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In Greek mythology, the Oceanids or Oceanides ( ; , ) are the who were the three thousand (a number interpreted as meaning "innumerable") daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys.Hard, pp. 40–41; Tripp, s.v. Oceanids, p. 401; Grimal, s.v. Oceanus, p. 315.
The Oceanids are not easily categorized, nor confined to any single function,Tripp, s.v. Oceanids, p. 401. not even necessarily associated with water.Hard, p. 40; West, p. 260. Though most nymphs were considered to be minor deities, many Oceanids were significant figures. Metis, the personification of intelligence, was Zeus' first wife, whom Zeus impregnated with Athena and then swallowed.Hesiod, Theogony 886–900; Apollodorus, 1.3.6. The Oceanid Doris, like her mother Tethys, was an important sea-goddess.Tripp, s.v. Oceanids, p. 401. While their brothers, the river gods, were the usual personifications of major rivers, Styx (according to Hesiod the eldest and most important Oceanid) was also the personification of a major river, the Greek underworld's river Styx.Tripp, s.v. Oceanids, p. 401; Hesiod, Theogony 361. And some, like Europa, and Asia, seem associated with areas of land rather than water.Fowler, pp. 13–14; Tripp, s.v. Oceanids, p. 401.
The Oceanids were also responsible for keeping watch over the young.Hard, p. 40; Larson, p. 30; Gantz, p. 28; Tripp, s.v. Oceanids, p. 401. According to Hesiod, who described them as "neat-ankled daughters of Ocean ... children who are glorious among goddesses", they are "a holy company of daughters who with the lord Apollo and the Rivers have youths in their keeping—to this charge Zeus appointed them".Hesiod, Theogony 346–366.
Like Metis, the Oceanids also functioned as the wives (or lovers) of many gods, and the mothers, by these gods, of many other gods and goddesses.Grimal, s.v. Oceanus, p. 315. Larson, p. 7 says that the Oceanids "serve mainly as genealogical starting points". Doris was the wife of the sea-god Nereus, and the mother of the fifty sea nymphs, the Nereids.Hesiod, Theogony 240–264; Apollodorus, 1.2.7. Styx was the wife of the Titan Pallas, and the mother of Zelus, Nike, Kratos, and Bia.Hesiod, Theogony 383–385; Apollodorus, 1.2.4. Eurynome, Zeus' third wife, was the mother of the Charites.Hesiod, Theogony 907–909; Apollodorus, 1.3.1. Other sources give the Charites other parents, see Smith, s.v. Charis. Clymene was the wife of the Titan Iapetus, and mother of Atlas, Menoetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus.Hesiod, Theogony 351, however according to Apollodorus, 1.2.3, another Oceanid, Asia was their mother by Iapetus. Electra was the wife of the sea god Thaumas and the mother of Iris and the Harpies.Hesiod, Theogony 266–269; Apollodorus, 1.2.6. Other notable Oceanids include: Perseis, wife of the Titan sun god Helios and mother of Circe, and Aeetes the king of Colchis;Hesiod, Theogony 956–957; Apollodorus, 1.9.1. Idyia, wife of Aeetes and mother of Medea;Hesiod, Theogony 958–962; Apollodorus, 1.9.23. and Callirhoe, the wife of Chrysaor and mother of Geryon.Hesiod, Theogony 286–288; Apollodorus, 2.5.10.
Sailors routinely honored and entreated the Oceanids, dedicating prayers, libations, and sacrifices to them. Appeals to them were made to protect seafarers from storms and other nautical hazards. Before they began their legendary voyage to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, the Argonauts made an offering of flour, honey, and sea to the ocean deities, sacrificed bulls to them, and entreated their protection from the dangers of their journey.Kemp, s.v. Oceanids, p. 611. They were also recorded as the companions of Persephone when she was abducted by Hades.Fowler, p. 13; Larson, p. 7; Homeric Hymns, 2.5, 2.418–423.
The goddess Artemis requested that sixty Oceanids of nine years be made her personal choir, to serve her as her personal handmaids and remain virgins.Callimachus, Hymn III to Artemis 1-27.
Several of the names of Oceanids were also among the names given to the Nereids.
Two 19th century artists depicted the mourning of the Oceanids about the rock on which Prometheus is chained, which was interpreted in this case as rising mid-ocean. The first of these was La Désolation des Océanides (1850) by Henri Lehmann, presently in the Musée départemental de Gap.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Museum site The other, titled simply The Oceanids (The Naiads of the Sea) (1869), was by Gustave Doré. Lehmann's painting was savaged as lacking in Classical decorum by the critics of the Salon at which it was exhibited; in particular, the nymphs clustered about the sea-girt rock on which Prometheus is chained were compared to "a troop of young seals clambering onshore".Philippe de Chennevières, Lettres sur l'art français en 1850, Argentan 1851, p.48 Doré's naiads, engaged in the same occupation, were eventually identified more elegantly by Dorothea Tanning as akin to mermaids.Andrew Teverson, Cultural History of Fairy Tales, Bloomsbury Academic 2021, pp. 11-12
Later artists reinterpreted the nymphs tumbling among the waves, as depicted by both painters, in order to portray individual Oceanids as female manifestations of sea foam. Examples include Wilhelm Trübner's study of a female form in a frothy wave ( Weiblicher Akt im Schaum einer Welle), which he titled "Oceanide" (1872);Wikimedia and William-Adolphe Bouguereau's Océanide (1904), portraying a nude extended on the shore in the track of the incoming tide,Wikimedia of which a more sympathetic critic of the 1905 Salon noted how the artist delights in comparing a lissom body to the sea's undulations.Maurice Hamel, Les Salons de 1905, Goupil 1905, p.42 Manchester-born Annie Swynnerton's "Oceanid" emerging from the sea was painted the same year and is presently in the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford. "Oceanid", Artist's website
The fountain at York House, Twickenham concentrates on a purely marine theme and is of much wider extent. This gave the turn of the century sculptor, Oscar Spalmach (1864–1917), the opportunity to drape his white marble Oceanids about the rocks of the cascade in a variety of painterly poses."The York House Cascade, or The Oceanides — a little-known masterpiece", Victorian Web Henri Laurens created a bronze Océanide in 1933 which was equally suited for outdoor display. Largely abstract in conception, the sea connection is suggested by the shell-like wave shape that upholds one of her legs. Middelheim Museum Several copies of the sculpture exist, displayed in the Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum outside Antwerp, the German Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. And in Australia Helen Leete went on to create an equally abstracted group of "Oceanides" in 1997 to mount on the seaside rocks off Manly, New South Wales. Izi Travel
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