS by way of eample; ...

p. 264

According to Pherecydes, Okeanos tried to test [Heracles'] nerve by raising a heavy swell, but gave up in alarm when the hero threatened him with his bow.

LSJ

s.v. ἀψόρροος

back-flowing, refluent, Homeric epith. of Ocean, regarded as a stream encircling the earth and flowing back into itself, Il.18.399, Od.20.65.

Tripp

p. 579 s.v. Titans

Oceanus; Hyperion's son Helius, the sun-god; and the Titanesses had taken no part in the conflict and they continued to perform their functions under the rule of Zeus, though Rhea, Phoebe, Theia, and Mnemosyne faded into the background. Oceanus, his wife Tethys, and Themis were particularly revered by the Olympians.

p. 401 s.v. Oceanus

Oceanus or Ocean. The river Oceanus and its god. Oceanus, the river, was believed to issue from the Underworld and flow in a circular stream about the earth, which was concieved of as flat. Helius (Sun) and Eos (Dawn) lived near its banks in the east and daily disappeared into the river in the west, Helius riding its current home each night in a golden cup. The garden of the Hesperides (Daughters of the Evening) was located near it in the west, as was Hades, when it was not thought of as underground. ODYSSEUS [G] entered Hades by crossing Oceanus.

West 1966

p. 36

The Titans, the Old Gods, Kronos' allies, were too important to be left without individual names. Kronos himself and Iapetos are the only two known by name to Homer. In the Theogony a full list is offered. Its very heterogeneity betrays its lack of traditional foundtion. Rhea, Zeus' mother, must be married to Kronos, Zeus' father. Hyperion, as father of Helios, must be put back to that generation; so must ancient and venerable personages as Oceanus and Tethys, Themis and Mnemosyne. By the addition of four more colourless names (Koios, Kreios, Theia, and Phoibe), the list is made up to a complement of six males and six females.²

² According to Pohlenz, ... the number was modelled on the Olympian twelve. But the latter do not appear as such in Hesdiod. On the other hand, he does very often arrange families in threes or multiples of three. ...

p. 200 on line 133

The list of children that follows as far as 138, six male and six female (cf. p. 36). forms the group which Uranos gives the name Titans in 207; ...

The heterogeneity of [Hesiod’s list of Titans] is striking. Besides the dangerous ogres Kronos and Iapetos (cf. on 18), we find the relatively colourless figures Koios, Kreios, Hypoerion, Theia; the gentle Oceanus, who encourages his daughter Styx to help Zeus against the Titans (398);

p. 201 on line 133

Ὠκεανόν: the great river that flows round the rim of the world (790-1, cf. Il. 18. 607, Sc. 314-17). He is father of all other rivers and springs (337 ff., Il. 21. 195-7), and must therefore be himself a freshwater stream, quite distinct from the sea, though later equated with it. In Homer he is the origin of all things, or of all the gods (Il. 14.201, 246 [±246a]), and all the genealogies make him very ancient. His name is non-Greek; he is also Ὠγενός (Pherec. B 2), Ὤγενος (Lyc. 231), or Ὠγήν (Hsch.), ... Oceanus might be a Minoan word, since a Cretan river of the name is attested by Hesychius; or Clericus and many modern scholars may be right in seeking its origin further east (cf. Gisinger, R.E xvii. 2309; Schwabl, R.E Suppl. ix 1444). In particular it has been connected with Akkadian uginna, 'ring', and it was certainly a Babylonian and Egyptian concept that the earth was surrounded by water. Cf. A. Lesky, Thalatta, p. 64; Hölscher, Hermes, 1953, p. 385. But there can at present be no certainty.

West 1983

p. 71

[West's reconstruction of Rhapsodies] Uranos marries Ge, ... Ge gives birth to the Moirai ... the Hundred-Handers ... and the Cyclopes ... Uranos ... throws them into Tartarus ... Ge then, without [Uranos'] knowledge bears the Titans, seven females and seven males: Themis, Tethys, Mnemosyne, Theia, Dione, Phoibe, Rhea; Koios, Kreios, Phorkys, Kronos, Oceanus, Hyperion, Iapetos. Of these it is Kronos who is specially nurtured by Night, the nurse of the gods ... Ge incites the Titans to castrate Uranos; Oceanus alone is unwilling, and stays aloof ...

p. 117

The Timaeus genealogy runs:

From Ge and Uranos the children born were Oceanus and Tethys; from these, Phorkys and Kronos and Rhea, and all of that brood; from Kronos and Rhea, Zeus and Hera and all their brothers and sisters we hear tell of; and again from these more children.

p. 119

The Titans include Oceanus ... Oceanus was never in Tartarus; he is part of the upper world. Hesiod even represents him as assisting Zeus against the Titans by sending his daughter Styx with her children Zelos, Nike, and Bie (Th. 389-98). In Homer, too, Oceanus and Tehtys stay well out of the Titanomachy: Hera is evacuated to them (Il. 14.200-4). In the same passage they are referred to as

Oceanus the genesis of the gods, and mother Tethys,¹¹ [cont.]

p. 120

which puts them in an earlier generation than the Titans. Hesiod's accommodation of them in the list of Titans, then, appears to be something secondary and artificial, a matter of administrative convenience, whereas their position in an anterior generation in the Orphic theogony is a better reflection of their status in mythological tradition.

But in Homer Oceanus and Tethys ...

p. 121

The Titans

The children of Oceanus and Tethys in the Orphic poem are named as 'Phorkys, Kronos, Rhea, and all the rest'. This is the brood that coresponds to Hesiod's twelve Titans. But Phorkys belongs in Hesiod to a different family, as a son of Pontos. The other place where he appears as a Titan is in the Orphic Rhapsodies ..., where the Titans number fourteen: Hesiod's twelve plus Phorkys and DIone. It is tempting to guess that in the poem known to Plato Phorkys and Dione were counted among the Titans to make the number up to twelve because Oceanus and Tethys were otherwise accounted for.

p. 130

One feature that was not in Hesiod was the explicit dissociation of Oceanus from the castration. This reflects his ancient non-Titanic nature (cf. p. 119) and accords with the fact that when Kronos is ...

West 1997 [on shelf]

Amazon

p. 146

The etymology of Oceanus' name is obscure. The ancients though of ὠκὺ νάειν, 'swift flowing', among other derivations, but it cannot be explained from Greek. The likelyhood of a loan word is increased by the fact that Pherecydes of Syros used a divergent form, Ogēnos [

Vorsokr.

7 B 2]. No very convincing foreign models have been identified. It was once thought that there was a Sumerian word uginna 'ring', which seemed promising; but it does not exist. If a Semetic language should be the source, one might play with the above-mentioned Hebrew word for a (cosmic) circle, hûg, or with another Hebrew word, hōq, which means something prescribed or decreed, and is applied in several passages to the boundary set by Yahweh upon the sea or heavens. ...

p. 147

In Hellenistic and Roman verse Tethys was to become a handy learned term for the great outer sea, with which Oceanus had become identified, or for the sea in general. In early poetry she is merely an inactive mythological figure who lives with Oceanus and has borne his children. There is, however, one line in the Iliad,

Oceanus the origin of the gods and mother Tethys,

suggesting a myth according to which these two were the first parents of the whole race of gods.¹⁹⁷ This has long been seen as a parallel to the theogony in Enūma eliš, where Apsu and Tiamat, the Sea, appear as primeval parents. The comparison was first made by Mr. Gladstone, in the interval between his third and forth terms as Prime Minister.¹⁹⁸

More recently the question has been raised whether Tethys' name is not actually derived from that of Tiamat.¹⁹⁹ From a philological point of view it seems quite possible. Tiamat's name is a Semitic word for 'sea, the deep', found in masculine and feminine forms. The masculine prototype *tihāmu is represented in Ugaritic thm, Hebrew ...

¹⁹⁷ Il. 14.201 =302, cf. 246.

¹⁹⁸ W. E. Gladstone, Landmarks of Homeric Study, London 1890, 129-32.

¹⁹⁹ Wirth, 43; O. Szemerényi, JHS 94, 1974, 150 = Scr. Min. iii 1447; Burkert (1992), 92. f.

p. 148

The possibility that Tiamat's name resounds in Homer lends colour to the suggestion that there is an echo of Apsu's, in the strange epithet apsorrhoos which is applied to Oceanus and to nothing else. The poets no doubt understood it to mean 'flowing back (ἅψ) into itself', though that does not correspond to Hesiod's conception of its flow (Th. 791 f.), and the formation is anomalous, as ἅψ should not become ἅψο- in compound. The word occurs only in the genitive formula ἀψορρόον Ὼκεανοῖο; was this a representation of an *'Αψο, ῥόον Ὼκεανοῖο, 'of Apsu, the stream of Oceanus' (or the stream of the cosmic Basin, or whatever)?

Iconography

Vases

London 1971.11-1.1 (The Sophilos Dinos)

black-figure dinos by Sophilos, c. 600–550 BC, British Museum 971.11–1.1.^[1]

LIMC 6487 (Okeanos 1)

Type: dinos

Artist: Sophilos

Origin: Attica

Category: vase painting

Material: clay

Discovery: unknown

Dating: -580 – -570

Fabric: ATHENIAN

Technique: BLACK-FIGURE

Shape Name: DINOS

Date: -600 to -550

AVI 4748

AVI 4748: London, British Museum 1971,1101.1. BF dinos with stand. Sophilos. Second quarter sixth. Ca. 570.

History: Ex London, Erskine.

Decoration: Wedding of Peleus and Thetis.

Inscriptions: Inscriptions in red: hε̣φαιστος, retr. hιλεθυα, retr. Θε(θ)υς (theta under the snake's tongue){1}. Οκεανος. Αθεναια̣. Αρτεμις. [Μο]ιραι. hερμες, retr. [Ἀπ]ολ<λ>ον. Μοσαι. Αφροδιτε. Αρ̣ε̣ς. Μοσαι. Ανφιτριτε. Ποσειδον (end retr.). Χαριτες. hερα. Ζευς. Νυ<ν>φαι. Θεμις. Χιρον. hεβε. Διονυσος. Λετο. Χαρικλο. hεστια. Δε̣μετερ. Ιρις, retr. Πελευς, retr. Σοφιλος :* μεγραφσεν, retr.

Commentary: 3 frs. are on loan from the Getty Museum: 76.AE.126 = London 1978.6-7.1-3. Also two frs. bought in the American :Market: London 1978.6-6.1 and 1978.6-6.2. The Getty frs. show: [Δ]ε̣μετε[ρ]. Ιρις, retr. Πελευς. Have these frs. been inserted (they are said to be on loan) in the original or the photos? Some wrong restorations have been discovered; note a gap in the signature. According to Beazley, ABV 37 the artist’s name could be: Σώφιλος [so also LGPN, but that should be Σωφίλος(?)], Σοφίλος [that should be Σόφιλος(?)], or Σόφιλλος. The first occurrence of Themis (Shapiro). Closed heta. Theta both crossed and dotted. Sigma frequently reversed.

Gantz, p. 28

Artistic representations appear in the illustrations of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis on the Francois Krater (Florence 4209) and Erskine Dinos (London 1971.11-1.1), where Okeanos and Tethys form part of the procession as invited guests; in both cases, Okeanos is presented as human in form (albeit with bull's head or horns) from the waist up, but with a fish's body from the waist down.

Gantz, pp. 229–230

and the

François Krater of Sophilos and Kleitas

, respectively commemorate the [wedding of Thetis and Peleus] in the first half of the sixth century (London 1971.11-1.1; Florence; cf. Athens Akr 587, fragments of a second such pot by Sophilos). Obviously, if all the Olypmian gods are to attend there will not be much variation in th guest list, but even so, the choice of figures on these vases, and the order in which they appear are surprisingly similar, and it has been suggested that a detailed literary source such as Stesichoros may be responsible.³³ ... More surprisingly, the procession concludes on both preserved pots and the fragments with Okeanos (shown with a fish tail) and Hephaistos on his donkey.

Burkert, p. 202

[Oceanus and Tethys] are represented on the dinos of Sophilos (about 570 B.C.), BM 1971.11-1.1; cf. A. Birchall, Brit. Mus. Quart. 36 (1971/72) pl. 37; G. Bakir, Sophilos (1981) 64 fig. 3; D. Williams in Greek vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum I (1983) 9-34; Tethys is spelt ΘΕΘΥΣ by Sophilos.

Williams

p. 27

Figure 34.

p. 29

The rear of the procession is brought up by a rather amorphous group. First is the fish-bodied, bull-horned Okeanos ([ΟΚΕΑΝΟΣ]) (fig. 34), clutching a fish and a snake. In the background is his wife Tethys ([ΘΕΘΥΣ]) is accompanied by Eileithyia ([ΗΙΛΕΘΥΑ] retr.).

p. 31

The end of the procession is made up of the chariot of Athena and Artemis, virgins both and a motley crew of slow-moving stragglers (fig. 19). Okeanos, progenitor of the gods,⁶⁹ is given both aquatic and terestrial attributes, a fish-tail and a bull horn, as well as a fish in one hand and a snake in the other. This combination alludes perhaps to Okeanos' role as the great river encompassing the earth. His wife Tethys, who walks close behind, is accompanied [cont.]

p. 32

by Eileithyia—she need not hurry, for her job is still some months away. At the end rides Hephaistos on his mule slow and ridiculous.

p. 33

Before leaving the figured scene on the London dinos, we ought perhaps to discuss what external influences may have played a part in its formation. The possibility of the influence of a poem by Stesichoros has been recently raised by Andrew Stewart.⁷⁴

⁷⁴ A . Stewart, "Stesichoros and the François Vase," a paper delivered at Madison (1981, Acta forthcoming). I am very grateful to Dr. Stewart who kindly let me see his typescript.

Perseus: London 1971.11-1.1 (Vase)

Summary: Wedding of Peleus and Thetis; animal friezes.

Ware: Attic Black Figure

Painter: Signed by Sophilos

Date: ca. 580 BC

Shape: Dinos

Beazley Number: 350099

The last chariot is driven by Athena, with Artemis as her companion. Artemis wears a decorated peplos and no cloak, and holds a bow; Athena, a cloak, but no aegis or other attribute. Behind their horses walk three Moirai.

Behind these chariots comes Okeanos, fish-bodied and bull-horned, holding a fish and snake, accompanied by his wife Tethys and by Eileithyia. The procession is ended by Hephaistos riding on an mule, wearing a white chiton and apparently riding side-saddle on a swan-headed saddle (as on the François Vase; one frontal foot is preserved).

The subject of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis was painted by Sophilos on another, very similar krater, fragments of which were found on the Athenian Acropolis (Athens Acr. 587), and also on the François Vase of Kleitias and Ergotimos (Florence 4209)

British Museum 1971,1101.1

Theoi detail

Florence 4209

François Vase

LIMC 1602 (Okeanos 3)

ID: 1602

Type: volute crater

Artist: Kleitias

Origin: Attica

Category: vase painting

Material: clay

Discovery: Chiusi, Camars, Clevsin, Clusium

Dating: -570 – -560

Object ID: 7908

Description

Marriage of Peleus: In the procession of the gods behind Chiron three women wrapped into a cloak - Demeter, Chariklo (I) and Hestia. The three women walking beside the chariot of Apollon are probably the Charites . Maia and Hermes in one of the chariots. At the end of the third frieze is Okeanos. Dionysos is accompanied by three Horai.

Beazley Archive 300000

Fabric: ATHENIAN

Technique: BLACK-FIGURE

Shape Name: KRATER, VOLUTE

Provenance: ITALY, CHIUSI

Date: -600 to -550

AVI 3576

AVI 3576: Florence, Museo archeologico nazionale 4209. BF volute krater (François Vase). From Chiusi. Kleitias. Ergotimos, potter. 570-560.

Gantz, p. 28

Artistic representations appear in the illustrations of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis on the Francois Krater (Florence 4209) and Erskine Dinos (London 1971.11-1.1), where Okeanos and Tethys form part of the procession as invited guests; in both cases, Okeanos is presented as human in form (albeit with bull's head or horns) from the waist up, but with a fish's body from the waist down.

Gantz, pp. 229–230

and the

François Krater of Sophilos and Kleitas

, respectively commemorate the [wedding of Thetis and Peleus] in the first half of the sixth century (London 1971.11-1.1; Florence; cf. Athens Akr 587, fragments of a second such pot by Sophilos). Obviously, if all the Olypmian gods are to attend there will not be much variation in th guest list, but even so, the choice of figures on these vases, and the order in which they appear are surprisingly similar, and it has been suggested that a detailed literary source such as Stesichoros may be responsible.³³ ... More surprisingly, the procession concludes on both preserved pots and the fragments with Okeanos (shown with a fish tail) and Hephaistos on his donkey.

Perseus Florence 4209 (Vase)

ca. 570 BC - ca. 560 BC

The next chariot is driven by Hermes, accompanied by his mother Maia. He is bearded, and carries the caduceus, whip and reins. Maia wears a long peplos and lifts one side of her mantle. In front of the horses are four Moirai, holding hands, one of whom wears another figured embroidered peplos, the others different, less elaborate peploi. The last chariot is hardly preserved, and its driver and passenger are uncertain; Tethys is one conjecture. Behind the last chariot is Okeanos, of whom only the bull-like neck and ear are preserved (cf. Eur. Orest. 1377). Finally, bringing up the end of the procession is Hephaistos, riding side-saddle on a donkey and in frontal view.

Carpenter p. 6

Buschot's reconstruction of a bull-headed Okeanos with a human body riding with Tethys is unconvincing, as it requires the presence of Triton.¹⁸ On Sophilos' vase Okeanus has a fish body, and it is likely that the fish-body on Kleitas' vase also belongs to Okeanos.

Beazley, p. 27

and last [of the chariots], as dwelling farthest away, Okeanus, the ocean-stream believed to encompass the whole earth, with Tethys his spouse. Hardly anything of these last two figures remain, but enough to show that Okeanos was represented with a human body but the head and neck of a bull.⁹ River-gods were thought of by early Greeks as bull-like, and Okeanos was the greatest of the rivers. Euripides long after calls him bull-headed, ταυρόκρανος.¹⁰ Okeanos and his wife are attended by a trio of femails, probably Nereids, sisters of Thetis, and by a sea-god ending in the tail of a fish, or rather of a sea-serpent, a pristis, Triton. This is the last chariot, but not the end of the procession. As in the earlier picture of the subject by Sophilos, the lame god Hephaistos brings up the rear.

Pergammon Altar

Gigantomachy.^[1]

LIMC 617 (Okeanos 7)

Object

ID: 617

Type: slab

Origin: Asia Minor

Category: architectural relief

Material: marble

Discovery: Pergamon

Dating: -160 – -150

Description

Friezes of the altar of Pergamon.

Object

ID: 469

Description

... Okeanos (labelled), half nude, next to Tethys. ...

Pollit, p. 96

[Thethys: inscription not preserved, meaning conjectured]

Queyrel, p. 67

In the background, there is no longer the goddess who fought by his side, probably the Titanide Tethys, the remains of the chiton above the shield lost by a giant hand and clutching a large tree branch behind head of the god.

[Au second plan, il ne subsiste plus de la déesse qui combattait à son coté, sans doute la Titanide Téthys, que les restes du chiton au-dessus du bouclier perdu par un géant et la main qui serre une grosse branche d'arbre derrière la tete du dieu.]

Jentel

p. 1194

2. ... Okeanos front, lower body T. (?) draped.

[2. ... Devant Okéanos, bas du corps de T. (?) drapée.]

p. 1195

In the Hellenistic period, it can be assumed that the bottom of a draped woman (2) in front of Okeanos on the altar of Pergamon, is the remains of a figure T.

[A l'époque hellénistique, on peut supposer que le bas d'une femme drapée (2) devant Okéanos, sur l'autel de Pergame, est le reste d'une figure de T.]

1. ^ LIMC 617 (Okeanos 7).

Mosaics

Hatay Archaeology Museum 850 ("House of the Calendar" triclinium)

LIMC 735 (Oceanus (S) 62)

Object

ID: 735

Type: mosaic

Category: mosaic

Discovery: Antakya, Antiocheia on the Orontes, Antiochia ad Orontem (House of the Calendar)

Dating:

Description

Of the originally four Seasons around a round mosaic with depictions of personifications of months only two are preserved: they are named TROPE. The Trope of spring is depicted as young winged woman. In a rectangular panel Thetys (I) is seated together with Oceanus. Remains of Ketos visible, fish and shellfishes. Fragments of six standing Menses in circular design and inscribed with the names of a Syro-Macedonian calendar are preserved. The adjacent panel shows Okeanos and Thethys (I).

Names

Menses, Oceanus, Thetys I, Tropai

Jentel, p. 1194

5.* ... In Antioch, the House of the Calendar, triclinium. ... T to l. (Long hair with wings, nude to the waist, draped legs), R. arm tense with remains of a ketos, if retoune to Okeanos sitting r. Around them, fish and shellfish.

[5.* ... D'antioch, Maison du Calendrier, triclinium. ... T. vers la g. (longue chevelure avec ailettes, torse nu, jambes drapées), le bras dr. tendu avec restes du kétos, se retoune vers Okéanos assis à dr. Autour d'eux, poissons et crustacés.]

Wages

p. 120

The earliest sea goddess mosaic is the one excavated from the House of the Calendar in Antioch, dated by archeological evidence to a period shortly after the earthquake of A.D. 115 (Fig. 2).⁹ The style belongs to the tradition of Greco-Roman naturalistic classicism.¹⁰ It depicts a semi-nude god and goddess reclining on opposite sides of a blue-green sea filled with fish who dart about at random, casting shadows below them, sometimes overlapping each other. The fish are portrayed with such realism that they have been identified by species.¹¹

p. 123

The iconographic development of the winged sea goddess group of mosaics can be divided into three phases. I propose that in the first phase the winged sea goddess represented Tethys primarily in her mythological role as consort of Okeanos, joint ruler of the waters of the earth. To this phase belong the second-century pavement from the House of the Calendar (Fig. 2) and its derivatives.²⁴ In the House of the Calendar mosaic the reclining god can be identified as Okeanos, for he has the wild, white hair and beard, as well as the crown of crustacean's claws, which are the standard attributes of this diety. In addition, he holds a rudder, the implement used to govern the waters. From the goddesses' forehead sprout wings, like those of Tethys in the Dumbarton Oaks pavement. Although the head has been destroyed, the serpent- [cont.]

²⁴ These include both the mosaics from the House of the Boat of Psyches as well as those from Myriandos and the House of Menander.

p. 124

tine body of some sea monster is preserved, entwined around the goddess' raised arm. I suggest that the goddess in this mosaic is Tethys because, like the goddess in the later Dumbarton Oaks mosaic, she is represented in a marine environment and has wings. The scene in the the House of the Calendar would then represent the rulers and progenitors of the waters in their domain. Support for this conclusion is provided by the later mosaic from the triclinium of the House of the Boat of Psyches dated to the third quarter of the third century. There the two dieties appear in a panel adjacent to the scene of the Rape of Europa, who was one of the daughters of Okeanos and Tethys.

fig. 2

Antioch, House of the Calendar, Tethys and Okeanos

p. 127

House of the Calendar: triclinium overlooking a pool. [Antioch, II, 191 no. 71 B, pl 51; Levi I 38-39, fig. 12; II, pl. 6]

Eraslan, p. 455

In the "Calendar House" mosaic, Tethys and Oceanus were depicted as surrounded by himation under their waists and together with various marine animals (Levi, 1947: 38-9; Lassus, 1983: 257; Campbell, 1988: 61) fig. 1). They both sit on the sea floor. Tethys leans left and raises her left hand up. She probably holds the body of Cetus with her left hand.

Campbell 1988, p.61

The panel itself shows Okeanos and Thetis reclining against against a blue/grey sea and surrounded by an enormous variety of fish.

Hatay Archaeology Museum 850

Theoi image

Hatay Archaeology Museum 1013 (House of Menander)

Harbiye, Turkey), third century AD, Hatay Archaeology Museum 1013.^[1]

LIMC 659 (Oceanus (S) 55)

Object

ID: 659

Type: mosaic

Category: mosaic

Discovery: Daphne (Antiochia ad Orontem) (House of Menander)

Dating: 200 – 320

Description

Busts of Tethys (I) and Oceanus looking at each other.

Names

Eros, Oceanus, Tethys I

Jentel, p. 1195

15.* ... Daphne-Harbié house of Menander. ... On the left, in the background, T is looking at the bust of Okeanos in the foreground. Hair purple, brown and green wings, earrings.

[15.* ... De Daphné-Harbié, maison de Ménandre. ... A g., au second plan, T. regardant Okéanos en buste au premier plan. Chevelure violacée, ailettes brunes et vertes, boucles d'oreilles.]

Hatay Archaeology Museum 1013

Wages

p. 123 n. 24

To this phase belong the second-century pavement from the House of the Calendar (Fig. 2) and its third-century derivitives.²⁴

²⁴ These include both mosaics from the House of the Boat of Psyches as well as those from Myriandos and the House of Menander.

fig. 8

Antioch, House of Menander, Room Seventeen, detail of heads of Tethys and Oceanos

p. 127

Theoi Image

1. ^ LIMC 659 (Oceanus (S) 55).

Hatay Archaeology Museum 9095

LIMC 7630 (Tethys I (S) 16)

Object

ID: 7630

Type: mosaic

Category: mosaic

Discovery: Alexandrette, Iskenderun (thermal baths)

Dating: 200 – 320

Description

Tethys (I) looking at Oceanus.

Names

Tethys I

Jentel, p. 1195

16. ... The Baths of Alexandretta. On the left, T. looking toward Oceanus. Long dark hair with wings and earrings

Hatay Archaeology Museum 9095

Theoi image

Baltimore Museum of Art 1937.126 (House of the Boat of Psyches: triclinium)

LIMC 661 (Oceanus (S) 56)

Object

ID: 661

Type: mosaic

Category: mosaic

Discovery: Daphne (Antiochia ad Orontem)

Dating: 200 – 220

Description

Tethys (I), Ketos and Oceanus.

Names

Oceanus, Tethys I

Jentel, p. 1195

17. ... Daphne-Harbié, House of the Boat of Psyches, triclinium. ... T., long straight hair with green wings, ketos around the neck, looking at Okeanos on the right.

Wages, p. 127

triclinium

Baltimore Museum of Art 1937.126

Tethys and Oceanus

Origin: Daphne, Syria (present day Turkey)

Image

[Tethys and Oceanus, with sea serpent and rudder, behind and to the right of each respectively]

Zeugma Mosaic Museum, Oceanus and Tethys Mosaic

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Discovered 2014: [1]

Theoi

Theoi

Zeugma Mosaic Museum, Poseidon Oceanus and Tethys Mosaic

Eraslan, pp. 456–457

See also Eraslan, TETHYS AND THALASSA IN MOSAIC ART pp. 2–3, fig. 2

Onal, p. 35

Theoi

Garni Oceanus and Tethys/Thalassa

LIMC 656 (Thalassa (S) 12)

Object

ID: 656

Type: mosaic

Origin: Greco-Roman

Category: mosaic

Material: opus tessellatum

Discovery: Garni (Armenia) (thermal baths)

Dating: 290 – 300

Description

Agrios (II) putting his arm on the shoulders of Epithymia who is seated in front of the marine monster. Aigialos carrying Thetis on his back. Tritons and Nereides: Aigialos, Bythos, Glaukos, Kallos, Peleus, Pothos, Epithymia, Galene (I), Thetis, Agrios (II). Busts of Thalassa and Oceanus.

Inscription

AGRIOS, EGIALOS, GALENE, KALLOS, POTHOS, THALASA, OKEANOS.

Koutsoyiannis, p. 7

[misidentifies Thetis image as Tethys]

Can

p. 84

There is a Roman settlement in Garni, Armenia, approximately 32 km south-east of Yerevan. Today, the Mithra Temple and Bath constructions are relatively well preserved. A mythological description is found on the mosaic pavement on the ground of the frigidarium, with an apsis located in the eastern part of the Bath.⁵ (Figure 2). Busts of [cont.]

⁵ Thierry-Donabedian, 1987: 529; Eraslan, 2010: Fig.8

p. 85

Oceanus and Tethys are situated side-by-side in the middle panel, and Triton, the Nerieds, and Eros are depicted in surrounding borders. These mosaics, dating to the second half of the 3rd century AD, are important because of their unity in Armenia. Besides being encountered almost everywhere in the Mediterranean basin, the best matches in style can be seen in Anatolia. As depicted in the Garni mosaic, other samples in which Oceanus and Tethys are shown together can only be seen in Anatolia — specifically in Antiocheia⁶ and Zeugma⁷. Additionally, depictions of wings on Tethy's hair can be seen in all representations of Tethys in Antiocheia and Zeugma.

⁶ "Oceanos and Tethys" mosaic of the "House of the Calendar" dated to the 2nd century BC: Cimok, 2000:46-47; "Oceanos and Tethys" mosaic dated to 3rd century BC and situated in "House of the Boat of Psyche": Cimok, 2000:151; "Oceanos and Tethys" mosaic dated to the 3rd century BC in "House of the Menander":Cimok, 2000: 187; "House of the Oceanos and Tethys" mosaic dated to 3rd century BC: Levi, 1947: II Pl.Lb-c

⁷ "House of Oceanos" mosaics dated to end of 2nd century BC-begining of 3rd century BC: Ergeç, 2006: 78-85; "House of the Poseidon" mosaics dated to the end of the 2nd century-begining of 3rd century BC: Ergeç2006:110-`113

p. 91

Figure 2 Frigidarium Mosaic, Garni Bath, Armenia

Eraslan, p 457, fig 5

One of the mosiacs depicting Tethys and Oceanus together have been found pavement of Roman Bath in Garni. In the mosaic dated 3rd century AD, the outmost part of the panel was bordered by a pink stripe, and the figures of Nereid, Eros and fish ornament were used as border ornamentation (Wages, 1986:120; Thierry-Donabedian, 1987:529) (Fig. 5).

As the mosaic is in a highly damaged situation, only the eyes and hair of Tethys and hair of Oceanus can be seen. ... in the preserved area at the top right the inscription, ΘΕΤΙC (Thetis), written in Ancient Greek language is seen.

Wages

p. 124

This development is heralded by an inscription in a mosaic in the late third-century bath at Garni, in eastern Armenia.²⁶ In the central square of this pavement survive the head of a god, crowned with claws and identified by an inscription as "Oceanos" and the head of a woman, identified as "Thalas(s)a," the personification of the sea. ... Although difficult to read because of their abstraction, the protuberances growing from Thalassa's head probably are wings. If they are wings, then their presence in a picture of a marine goddess identified as Thalassa suggests that they were attributes of the personification of the sea as well as of the goddess Tethys.

...

Since there are mistakes in the spelling of the Greek inscriptions in the Garni mosaic, its attribution of wings may also be a mistake. ...

p. 126

[Tethis] appears, identified by inscriptions, ... in the border of the third-century Garni mosaic,⁴² where she is associated with other marine subjects of Okeanos and Thalassa; ...

Jentel, p. 1195

However, there are many other representations of a sea goddess, also forming a couple with Okeanos, and bearing like him, crab claws on her head. This deity is identified on a mosaic of a thermal building of Garni (-> Oceanus 53 * = Thalassa 12) with the inscription ΘΑΛΑΣΑ. One might conclude that the many representations of the "goddess with crab claws" on sarcophagi, sculptures, mosaics, are those of -> Thalassa, another female personification of the sea, but one wonders if the ancient artists would have made a distinction between the two goddesses.

Denver 1951.29

LIMC 739 (Oceanus (S))

Object

ID: 739

Type: mosaic

Category: mosaic

Discovery: Seleukeia (Pamphylia)

Dating: 200 – 320

Description

Left part of a heavily worn mosaic from the House of Okeanos and Tethys. Nude torso of Tehtys (I) and Ketos remain. :Reclining close to her is Oceanus.

Names

Tethys I