Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained.
In today’s video, we’re going to discuss Oceanus, the very first Titan and, if allusion
and shallow references are anything to go off of, perhaps, generally speaking, the very
first god - including Primordials, Titans, and Olympians - in all of Greek mythology.
This, in a broader sense, is indicative how complex Greek mythology was, there having
been, the accounts that remain popular today notwithstanding, different versions of the
creation myth, something evidenced by a multitude of allusions to Oceanus as a creator across
an array of works, and by offshoots of what could be called ‘orthodox Greek mythology’,
such as orphism, a religious movement that centered on the hero Orpheus, who was thought
of as the seed from which Orphism grew, him having brought back secret knowledge when
he returned from the underworld to the land of the living.
Oceanus was the personification of the great river that encircled the world, and in the
context of his family (the other 11 first-generation Titans), he was somewhat of an aberration,
partial to pacifism as he was.
He eschewed conflict, neither joining in the castration of his father nor fighting in the
Titanomachy, the 10 year war between the Olympians and the Titans.
I was going to say, “though he was undoubtedly one of the most powerful gods in Greek mythology,
he seldom surfaces in any of its myths, more often existing as a piece of the stage on
which Greek mythology unfolds than as an actor in the production”, but after delving into
his mythology more deeply, he actually does a have a nice little niche.
He’s mentioned a handful of times by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey.
In Aeschylus’s “Prometheus Bound”, he visits Prometheus, now chained to a rock by
Zeus, and offers the condemned god succor.
One of the Orphic Hymns is dedicated to him, and generally, he is either mentioned or makes
brief appearances in a number of other works.
As well, the Iliad features several allusions to Oceanus, not Chaos, being the first god
and thus the ultimate source of creation in Greek mythology.
Together, these allusions could hardly even be called fragmentary, but what’s perhaps
most compelling about them is how creation conceptualized as beginning with Oceanus,
as beginning with water, is consistent with the creation myths of the Near East and of
Ancient Egypt - the Near East, specifically ancient Mesopotamia, known today to be have
been a major influence to the development of Greek mythology.
Alright, let’s get into it.
It’s not uncommon to hear people say, “Titans aren’t gods; they’re Titans.”
This is incorrect.
Titans are gods, a specific group of gods, just as the Olympians, the gods who live atop
Mt.
Olympus, are a specific group of gods.
The 12 Titans were the progeny of Gaia, the personification of the earth, who birthed
them, and of Uranus, the personification of the sky, who sired them.
Their number comprises six gods and six goddesses.
The six male titans, gods, were Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, and Iapetus, and the six
female titans, goddesses or Titanides, were Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and
Tethys.
The titan cohort also includes many of the children of the original 12 Titans, meaning
there are second and third generations Titans, as well; though this, categorizing gods, is
a seemingly arbitrary business, often more contingent on allegiance than parentage.
Zeus and his five siblings, despite being the children of Cronus and Rhea, are not considered
Titans; whereas Atlas, condemned to forever hold the sky up on his shoulders, was the
son of Iapetus and was considered a second generation Titan, as were his siblings: Menoetius,
Prometheus, and Epimetheus.
Anyway, it’s all a bit muddled.
Oceanus was the eldest of the 12 first-generation Titans, meaning he was the very first Titan.
Tethys, his younger sister, was his wife, and she, depending on the version, was either
a sea goddess or the personification of the font of fresh water that was the ultimate
source of Oceanus’ own sweet waters - Oceanus, in turn, the source of every river and rivulet,
of every torrent and tributary, that flowed and cascaded the world over, the very veins
of the earth, the capillaries that conveyed life to the four corners of creation.
Born to them were many children, a proliferation of progeny, the two of them procreating more
offspring than any other divine pair in Greek mythology.
Their children included: the Oceanids, a group of 3,000 water nymphs, and all the rivers
of the world.
Unlike most of the Titans - others like Helios, the personification of the sun, also being
exceptions - Oceanus was one of the material manifestations of the universe, in this respect
making him more akin to the primordial deities who came before him than to the Titan cohort
he was born into.
Oceanus was thought to be the great river that encircled the earth, making him the terrestrial
frontier, the outer limit of the earth, which, before philosopher mathematicians like Pythagoras
and Parmenides, was thought to be flat and disk shaped.
Here’s a passage from Classical Mythology A to Z that expands on this:
“From an elemental perspective, Oceanus was early on envisioned as a river that encircled,
and thus was the outer boundary of, the flat, disk-shaped world.
This, for example, is how Oceanus is depicted on the Shield of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad.
Oceanus was believed to be the source of all rivers.
Helios (the Sun) and Eos (the Dawn) were thought to rise from Oceanus’s eastern banks and
then, having completed their daily journey, to sink back into the river in the west.
For Homer, the Elysian Fields and Hades lay beyond Oceanus and thus beyond the limits
of the world.”
Legendary locations like the Elysian Fields and dark do minions like Hades existing beyond
the waters of Oceanus ties into a more fundamental notion about what Oceanus was: he wasn’t
just the great river or the boundary of the mortal world, he was the divide between the
material and the mythic, something like a magic divide you might see in a fantasy story
that partitions the human world from the supernatural and otherworldly.
Originally, the Elysian fields, also known as Elysium, were conceived of as existing
beyond the underworld.
This changed over time, though, becoming, instead of an independent location, a paradisiacal
province of Hades' realm.
The first mention of the Elysian fields comes in the Odyssey, in a prophecy that foretold
Menelaus would not be claimed by Death’s clutches but would be born by the gods to
the Elysian fields, located at the edge of the earth, specifically, the western edge
of the river Oceanus.
Beyond transcendent territories that could only be reached through heroism, being a paragon
of virtue, or death, exotic people and mythical creatures were also said to dwell near the
shore, the perimeter of the earth, which was, by dint of its proximity to the waters of
Oceanus, imbued with a measure of the magical-divide quality Oceanus embodied.
Examples of mythical creatures proximal to Oceanus include: the Gorgons (monstrous snake-haired
women), Geryon (a giant killed by Heracles), the Hecatonchires (a trio of primeval giants
with 100 arms and 50 heads), and the Hesperides (the nymphs tasked with tending the golden-apple-bearing-trees
gifted by Gaia to Hera as a wedding present).
Pertaining to how Oceanus was conceptualized as a material manifestation of the universe,
this changed as the ancient Greeks became more informed, the edges of the map filling
in, so to speak, science supplanting, to a limited extent, what was formerly inscrutable
phenomena explained by gods and monsters.
Here’s another passage from Classical Mythology A to Z to shine a little more light on this:
“As geographic exploration and speculation progressed in the course of time, the conception
of Oceanus as a river was questioned, and it was increasingly thought of as a great
sea beyond the Straits of Gibraltar (the Atlantic Ocean) or as a “world sea” that encompassed
all oceanic waters interconnected.
Oceanus’s depictions range from the mundane, a mature, bearded man, to the mythical, the
same man but with horns and a fish tail.
He was incongruent in the context of his own family, drastically different from his five
younger brothers, all of whom shared a propensity for violence and conflict.
Unlike his seditious siblings, Oceanus didn’t participate in the castration of his father,
as is said in Pseudo-Apollodorus’s “Bibliotheca”: “Now Gaia… persuaded the Titans to attack
their father…
so all of them except Oceanus set upon Uranus.”
He also didn’t participate in the war between the gods and the Titans, remaining neutral
throughout the cataclysm clash.
He did, however, encourage his daughter Styx to join Zeus, probably perceiving which way
the winds of victory were blowing.
His only involvement was extending the succor of refuge to Hera, who remained with Oceanus
and Tethys while the war raged on - interminable, lasting 10 years, and destructive to the extreme,
remaking the face of the earth.
Later, much later, Hera expressed that she would return to reciprocate the kindness and
support once shown to her.
However, as we’ll see, Hera’s actual intent - not her purported intent, the pretense she
presented to Aphrodite - was not to give back to the couple that helped her so long ago
but to help the Greeks in the Trojan war.
Here’s the passage from the Iliad:
“"[Hera addresses Aphrodite:] ‘Since I go now to the ends of the generous earth on
a visit to Oceanus, whence the gods have risen, and Tethys our mother who brought me up kindly
in their own house, and cared for me and took me from Rhea, at that time when Zeus of the
wide brows drove Cronus underneath the earth and the barren water.
I shall go to visit these, and resolve their division of discord, since now for a long
time they have stayed apart from each other and from the bed of love, since rancor has
entered their feelings.
Could I win over with persuasion the dear heart within them and bring them back to their
bed to be merged in love with each other I shall be forever called honored by them, and
beloved.’"
Hera never intended to visit Oceanus and Tethys, but this is what she told Aphrodite, a ploy
presented to allay Aphrodite’s suspicions and, once lulled, borrow the love goddesses'
girdle; for it was magical, enhancing charm and beauty.
The story Hera spun was that wearing it would assist her in ameliorating the situation between
the two Titans, closing the chasm between them and mending their marriage.
The reason Hera employed this deceptive gambit was that she and Aphrodite supported opposing
sides - Hera, the Greeks, and Aphrodite, the Trojans.
If Hera told Aphrodite why she really wanted the girdle, she would have been refused and
thwarted.
Hera wanted the girdle so that she could seduce Zeus, thereby distracting the king of the
gods and creating an opening for Hypnos, the god of sleep, to sedate him to slumber.
With Zeus thus incapacitated, Poseidon, who was currently forbidden by his brother from
sending his strength directly against the Trojans, would be unimpeded in bolstering
the Greeks and unleashing death and destruction upon the ranks of their enemies.
Having discussed who Oceanus was in Greek mythology, we will now transition to the second
part of the video, which takes a more focused approach in delving into the alternative cosmogony
that centers on Oceanus instead of Chaos.
Homer and Hesiod are two ancient Greek poets.
From them come the oldest works of ancient Greek literature that have survived through
to today.
When exactly they lived and produced their seminal and singular works are things not
known for certain, still debated by scholars.
Some sources say that Homer was first, others that Hesiod was, but generally, you would
be making a very safe claim if you said they both lived and produced their works, irrespective
of temporal precedent, in the 200 intervening years between 850 BC and 650 BC.
Hesiod's "Theogony" is an ancient Greek poem that describes the origin and genealogy of
the gods, beginning with Chaos, the great void from which everything emerged.
From Chaos, the first primordial deities, including Gaia (the Earth), Tartarus (the
abyss beneath the earth), and Eros (Love and desire), were either born or self-engendered,
depending on the interpretation.
The poem continues with the birth of the Titans, their conflict with the younger Olympian gods,
and the eventual triumph of Zeus as the supreme deity.
Throughout, Hesiod weaves in various myths, such as the story of Prometheus and the creation
of humanity.
It would be fair to say that today the authoritative version of the Greek creation myth comes from
Hesiod’s Theogony - its age, one of oldest surviving Greek works, and its completeness,
comprehensively covering the creation myth and more, making a strong case for this - but
Interestingly, another version of the Greek creation myth is alluded to in the Iliad,
this one centering on Oceanus instead of on the chaos-catalyzed structure of primordial
deities.
One mention of this version relates exclusively to Oceanus, reading: “[Hypnos addresses
Hera:] ‘any other one of the gods, whose race is immortal, I would put to sleep, even
the stream of that River Oceanus, whence came the seed of all the immortals.’”
Another, this one relating to both Oceanus and Tethys, reads, "[Hera addresses Aphrodite:]
‘Since I go now to the ends of the generous earth on a visit to Oceanus, whence the gods
have risen, and Tethys our mother’” And in addition to what Homer wrote, there’s
also a bevy of similar allusions present in later works.
In Birds, written by Aristophanes, it says, “The immortals did not exist until Eros
(love) had brought together all the ingredients of the world, and from their marriage Uranus,
Oceanus, and the imperishable race of blessed gods sprang into being.”
In Orphic Hymn 83, it says, “Oceanus I call, whose nature ever flows, from whom at first
both Gods and men arose.”
And in Theaetetus, written by Plato, Homer’s own words are reiterated: “Homer, who, in
the line ‘Oceanus the origin of the gods, and Tethys their mother,’ has said that
all things are the offspring of flow and motion.”
Oceanus being the progenitor of the gods is touched on in Classical Myth, which says:
“According to a passing reference by Homer, Oceanus and Tethys themselves gave birth to
all the gods: a good example of a different cosmogony parallel to Hesiod’s.
Where Chaos as the first god is espoused and expanded on by some of the most important
works pertaining to Greek mythology, the extent of Oceanus’ own version is today relegated
to a few passing remarks.
While Hesiod’s Theogony boasts the oldest extant Greek creation myth told in its entirety,
there are a couple of compelling points connected to the mentions of Oceanus being the creator
in the Iliad - mainly that there’s a congruity between it and the creation myths of other
eastern mythologies, such as those of ancient Mesopotamia and that of ancient Egypt.
Greek mythology is thought to be, to a varying degree - largely or marginally, depending
on whose weighing in - derivative of the mythologies of the Near East, so it would make sense if
its creation myth reflected the antecedent mythologies that were influential to its development.
The Sumerians, the civilization that invented cuneiform, the oldest known writing system,
believed the world originated from a primordial state of watery chaos, referred to as the
primeval sea, this personified as the goddess Nammu, and the ancient Egyptians were of likemind,
also believing that the world originated from a primordial state of watery chaos, in their
case called the Waters of Nun, personified by the god Nun.
Furthermore, there’s the Babylonian creation myth, which personifies the primordial waters
of chaos as two gods: Tiamat, the goddess of salt water, and her husband Apsu, the god
of freshwater, this paralleling the allusion from the Iliad in which both Oceanus and Tethys
(a sea goddess, or the font of fresh water that feeds Oceanus’ own waters, and the
husband of Oceanus), are said to be the father and mother of the gods.
Here’s a passage from Classical myth that comments on the influence of the Near East
on mythologies that subsequently surfaced:
“Whereas such myths as those of the Trojan War appear to be Greek in origin and to go
back to the Bronze Age or earlier, other very important stories had their beginnings not
in Greece, but in the non-Indo-European Near East.
Ancient Mesopotamia, the “land between the rivers,” which occupies the region of the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is today Iraq, was a particularly important source.
The Greek myth of the origin of the present world-order in a battle of the gods, for example,
was certainly of Mesopotamian origin…
The Near Eastern background for prominent Greek myths is so important that we must now
say something about these stories that leaped cultural and linguistic barriers to influence
the Greeks and, through them, the entire world.”
And that’s it for this video.
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