Thetis (Titan)

Representation of Tetis in a mosaic preserved in the Museum of Antioch (Turkey).

In Greek mythology, Thetis (in ancient Greek Τηθύς Têthys, "nanny", "grandmother" or "aunt"), daughter of Uranus and Gaea, It is considered a personification of the waters of the world (especially its facet as aquatic fertility). She is always described as the wife of Océano, whether she refers to the Titan or to the river that surrounds the world. There are no records of active Thetis cults in historical times. Thetis has sometimes been confused with another sea goddess of the same name, the Nereid wife of Peleus and mother of Achilles. At least in the most common genealogical variants, the Titaness Thetis (Τηθύς) is the grandmother of the homonymous Nereid, through the Oceanid Doris. Note that although the spellings are homonymous in Spanish, in ancient Greek they were differentiated, such as Tηθύς and Θέτις. Thetis, little by little, is identified with other goddesses with similar roles, especially Thalassa, Thesis and the Amphitrite of Homeric texts. Robert Graves interprets the use of the term "nurse" or "nanny" as an identifier of the goddesses which were once of key importance in the periods before historical documentation.

In the Hesiodic texts

In the Theogony we are offered its genealogical role, a tradition that remained common to later authors. "The kind Thetis" is presented as the youngest of the six Titans; and wife of her older brother, the Ocean This primordial river encircles the entire earth and its tributaries are all the rivers of the world. The fertility of Thetis is, of course, proverbial, since the poet says that «there are three thousand Oceanids with thin ankles that guard the earth and the depths of the lagoons everywhere. And many others (are) the Rivers that run noisily, to which the august Thetis gave birth". Other authors, further from the conventional epic, cite her as the mother of different freshwater nymphs, such as the limnades (lakes), the néfelas (clouds) or the auras (breezes), which ultimately belong to the race of naiad or oceanid nymphs.

In the Homeric texts

The Homeric texts ignore the affiliation of Thetis, but make her a primordial goddess. It is said that Oceanus and Thetis were the origin couple of the other gods and even that the couple cared affectionately in their homes for the goddess Hera, whom Rhea welcomed by the hand when Zeus was at war with her father Cronus. This already represents the indicative of the power exercised by Thetis. During a passage in the Iliad in which Hera deceives Zeus, she makes the excuse that she has to visit Thetis and Oceanus to reconcile them, because they had quarreled and did not share a bed. In the same way, the Homeric texts tell us of at least three daughters of Oceanus: Thetis, Eurynome, and Perse; these primordial goddesses had facets as pre-Olympian goddesses, wives of the Titans, queens of the gods, or creator goddesses. Furthermore, Thetis as the goddess of creation is understood in Orphic texts as Thesis, the primordial goddess of creation. One myth tells that Hera was not satisfied with the location of Callisto and Arcas in the sky, like the constellations Ursa Major. and Ursa Minor, so she asked her nursemaid, Thetis, for help. This, goddess of the sea, cursed these constellations to revolve around the sky without ever going below the horizon, which explains why they were circumpolar.

Representations and interpretations

Although these vestiges indicate an important role in early times, Thetis plays virtually no role in surviving Greek texts, nor in historical records of Greek religion and cults. Walter Burkert points out the presence of Thetis in Book XIV of the Iliad, in the passage that the ancients called the "Deception of Zeus", when Hera sets a trap for her husband by telling him that she wants to go " to the ends of the fertile earth, to see Oceanus, father of the gods, and mother Thetis". Burkert sees in the name a transformation of the Akkadian "tiamtu" or "tâmtu". " ("sea"), recognizable in Tiamat.

Some of the few depictions of Thetis that have been confidently identified are so from accompanying inscriptions, such as the Late Antique mosaic (5th century IV) from the floor of some baths in Antioch, currently on display in Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, D.C.) In this mosaic, the bust of Thetis (surrounded by fish) rises from the waters with the bare shoulders. Against her shoulder rests a golden rudder. Gray wings sprout from her forehead. Another is known as Ocean and Tethys. A main attribute that Thetis usually shows in Greco-Roman mosaics is the pair of wings that the goddess wears on her head; she is sometimes accompanied by some cetos, creatures with the head of a dragon and the body of a serpent. Towards the end of the period represented by these mosaics, Thetis's iconography seems to merge with that of another sea goddess, Thalassa, the Greek personification of the sea. This explains the common use of Thetis as a personification or metonym for the sea in Roman poetry.

Consorts and offspring

• With Ocean (titan in the Theogony, primordial in the Iliad)
  • The three thousand river gods or Oceanids, among them the main:
    • That one, the first of the rivers
    • Erídano, which limits the ecumene in the north end
    • Fasis, which limits ecumene to the eastern end
    • Nile, which limits ecumene in the southern end
  • The three thousand Oceanid nymphs, among them the oldest:
    • Éstige, firstborn and nymph of the underground current
    • Eurinome, wife of Ofion
    • Metis, also as Thesis
    • Perseid, one of the three daughters of Ocean for Homer
  • The nepheles, cloud nymphs

Other uses for Thetis

The honor of Thetis (Τηθύς) were named:

• The ocean Tetis, or the sea of Tetis (Tethys), an ocean of the Mesozoic era that existed between the continents of Gondwana and Laurasia, before the appearance of the Indian Ocean. Another mythological name for a preferred ocean also occurs in the case of Pantalasa (referring to Talasa).
• Tetis, one of the satellites of the planet Saturn.