|
From, A Handbook of Mythology, New York 1886
{ } = Page Numbers in the print edition, [ ] = Footnote Numbers
Page 107
SEA DIVINITIES.
OCEANUS.
Oceanus was the son of Uranus and Gaea. He was the personification of the ever-flowing stream, which, according to the primitive notions of the early Greeks, encircled the world, and from which sprang all the rivers and streams that watered the earth. He was married to Tethys, one of the Titans, and was the father of a {108} numerous progeny called the Oceanides, who are said to have been three thousand in number. He alone, of all the Titans, refrained from taking part against Zeus in the Titanomachia, and was, on that account, the only one of the primeval divinities permitted to retain his dominion under the new dynasty.
NEREUS.
Nereus appears to have been the personification of the sea in its calm and placid moods, and was, after Poseidon, the most important of the sea-deities. He is represented as a kind and benevolent old man, possessing the gift of prophecy, and presiding more particularly over the AEgean Sea, of which he was considered to be the protecting spirit. There he dwelt with his wife Doris and their fifty blooming daughters, the Nereides, beneath the waves in a beautiful grotto-palace, and was ever ready to assist distressed mariners in the hour of danger.
Cf.
A Day in Old Athens *
A Short History
of Greek Philosophy
Toynbee, Ancient Greek History and the West * Livingstone, On the Ancient Greek Literature
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/mythology.asp?pg=107