Oceanids

Members:

1. Styx - The eldest and most powerful, the nymph of the river Styx that forms the boundary between Earth and the underworld; her waters are the most sacred oath of the gods, and by her name Zeus himself swears inviolable vows

2. Doris - The bounty of the sea, mother of the fifty Nereids by the sea-god Nereus; she represents the rich abundance of fish and the gentle fertility of coastal waters

3. Electra - The amber-eyed nymph who bore the rainbow goddess Iris and the Harpies, the storm-winds that snatch souls and food; she embodies the sparkling brilliance of sunlit water

4. Metis - The cunning counsel, the first wife of Zeus who was swallowed by him when she was pregnant with Athena; she represents the deep wisdom that lurks beneath the surface of still waters

5. Eurynome - The wide-wandering, the mother of the three Charites, the goddesses of grace and beauty, by Zeus; she is the nymph of broad pasturelands nourished by ocean-fed rivers

6. Clymene - The famous name, mother of Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius by the Titan Iapetus; she is the nymph of renown and the stories that travel on the tongues of men

7. Perseis - The destroyer, mother of the sorceress Circe and the fire-breathing king Aeetes by the sun-god Helios; she is the nymph of the burning salt and the transformative power of the sea

8. Pleione - The many, mother of the seven Pleiades, the star-nymphs who guide sailors and weep for their lost brother Hyas; she is the nymph of multitude and the clustered lights of the night sky

9. Tethys - Not to be confused with her aunt Tethys the Titaness, this Oceanid is the mother of the Nile by Oceanus himself; she represents the great rivers that civilize the desert

10. Idyia - The knowing one, mother of the sorceress Medea by King Aeetes of Colchis; she is the nymph of hidden knowledge and the secrets whispered by underground springs

Oceanus and Tethys were among the eldest of the Titans, the primordial generation of gods who ruled before Zeus and the Olympians overthrew them in the Titanomachy, the ten-year war between the old gods and the new. While most Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus, the dark pit beneath the earth, after their defeat, Oceanus and Tethys remained free because they had not taken sides in the war. They withdrew to the outer waters, the great river that encircles the entire world like a serpent biting its own tail, and there they had three thousand daughters and three thousand sons, the Potamoi, the river-gods. The Oceanids were born in those outer waters, and from there they dispersed across the world, each taking up residence in a spring, a fountain, a well, or a quiet pool. They are immortal but not all-powerful, beautiful but not invulnerable, and their number is so vast that no poet ever named them all.

The most famous of the Oceanids is Styx, the eldest, whose river forms the boundary between the living world and the house of Hades, the grim king of the dead. When the Titanomachy began, Styx was the first to side with Zeus, bringing her children Zelos, Nike, Kratos, and Bia, the personifications of zeal, victory, strength, and force, to fight for the Olympians. In gratitude, Zeus decreed that the gods would swear their most binding oaths upon her waters, and any deity who broke such an oath would fall into a coma for nine years, denied the nectar and ambrosia that sustain immortality, and would be cast out of the divine council for a further nine years after waking. The water of Styx is so potent that Thetis, the sea-goddess mother of Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Greeks, dipped her infant son in it to make him invulnerable, holding him by the heel that would one day prove his doom. When the hero Heracles, forced to complete twelve impossible labors, needed to enter the underworld to fetch the hound Cerberus, the three-headed guard of the dead, he crossed the river Styx with the guidance of the nymph herself.

Another powerful Oceanid is Metis, whose name means simply "cunning counsel." She was the first consort of Zeus, and she helped him devise the plan to free his siblings from the belly of their father Cronus, the Titan who had swallowed them at birth to prevent a prophecy that one of his children would overthrow him. Metis gave Cronus a potion that forced him to vomit up Zeus's brothers and sisters, and after the Titanomachy she became Zeus's wife. But a prophecy warned that Metis would bear a son more powerful than his father, and so Zeus, repeating the very crime he had condemned in Cronus, swallowed Metis whole while she was pregnant. The child was not a son but Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, who sprang fully armed from Zeus's forehead when Hephaestus, the smith-god, split it open with an axe. Metis survived inside Zeus, becoming the source of his wisdom, and she remains there still, the hidden counsel that the king of gods cannot escape.

Doris, the bounty of the sea, married Nereus, the old man of the sea, a shape-shifting god who could foretell the future and who was renowned for his gentleness. By him she bore fifty daughters, the Nereids, the nymphs of the Mediterranean who attended the sea-god Poseidon and who guided sailors through storms. The most famous of the Nereids is Thetis, the mother of Achilles, who was so beautiful that both Zeus and Poseidon desired her until a prophecy warned that her son would be greater than his father. Thetis was married instead to the mortal king Peleus, and their wedding on Mount Pelion was attended by every god except Eris, the goddess of discord, whose uninvited gift of the golden apple marked for the fairest set in motion the chain of events that led to the Trojan War. Doris's other daughters include Amphitrite, the wife of Poseidon, and Galatea, the beloved of the Cyclops Polyphemus.

Perseis, the destroyer, lay with Helios, the sun-god who drives his blazing chariot across the sky each day, and bore two children who would shape the fate of heroes. Her daughter Circe, the sorceress of Aeaea, an island in the western sea, transformed the crew of Odysseus, the cunning king of Ithaca who spent ten years struggling home from the Trojan War, into swine with her magic potions, and later became his lover and bore him a son. Her son Aeetes became the king of Colchis, a kingdom on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, and the guardian of the golden fleece, the hide of a winged ram that was the object of the quest of Jason and the Argonauts. Pleione, the many, bore the seven Pleiades to Atlas, the Titan condemned to hold up the heavens, and these star-nymphs became the guiding lights of sailors and the weeping sisters of the hunter Orion, whom they fled into the sky to escape. Idyia, the knowing one, was the wife of Aeetes and the mother of Medea, the sorceress who helped Jason steal the golden fleece, murdered her own brother to delay pursuit, and later killed her children in revenge when Jason abandoned her for another woman. Every major myth of the Greek world traces back to an Oceanid mother, a spring of divine blood flowing from the outer waters into the heart of the story.