Oceanus - In cosmography, External links

In Greek mythology, a Titan, the son of Uranus and Gaia. He is a benign god who personifies the stream of Ocean which was assumed to surround the world, as known to the Greeks.

In the Greek and Roman world-view, Oceanus (Greek Ὠκεανός, Okeanos), was the world-ocean, which they believed to be an enormous river encircling the world.

Some scholars believe that Oceanus originally represented all bodies of salt water, including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, the two largest bodies known to the ancient Greeks. However, as geography became more accurate, Oceanus came to represent the stranger, more unknown waters of the Atlantic Ocean (also called the "Ocean Sea"), while the newcomer of a later generation, Poseidon, ruled over the Mediterranean.

Oceanus' consort is his sister Tethys, and from their union came the ocean nymphs, also known as the three-thousand Oceanids, and all the rivers of the world, fountains, and lakes.

In most variations of the war between the Titans and the Olympians, or Titanomachy, Oceanus, along with Prometheus and Themis, did not take the side of his fellow Titans against the Olympians, but instead withdrew from the conflict.

In the Iliad, the rich iconography of Achilles' shield, which was fashioned by Hephaestus, is enclosed, as the world itself was believed to be, by Oceanus:

When Odysseus and Nestor walk together along the shore of the sounding sea (Iliad ix.182) their prayers are addressed "to the great Sea-god who girdles the world."

Invoked in passing by poets and figured as the father of rivers and streams, thus the progenitor of river gods, Oceanus appears only once in myth, as a representative of the archaic world that Heracles constantly threatened and bested.

In cosmography

Oceanus appears in Hellenic cosmography as well as myth.

Though Herodotus was skeptical about the physical existence of Oceanus, he rejected snowmelt as a cause of the annual flood of the Nile river;

External links

Theioi.com: "Okeanos"

Greek deities series
Primordial deities | Titans | Aquatic deities | Chthonic deities
Titans
Titanes: Oceanus | Hyperion | Coeus | Cronus | Crius | Iapetus Titanides: Tethys | Theia | Phoebe | Rhea | Mnemosyne | Themis Sons of Iapetus: Atlas | Prometheus | Epimetheus | Menoetius
Aquatic deities
Poseidon | Oceanus | Ceto | Nereus | Glaucus | Thetis | Amphitrite Tethys | Triton | Proteus | Phorcys | Pontus | Oceanids | Nereids |