Thalassa (; ;[Beekes, s.v. θάλασσα, p. 530.] Attic Greek: θάλασσα, thálatta[Silva, pp. 71 ff.; Beekes, s.v. θάλασσα, p. 530.]) was the general word for 'sea' and for its divine female personification in Greek mythology. The word may have been of Pre-Greek origin[Beekes, s.v. θάλασσα, p. 530.] and connected to the name of the Mesopotamian primordial sea goddess Tiamat.
Mythology
According to a scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes, the fifth-century BC poet Ion of Chios had Thalassa as the mother of Aegaeon (Briareus, one of the
Hecatoncheires).
[Ion of Chios, fr. 741 Campbell =)]; BNJ, commentary on 3 F43, commentary on 424 F5.] Diodorus Siculus ( 1st century BC), in his
Bibliotheca historica, states that "Thalatta" is the mother of the
Telchines and the
sea-nymph Halia,
[Diodorus Siculus, 5.55.1, 5.55.4.] while in the
Orphic Hymn to the Sea, Tethys, who is here equated with Thalassa,
[Morand, p. 338, table 2; Athanassakis and Wolkow, p. 114.] is called the mother of
Cypris (
Aphrodite).
[Morand, p. 332, table 1; Orphic Hymns to the Sea (22), 7 (Athanassakis and Wolkow, p. 22).]
The Roman mythographer Hyginus (c. 64 BC – AD 17), in the preface to his Fabulae, calls Mare (Sea, another name for Thalassa)[ Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. Pontus, p. 1220.] the daughter of Aether and Dies (Day), and thus the sister of Terra (Earth) and Caelus (Sky).[Hyginus, Fabulae Theogony 2 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 95; Latin text).] With her male counterpart Pontus, she spawns the species of fish.[Hyginus, Fabulae Theogony 5 (Smith and Trzaskoma, p. 95; Latin text).]
Literature
Two rather similar fables are recorded by
Babrius. In one, numbered 168 in the
Perry Index, a farmer witnesses a shipwreck and reproaches the sea for being "an enemy of mankind". Assuming the form of a woman, she answers by blaming the winds for her turbulence. Otherwise, "I am gentler than that dry land of yours."
[ Babrius II.22] In the other, a survivor from a shipwreck accuses the sea of treachery and receives the same excuse. But for the winds, "by nature I am as calm and safe as the land."
[ Babrius I.71]
In yet another fable, Perry's number 412 and only recorded by Syntipas, the rivers complain to the sea that their sweet water is turned undrinkably salty by contact with her. The sea replies that if they know as much, they should avoid such contact. The commentary suggests that the tale may be applied to people who criticize someone inappropriately even though they may actually be helping them.[ Aesopica]
In the 2nd century CE, Lucian represented Thalassa in a comic dialogue with Xanthus, the god of the River Scamander, who had been attacked by a rival Greek deity for complaining that his course was being choked with dead bodies during the Trojan War. In this case he had been badly scorched and asks her to soothe his wounds.[Lucian, Confabulations of the Marine Deities XI ( pp. 355–356).]
Art
While the sea-divinities Tethys and Oceanus were formerly represented in Roman-era mosaics, they were replaced at a later period by the figure of Thalassa, especially in
Western Asia. There she was depicted as a woman clothed in bands of seaweed and half submerged in the sea, with the crab-claw horns that were formerly an attribute of Oceanus now transferred to her head. In one hand she holds a ship's oar, and in the other a dolphin.
[Eraslan, pp. 5–7.]
In 2011, Swoon created a site-specific Installation art depicting the goddess in the atrium of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Notes
-
Athanassakis, Apostolos N., and Benjamin M. Wolkow, The Orphic Hymns, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. .
-
Babrius, Phaedrus, Fables. Translated by Ben Edwin Perry. Loeb Classical Library No. 436. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1965. Online version at Harvard University Press.
-
Beekes, Robert S. P., Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2 vols, Leiden, Brill Publishing, 2009. . Online version at Brill.
-
Campbell, David A., Greek Lyric, Volume IV: Bacchylides, Corinna, Loeb Classical Library No. 461. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1992. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
-
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Volume III: Books 4.59-8, translated by C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library No. 340, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1939. . Online version at Harvard University Press. Online version by Bill Thayer.
-
Eraslan, Şehnaz, "Tethys and Thalassa in mosaic art", in Art Sanat, Vol. 4, pp. 1–13. PDF.
-
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, Fabulae in Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae : Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, translated, with Introductions by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Hackett Publishing, 2007. . Google Books.
-
Hyginus, Gaius Julius, Hygini Fabulae, edited by Herbert Jennings Rose, Leiden, Sijthoff, 1934. Online version at Packhum.
-
Lucian, Lucian of Samosata, from the Greek, with the Comments and Illustrations of Wieland and others, Volume I, translated by William Tooke, London, 1820. Google Books.
-
Morand, Anne-France, Études sur les Hymnes Orphiques, Brill Publishers, 2001. . Online version at Brill.
-
Oxford Classical Dictionary, revised 3rd ed., Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (editors), Oxford University Press, 2003. . Internet Archive.
-
Silva, Moises, God, Language and Scripture: Reading the Bible in the light of general linguistics, Zondervan, 1990. .
-
Wages, Sara M., "A Note on the Dumbarton Oaks 'Tethys Mosaic'", in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 40, pp. 119–128. .
-
Wendel, Carl, Scholia in Apollonium Rhodium vetera, Hildesheim, Weidmann, 1999. .
External links
