Accion ("ocean"), in the fourth century AD Gaulish Latin of Avienus' Ora maritima, was applied to great lakes. Some 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. It was the source of all of the earth's fresh-water--from the rivers and springs which drew their waters from it through subterranean aquifers to the clouds which dipped below the horizon to collect their moisture from its stream. In order to reach the Underworldit is necessary to cross this river: [39], When Cronus, the youngest of the Titans, overthrew his father Uranus, thereby becoming the ruler of the cosmos, according to Hesiod, none of the other Titans participated in the attack on Uranus. In Homers Iliad, Oceanus is referred to as ”the great Sea God who encircles the world”. Oceanus was the eldest of all Titans. Also, Oceanus was also against the decision to overthrow Uranus. OCE′ANUS (Ôkeanos), the god of the river Oceanus, by which, according to the most ancient notions of the Greeks, the whole earth was surrounded. For my part I know of no river called Ocean, and I think that Homer, or one of the earlier poets, invented the name, and introduced it into his poetry. of Ὠκεανίς, Ōkeanis) are the nymphs who were the three thousand (a number interpreted as meaning "innumerable") daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. [72] According to Homer, from Oceanus "all rivers flow and every sea, and all the springs and deep wells". The ancient Greeks viewed Oceanus as a kind and benevolent deity, and he was generally represented as an older male with a flowing beard that symbolized his fatherly authority. He is the Titan of the sea and all water boundaries. They went on to bear many more Titan gods and goddesses, including Tethys who would later become the wife of Oceanus. [70] According to later sources, after setting, Helios sails back along Oceanus during the night from west to east. This parentage made the Oceanids sisters to the 3,000 Potamoi, the river gods of Greek mythology. Oceanus was an ancient Greek god. In other tales, Oceanus was portrayed as the 'origin of everything.' innumerable) river gods. [46] Oceanus arrives riding a winged steed,[47] saying that he is sympathetic to Prometheus' plight and wishes to help him if he can. Oceanus Greek myth a titan that personified the oceans. Although little remains of Oceanus, he was apparently shown here with a bull's head. In Greek mythology, this world-ocean was personified as a Titan, the eldest son of Uranus and Gaea. [53] Twice Hesiod calls Oceanus "the perfect river" (τελήεντος ποταμοῖο),[54] and Homer refers to the "stream of the river Oceanus" (ποταμοῖο λίπεν ῥόον Ὠκεανοῖο). He is one of the 12 Titans of the First Generation and is known to be the ancient Poseidon! Another version has it that he was one of the twelve Titans, thus a son of Gaea and Uranus. [30] Twice Homer has Hera describe the pair as "Oceanus, from whom the gods are sprung, and mother Tethys". [6], According to Hesiod, there were three thousand (i.e. Apollonius of Rhodes, similarly, calls the lower Danube the Kéras Okeanoío ("Gulf" or "Horn of Oceanus"). Its name is drawn from Greek mythology. Oceanus is depicted (labeled) as one of the gods fighting the Giants in the Gigantomachy frieze of the second century BC Pergamon Altar. In Greek mythology, Oceanus (/oʊˈsiː.ə.nəs/;[1] Greek: Ὠκεανός,[2] also Ὠγενός, Ὤγενος, or Ὠγήν)[3] was the Titan son of Uranus and Gaia, the husband of his sister the Titan Tethys, and the father of the river gods and the Oceanids, as well as being the great river which encircled the entire world. [45], Sometime after the war, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, has Oceanus visit his nephew the enchained Prometheus, who is being punished by Zeus for his theft of fire. Oceanus was the perfect river and the ruler of the waters and the seas. Oceanus The TItan God Of The Ocean - (Greek Mythology Explained) - YouTube. What are synonyms for Oceanus? Saved by eva oceguera. [citation needed] 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 Sea. This is the god of the backward-flowing river Ocean, which bounds the earth and from which all rivers flow and every sea, and all the springs and wells. 146–147. [11], According to Hesiod, there were also three thousand Oceanids. In classical antiquity, Oceanus (from Greek: Ὠκεανός, lit. "[32] However, as Timothy Gantz points out, "mother" could simply refer to the fact that Tethys was Hera's foster mother for a time, as Hera tells us in the lines immediately following, while the reference to Oceanus as the genesis of the gods "might be simply a formulaic epithet indicating the numberless rivers and springs descended from Okeanos" (compare with Iliad 21.195–197). Oceanus is an Atlantean Classical Age minor god in Age of Mythology. Herodotus was skeptical about the physical existence of Oceanus and rejected the reasoning—proposed by some of his coevals—according to which the uncommon phenomenon of the summerly Nile flood was caused by the river's connection to the mighty Oceanus. Speaking about the Oceanus myth itself he declared: As for the writer who attributes the phenomenon to the ocean, his account is involved in such obscurity that it is impossible to disprove it by argument. Many early works of art depict him as somewhat resembling a … [71], Just as Oceanus the god was the father of the river gods, Oceanus the river was said to be the source of all other rivers, and in fact all sources of water, both salt and fresh. [85], Some scholars[who?] According to the Greek poet Homer, he was the origin of all things and of all deities. [citation needed], Oceanus appears in Hellenic cosmography as well as myth. Oceanus was also the god who regulated the rising and setting of the heavenly bodies which were belived to emerge and descend into his watery realm at the ends of the earth. Check out everything about this Ancient God below. Synonyms for Oceanus in Free Thesaurus. [96] Nevertheless, Michael Janda sees possible Indo-European connections. [12] These included: Metis, Zeus' first wife, whom Zeus impregnated with Athena and then swallowed;[13] Eurynome, Zeus' third wife, and mother of the Charites;[14] Doris, the wife of Nereus and mother of the Nereids;[15] Callirhoe, the wife of Chrysaor and mother of Geryon;[16] Clymene, the wife of Iapetus, and mother of Atlas, Menoetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus;[17] Perseis, wife of Helios and mother of Circe and Aeetes;[18] Idyia, wife of Aeetes and mother of Medea;[19] and Styx, goddess of the river Styx, and the wife of Pallas and mother of Zelus, Nike, Kratos, and Bia. Not much is known about his role in the Great War. In Greek mythology the River Oceanus was a great, fresh-water stream which encircled the flat disc of the earth. Oceanus' consort is his sister Tethys, and from their union came the ocean nymphs, also referred to as the three-thousand Oceanids, and all the rivers of the world, fountains, and lakes. Oceanus (Okeanos, Ocean) Oceanus was a Titan god of enormous river called Okeanos which was believed to be encircling the world and was connecting this world to other realms, such as heavenly realms from which the gods came and underworld where the souls of the dead lived. Etymology. Okeanos (Ancient Greek: Ὠκεανός) was a son of Gaea and Ouranos. 117–118; Fowler 2013. It is said that he did not participate in the war and left his Titan brothers. His only appearance of note in the Greek Myths is when he stirs up the ocean to test the hero Herculeson his wa… According to one version, he was born by the union of the primal gods Chaos and Gaea, sanctified by god Eros. It might seem strange for the children of Oceanus to be associated with fresh-water, but in Greek mythology, it was assumed that Oceanus was the god of a great earth encircling fresh water river. The Oceanids were the 3,000 daughters of Oceanus, the Titan god of the earth encircling river, and his wife, the Titanide Tethys. [66] While Homer located such exotic tribes as the Cimmerians, the Aethiopians, and the Pygmies as living nearby Oceanus. 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. Oceanus follows a chariot driven by Athena and containing Artemis. In Greek mythology, this ocean-stream was personified as a Titan, the eldest son of Uranus and Gaia. Oceanus was married to his sister, Tethys, with whom he had numerous children, called Oceanids. [86] In the fourth century BC, Hecataeus of Abdera writes that the Oceanus of the Hyperboreans is neither the Arctic nor Western Ocean, but the sea located to the north of the ancient Greek world, namely the Black Sea, called "the most admirable of all seas" by Herodotus,[87] labelled the "immense sea" by Pomponius Mela[88] and by Dionysius Periegetes,[89] and which is named Mare majus on medieval geographic maps. Oceanus god of all the earth's fresh-water: including rivers, wells, springs and rain-clouds. Fowler 2013, p. 11; West 1997, pp. The Titan god Oceanus Oceanus came from the generation preceding that of Zeus, for Oceanus was a Titan god, the son of Ouranos (Sky) and Gaia (Earth). Typhon). The name “Oceanus” was identical to the Greek word ōkeanos, meaning “great sea or river,” which referred to the body of water that encompassed the world. [23], Passages in a section of the Iliad called the Deception of Zeus, suggest the possibility that Homer knew a tradition in which Oceanus and Tethys (rather than Uranus and Gaia, as in Hesiod) were the primeval parents of the gods. While Poseidon was the god who was able to control the sea, Oceanus was actually looked at as the deity that physically represented the sea. Greek text available at Perseus Digital Library, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, Livio Catullo Stecchini, "Ancient Cosmology", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oceanus&oldid=995794154, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles having different image on Wikidata and Wikipedia, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2020, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from April 2017, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2017, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Williams, Dyfri, "Sophilos in the British Museum" in, This page was last edited on 22 December 2020, at 22:47. [51], Although sometimes treated as a person (such as Oceanus visiting Prometheus in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, see above) Oceanus is more usually considered to be a place,[52] that is, as the great world-encircling river. (Il. Oceanus: GreekMythology.com - Jan 27, 2021, Greek Mythology iOS Volume Purchase Program VPP for Education App. 195.) For example, in Hesiod Nereus and Thaumus, both sons of Pontus, marry daughters of Oceanus, and in Homer (who makes no mention of Pontus), Thetis, the daughter of Nereus, and Eurynome the daughter of Oceanus, live together. Oceanus was a powerful god of the Greek pantheon, and from him, ultimately, all of the world’s freshwater was said to arise. n. Greek Mythology A Titan god of the outer sea encircling the earth and the father of the Oceanides and the river gods. Strictly speaking, Oceanus was the ocean-stream at the Equator in which floated the habitable hemisphere (oikoumene οἰκουμένη). [83] Oceanus stands half nude, facing right, battling a giant falling to the right. And, according to Proclus, Oceanus did not in fact take part in the attack. "ocean") was believed to be the world-ocean, which the ancient Romans and Greeks considered to be an enormous river encircling the world. [36] Plato's apparent inclusion of Phorcys as a Titan (being the brother of Cronus and Rhea), and the mythographer Apollodorus's inclusion of Dione, the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus, as a thirteenth Titan,[37] suggests an Orphic tradition in which the Titan offspring of Oceanus and Tethys consisted of Hesiod's twelve Titans, with Phorcys and Dione taking the place of Oceanus and Tethys. Gantz, pp. [31] According to M. L. West, these lines suggests a myth in which Oceanus and Tethys are the "first parents of the whole race of gods. [40] However according to the mythographer Apollodorus, all the Titans—except Oceanus—attacked Uranus. According to one version, he was born by the union of the primal gods Chaos and Gaea, sanctified by god Eros. Oceanus was married to his sister, Tethys, with whom he had numerous children, called Oceanids. [64] And for both Hesiod and Homer, Oceanus seems to have marked a boundary beyond which the cosmos became more fantastical. Oceanus synonyms, Oceanus pronunciation, Oceanus translation, English dictionary definition of Oceanus. He was the husband and brother of Tethys and is well known in mythology as the great river that girdles the world. Online version at Harvard University Press, Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. [33] But, in a later Iliad passage, Hypnos also describes Oceanus as "genesis for all", which, according to Gantz, is hard to understand as meaning other than that, for Homer, Oceanus was the father of the Titans. For other uses, see, "Okeanos" redirects here. But Prometheus replies: "I envy you because you have escaped blame for having dared to share with me in my troubles. [22] Nonnus, in his poem Dionysiaca, described "the lakes" as "liquid daughters cut off from Oceanos". [42], Oceanus seemingly also did not join the Titans in the Titanomachy, the great war between the Cronus and his fellow Titans, and Zeus and his fellow Olympians, for control of the cosmos; and following the war, although Cronus and the other Titans were imprisoned, Oceanus certainly seems to have remained free. [41] Proclus, in his commentary on Plato's Timaeus, quotes several lines of a poem (probably Orphic) which has an angry Oceanus brooding aloud as to whether he should join Cronus and the other Titans in the attack on Uranus. 1 Attributes 1.1 God Power 1.2 Technologies 1.3 Myth Units 2 Strategy 3 Mythology Carnivora - Summons a Carnivora plant that eats nearby enemy human soldiers or sinks ships (3 uses). Online version at the Topos Text Project. 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