Oceanus in Mythology and History

The myths of ancient Greece have provided the world with one of the richest sources of stories and legends in the world; they provided not only a recording of how they believed the world came to be, but provided a moral guide to live one’s life against as well as being a form of entertainment.

In Greek mythology the Olympian gods were widely worshipped, but they were not the first gods to come into existence. The first primal deities, the Protogenoi, gave birth to several deities who came to be known as the Titans. These Titans then fought in the war against the Olympians which saw, for most of them, their eventual imprisonment in the bowls of the earth.

One of these Titans was Oceanus, whose name can be translated as ‘River Ocean’. There are two versions of his parentage; Hesiod states that Gaia and Ouranos were his parents but the later Roman author, Hyginus, states that they were Aither (also spelt Aether) and Gaia.

Oceanus was believed to have been the great river that encircled his mother, the earth. He, like many of the gods in Greek mythology, married his sister Tethys, and together they produced many children. These included the elegant Oceanids, nymphs of the sea and the many river-gods of the earth (called the Potoami). Like Zeus and Poseidon, he had many affairs which resulted in the birth of the Aurae (nymphs of the breezes), the monkey-thieves Cercopes by the goddess Theia as well as the semi-divine Triptolemos by Gaia. In addition to this, he also raised Hera, the future queen of the gods, from birth until her marriage to Zeus.

Oceanus and Tethys were, as stated earlier, an incestuous couple, a theme which reoccurs in Greek mythology. Due to this, their relationship was used by the Roman poet Catullus. In one of his poems, Gellius is accused of incest with his mother, sister, and aunt and not even Oceanus and Tethys can wash away his crimes. This notion that large bodies of water are unable to wash away the stain of crime is of course a ‘topos’ going back to Greek tragedy but the “individual naming of the two sea-deities seems to make a point-a literary point which is relevant to the invective of the poem. Not even the mythologically incestuous couple Oceanus and Tethys can wash out Gellius' incest, though they are guilty of the offence themselves and might be thought likely to connive at it”.

Although the children that the Titans gave birth to were more influential in Greek and Roman society than that of their parents, the Titans’ myths still had a great significance on ancient society. Their tales were usually seen as explanations of the nature of the world or the origins of the dominant gods. In spite of this, the Titans are interesting characters of ancient Greek mythology.

Bibliography:

Harrison, S. J. (1996) Mythological Incest: Catullus 88, The Classical Quarterly, Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Classical Association.