Tethys
Mother of Rivers
TEE-thiss
Titaness of fresh water and mother of every river and spring, who raised Hera while the Titans and Olympians tore each other apart.
Domains
Fresh WaterNursingSprings and Streams
Symbols
Winged BrowWater UrnRiver Channels
Family
Consorts:
The Story
Tethys is the source that Oceanus distributes: the nurse of the world's water, and by him the mother of the rivers and the three thousand Oceanid nymphs. Cults imagined her feeding the streams from beneath the earth.
In the Iliad, Hera says she was fostered by Tethys and Oceanus during the war, the Titaness raising the future queen of the gods who would depose her generation. She is also blamed for one piece of cosmic spite: at Hera's request she forbade the Great Bear to bathe in her waters, which is why that constellation never sets.
Did You Know?
- Geologists named the vanished sea between the ancient continents of Laurasia and Gondwana the Tethys Ocean after her. The Mediterranean is what is left of it.
- She was credited with three thousand river sons and three thousand Oceanid daughters. Hesiod admits outright that no mortal could name them all and lists about forty.
- Almost nothing was ever written about her in her own right, she has no myth of her own, no cult of consequence, and appears mostly as one half of a pair.