Oceanus
The Encircling River
oh-SEE-uh-nus
The freshwater river that rings the whole earth, eldest of the Titans, and the one who refused to take a side in the war.
Domains
The World-RiverFresh WaterThe Horizon
Symbols
Bull's HornsSerpent TailOverflowing Urn
Family
Consorts:
The Story
Before the ocean was a body of water it was a river, running in a circle around the rim of the world, and Oceanus was both. Every river, spring, and well is his child by Tethys, three thousand sons and three thousand daughters, in Hesiod's count.
When Cronus moved against Uranus, Oceanus alone declined to join, and when the Olympians moved against Cronus he stayed out of that too. It cost him nothing: the world's water kept flowing under every regime, and he is the one Titan never punished.
Did You Know?
- In Iliad 14 Hera calls him the origin of the gods, a cosmology in which everything begins in water, closer to Babylonian and Egyptian creation accounts than to Hesiod's.
- Greek maps kept his shape for centuries: a disc of land with a circular river around the rim. The word ocean is his name, still describing a thing the Greeks would not have recognised.