Oceanos
Oceanus or Okeanos refers to the
ocean, which the Greeks and Romans regarded as a river circling the world. Strictly speaking, it was the ocean-stream at the
Equator in which floated the habitable hemisphere (oikoumene)[http://www.metrum.org/mapping/cosmol.htm].
In
Greek mythology this world-ocean was personified as a
Titan, a son of
Uranus and
Gaia. In ancient Greek beliefs this Titan is often depicted as having the upper body of a muscular man with a long beard and horns, and the lower torso of a
serpent. (Compare
Typhon.) Oceanus' consort is his sister
Tethys, and from their union came the ocean
nymphs, also known as the three-thousand
Oceanids, and all the rivers of the world. Some scholars believe he originally represented all bodies of salt water, including the
Mediterranean Sea and the
Atlantic Ocean, the two largest bodies known to the ancient Greeks. However, as geography became more accurate, Oceanus came to represent the stranger, more unknown waters of the Atlantic Ocean (also called the Ocean Sea), while Poseidon ruled over the Mediterranean. In most variations of the
war between the Titans and the Olympians ("Titanomachy"), Oceanus, along with Prometheus, and Themis, did not take the side of his fellow Titans against the
Olympians, but instead withdrew from the conflict. In most variations of this myth, Oceanus also refused to side with
Cronus in the latter's revolt against their father,
Uranus.
Uranus In
Iliad the rich iconography of
Achilles' shield fashioned by
Hephaestus, is enclosed, as the world itself is, by Oceanus: :"Then, running round the shield-rim, triple-ply, :he pictured all the might of the Ocean stream." Oceanus appears in Hellenic cosmography as well as myth. Cartographers continued to represent the encircling equatorial stream much as it had appeared on Achilles' shield [http://www.metrum.org/mapping/cosmol.htm]. Though
Herodotus was skeptical about the physical existence of Oceanus, he rejected snowmelt as a cause of the annual flood of the
Nile river; according to his translator and interpreter
Livio Catullo Stecchini, he left unsettled the question of an equatorial Nile, since the geography of
Sub-Saharan Africa was unknown to him.
USA: Dorrance Publishing, 1994 0805934294. The story of the sinking of the Oceanos, the rescue of passengers and crew and subsequent treatment of the captain; written by his wife. First edition. Octavo, 111pp. Fine in near Fine dust jacket. Very scarce. .
