Ocean (mythology)

Ocean, on the right, with scamed tail, in the Gigantomaquia of the Altar of Pergam.

In classical antiquity, Ocean (Ancient Greek Ώκεανός Ōkeanós or Ωγενος Ōgenos, literally 'ocean'; in Latin Oceanus or Ogenus) referred to the world ocean, which the Greeks and Romans thought was a huge river that encircled the world. More precisely, it was the seawater current at the equator in which the ecumene floated (οἰκουμένη oikoumene).

In the myths

In Greek mythology this world ocean was personified as a Titan, son of Uranus and Gaia. In Hellenistic and Roman mosaics (for example in Zeugma's Ocean and Thetis, III century) this Titan is often depicted as having the torso and arms of a muscular man with a long beard and horns (often with crab claws), and the lower body of a serpent (compare Typhon). In fragments of an archaic vessel dated about 580 B.C. C., between the gods who attend the wedding of Peleus and the sea nymph Thetis appears an Ocean with a fish tail, carrying a fish in one hand and a snake in the other, gifts of reward and prophecy. In Roman mosaics, such as Bardo's, he may appear holding a rudder and rocking a ship.

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

The wife of Oceanus was his sister Thetis, and from their union were born the three thousand Oceanids (or sea nymphs) and all the Oceanids, the rivers of the world, as well as the springs and lakes. the race of the Titans, the twelve Olympians were born, and Hera mentions twice in the Iliad their alleged journey “to the ends of the fertile earth to see Oceanus, father of the gods, and mother Thetis, who received me from the hands of Rhea and brought me up and educated me in her palace."

In most versions of the Titanomachy, or war between the Titans and the Olympians, Oceanus, along with Prometheus and Themis, did not join the side of his Titan brothers against the Olympians, but instead remained oblivious to the conflict. In most versions of this myth, Oceanus also refused to join Cronus in his rebellion against his father Urano.

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

Statue of Ocean from Ephesus, centuryII (Istanbul Archaeological Museum).

Then, running around the edge of the shield, three times,
drew the entire force of the ocean current.

When Odysseus and Nestor walked together "by the shore of the thundering sea, they prayed many prayers to the god who embraces the earth and shakes it" it was Oceanus, not Poseidon, to whom they turned their thoughts.

Invoked in passing by the poets and conceived of as the father of rivers and streams, and thus progenitor of the associated deities, Oceanus appears only once in myth, as a representative of the archaic world that Heracles constantly threatened and surpassed. Heracles forced Helios to lend him his golden cup to cross the great expanse of the Ocean on his journey to the Hesperides. When Oceanus shook the cup, Heracles threatened him and calmed the waves. Heracles' voyage in the solar cup across the Ocean was a favorite subject of Attic ceramic painters.

Offspring of Ocean

• With Gea (first):
  • the Nunfa Creussa
  • Triptolemo
  • the river god
  • The Mermaids
• With Parthenope:
  • Europe
  • Trace
• With Ponfólige:
  • Libya
  • Asia
• With Tea, daughter of Memnon
  • the two Cercopes
• With Tetis, one of the titanides
  • The 3000 river gods or Oceanids, among them:
    • Alfeo
    • That's it.
    • Aqueror (as an tributary of the river Ocean)
    • Cefiso
    • Erídano
    • Scamandro
    • Indian
    • Nile
    • Pencil
  • The 3000 Oceanid Ninphas, including:
    • Calírroe
    • Clímene
    • Doris
    • Electra
    • Peito
    • Éstige
    • Eurínome
    • Fílira
    • Metis
    • Perseid
    • Pléyone
• No known union:
  • the auras or nymphs of the breezes
  • nepheles or cloud nymphs
  • The limnas or nymphs of the lakes

In cosmography

Statue of the Titan Ocean at the Fountain of Trevi (Rome).

Ocean appears in both Hellenic cosmography and mythology. Cartographers continued to depict the surrounding equatorial current in a similar way as it had appeared on Achilles' shield.

Although Herodotus was skeptical about the physical existence of Oceanus, he denied that melting ice was the cause of the annual overflow of the Nile River. According to his translator and interpreter Livio Stecchini, Herodotus left the question of an equatorial Nile unresolved, since the geography of sub-Saharan Africa was unknown to him.

Apollonius of Rhodes calls the lower Danube the Keras Okeanoio (‘Gulf’ or ‘Ocean Horn’) in his Argonáuticas.

In the Ora maritima of the Latin gallium of the century IV Avienus applies Action ('Ocean') to the Great Lakes.

Both Homer and Hesiod refer to the Okeanos Potamos, the ‘river ocean’.

Hecataeus of Abdera writes that the Hyperborean Ocean is neither the arctic nor the western one, but the sea located to the north of the ancient Greek world, called "the most wonderful of all seas" by Herodotus, the "immense sea » by Pomponio Mela and by Dionisio Periegeta, and whose name is Mare majus on medieval maps.

At the end of the Okeanos Potamos was the sacred island of Alba (Leuke, Pytho Nisi or Island of Serpents), sacred to the Pelasgian (and later also Greek) Apollo, who greets the rising sun of the east. Hecateus of Abdera alludes to the island of Apollo from the region of the Hyperboreans, in the Ocean. It was in Leuke , in one version of the legend about him, that the hero Achilles was buried in a burial mound (to this day, one of the mouths of the Danube is called Quilia).