Domain: The world-encircling river Ocean; the source of all waters Symbol: The great river coiled round the earth's rim, the bull-horned brow, the serpent-tailed body, the fish and the flowing stream Roman Equivalent: Oceanus
Overview
Oceanus is the eldest of the Titans, children of Gaia the earth and Uranus the sky, and he is the great river Ocean itself — not a sea within the world but the vast freshwater stream that the Greeks believed ran round the whole disc of the earth, the boundary of the known and the source from which every other water flows. Rivers, springs, wells, rain, and the salt sea alike were held to rise from him. Homer calls him the origin of all the gods, and in the oldest cosmology he and his wife Tethys are something close to the wellspring of the divine race. He was pictured as a mighty figure with the horns of a bull and a serpentine, fish-tailed lower body, forever pouring.
Of all the Titans he is the least warlike. When Cronus rose against their father and later when Zeus rose against Cronus, Oceanus is remembered as the one who held apart from the strife — the elder power who abides at the edge of things and simply keeps flowing while the succession of rulers plays out at the center. He is the constancy beneath the turnings of the world, the river that was there before the quarrels and will be there after.
Key Myths
The father of the waters. By his sister-wife Tethys, Oceanus fathered the three thousand rivers of the world and the three thousand Oceanids, the nymphs of springs and streams and clouds. Every river-god a Greek could name — every fountain, every rain-cloud — traced its descent to his union with Tethys. He is genealogy made liquid: the single source branching into all the flowing waters of the earth.
The Titan who kept the peace. Alone among the great Titans, Oceanus took no part in the castration of Uranus and stood aside from the Titanomachy against Zeus. In Aeschylus he even comes, an old and cautious kinsman, to counsel Prometheus toward submission after the war. For this restraint he was left unpunished when the other Titans were cast down — the elder river permitted to go on encircling the world as he always had.
The edge of the world. To sail to Oceanus was to reach the limit of the known — the stream beyond which lay the lands of the dead, the rising and setting places of Helios the sun, and the marvels at the world's rim. He is the horizon given a body, the boundary that both encloses the world and hints at what lies past it.
Related
- Tethys — His sister and wife, mother with him of the rivers and the Oceanids
- Gaia — His mother, the earth
- Uranus — His father, the sky
- Cronus — His brother, who led the Titans; Oceanus stood apart
- Prometheus — Whom he counselled after the Titanomachy
- Mythology
- Greek Mythology Index