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69-695: According to the usual account, Styx was the eldest of the Oceanids , the many daughters of the Titan Oceanus , the great world-encircling river, and his sister-wife, the Titaness Tethys . However, according to the Roman mythographer Hyginus , she was the daughter of Nox ("Night", the Roman equivalent of Nyx ) and Erebus (Darkness). She married the Titan Pallas and by him gave birth to

138-581: A papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus , P. Oxy. 2164. Semele is attested with the Etruscan name form Semla , depicted on the back of a bronze mirror from the fourth century BC. In ancient Rome , a grove ( lucus ) near Ostia , situated between the Aventine Hill and the mouth of the Tiber River , was dedicated to a goddess named Stimula . W.H. Roscher includes the name Stimula among

207-496: A boon. Zeus, eager to please his beloved, promised on the River Styx to grant her anything she wanted. She then demanded that Zeus reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his divinity. Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she persisted and he was forced by his oath to comply. Zeus tried to spare her by showing her the smallest of his bolts and the sparsest thunderstorm clouds he could find. Mortals, however, cannot look upon

276-877: 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. 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

345-715: A certain Ptolemy Hephaestion (probably referring to Ptolemy Chennus ) knew of a story, "concerning the water of the Styx in Arcadia", which told how an angry Demeter had turned the Styx's water black. According to James George Frazer , this "fable" provided an explanation for the fact that, from a distance, the waterfall appears black. Water from this Styx was said to be poisonous and able to dissolve most substances. The first-century natural philosopher Pliny , wrote that drinking its water caused immediate death, and that

414-489: A god, and on doing so she dies, and Zeus seals the unborn baby up in his thigh. As a result of this Dionysus "was also called Dimetor [of two mothers] ... because the two Dionysoi were born of one father, but of two mothers" Still another variant of the narrative is found in Callimachus and the 5th century CE Greek writer Nonnus . In this version, the first Dionysus is called Zagreus . Nonnus does not present

483-439: A heavy trance overshadows him. But when he has spent a long year in his sickness, another penance more hard follows after the first. For nine years he is cut off from the eternal gods and never joins their councils or their feasts, nine full years. But in the tenth year he comes again to join the assemblies of the deathless gods who live in the house of Olympus. The Roman poet Ovid has Jove (the Roman equivalent of Zeus) swear by

552-622: A high and beetling rock. Far under the wide-pathed earth a branch of Oceanus flows through the dark night out of the holy stream, and a tenth part of his water is allotted to her. In the Iliad the river Styx forms a boundary of Hades, the abode of the dead, in the Underworld. Athena mentions the "sheer-falling waters of Styx" needing to be crossed when Heracles returned from Hades after capturing Cerberus , and Patroclus 's shade begs Achilles to bury his corpse quickly so that he might "pass within

621-522: A libretto by William Congreve ), another by Marin Marais (1709), and a third by George Frideric Handel (1742). Handel's work, based on Congreve's libretto but with additions, while an opera to its marrow, was originally given as an oratorio so that it could be performed in a Lenten concert series; it premiered on February 10, 1744. The German dramatist Schiller produced a singspiel entitled Semele in 1782. Victorian poet Constance Naden wrote

690-488: A nude extended on the shore in the track of the incoming tide, 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. 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. Sculptures of the subject are comparable to

759-423: A single drop from that holiest—and cruelest—of springs? Even the gods and Jupiter himself are frightened of these Stygian waters. You must know that, at least by hearsay, and that, as you swear by the powers of the gods, so the gods always swear by the majesty of the Styx. Styx, along with the underworld rivers Cocytus and Acheron , were associated with waterways in the upper world. For example, according to Homer,

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828-619: A son that lives with maritime deities. There is a story in the Fabulae 167 of Gaius Julius Hyginus , or a later author whose work has been attributed to Hyginus. In this, Dionysus (called Liber) is the son of Jupiter and Proserpina , and was killed by the Titans . Jupiter gave his torn up heart in a drink to Semele, who became pregnant this way. But in another account, Zeus swallows the heart himself, in order to beget his seed on Semele. Hera then convinces Semele to ask Zeus to come to her as

897-472: A town (in what was then ancient Arcadia and now modern Achaea ) not far from Pheneus , and says that the Spartan king Cleomenes , would make men take oaths swearing by its water. Herodotus describes it as "a stream of small appearance, dropping from a cliff into a pool; a wall of stones runs round the pool". Pausanias reports visiting the "water of the Styx" near Nonacris (which at the time of his visit, in

966-464: Is Žemelė , and in Slavic languages , the word seme (Semele) means 'seed', and zemlja (Zemele) means 'earth'. Thus, according to Borissoff, "she could be an important link bridging the ancient Thracian and Slavonic cults (...)". In one version of the myth, Semele was a priestess of Zeus, and on one occasion was observed by Zeus as she slaughtered a bull at his altar and afterwards swam in

1035-591: Is a branch of the Styx. In Dante 's Inferno , Phlegyas ferries Virgil and Dante across the foul waters of the river Styx which is portrayed as a marsh comprising the Hell 's Fifth Circle, where the angry and sullen are punished. By metonymy , the adjective stygian ( /ˈstɪdʒiən/ ) came to refer to anything unpleasantly dark, gloomy, or forbidding. In the Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter Persephone names Styx as one of her "frolicking" Oceanid -companions when she

1104-559: The Homeric Hymns . Demeter asks the "implacable" water of Styx to be her witness, as she swears to Metaneira , Leto swears to the personified Delos by the water of Styx, calling it the "most powerful and dreadful oath that the blessed gods can swear", while Apollo asks Hermes to swear to him on the "dread" water of Styx. Hesiod , in the Theogony , gives an account of how this role for Styx came about. He says that, during

1173-480: The indigitamenta , the lists of Roman deities maintained by priests to assure that the correct divinity was invoked in public rituals. In his poem on the Roman calendar , Ovid (d. 17 CE) identifies this goddess with Semele: "There was a grove: known either as Semele's or Stimula's: Inhabited, they say, by Italian Maenads . Ino , asking them their nation, learned they were Arcadians , And that Evander

1242-547: The Christian era , ancient deities and their narratives were often interpreted allegorically. In the Neoplatonic philosophy of Henry More (1614–1687), for instance, Semele was thought to embody "intellectual imagination", and was construed as the opposite of Arachne , "sense perception". In the 18th century, the story of Semele formed the basis for three operas of the same name, the first by John Eccles (1707, to

1311-571: 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. They were also recorded as the companions of Persephone when she was abducted by Hades. 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. Hesiod gives

1380-514: The Titanomachy , the great war of Zeus and his fellow Olympians against Cronus and his fellow Titans, Zeus summoned "all the deathless gods to great Olympus" and promised, to whosoever would join him against the Titans, that he would preserve whatever rights and offices each had, or if they had none under Cronus, they would be given both under his rule. Styx, upon the advice of her father Oceanus,

1449-651: The acroterial statues there may be either Semele or Ariadne. The pair were part of the Aventine Triad in Rome as Liber and Libera , along with Ceres . The temple of the triad is located near the Grove of Stimula, and the grove and its shrine ( sacrarium ) were located outside Rome's sacred boundary ( pomerium ) , perhaps as the "dark side" of the Aventine Triad. In the later mythological tradition of

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1518-533: The nymphs who were the three thousand (a number interpreted as meaning "innumerable") daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys . The Oceanids' father Oceanus was the great primordial world-encircling river, their mother Tethys was a sea goddess, and their brothers the Potamoi (also three thousand in number) were the personifications of the great rivers of the world. Like the rest of their family,

1587-412: The "famous cold water" of Styx for the gods to swear by, and describes the punishments which would follow the breaking of such an oath: For whoever of the deathless gods that hold the peaks of snowy Olympus pours a libation of her water and is forsworn, must lie breathless until a full year is completed, and never come near to taste ambrosia and nectar, but lie spiritless and voiceless on a strewn bed: and

1656-568: The Great's death was caused by being poisoned with the water of this Styx. The Arcadian Styx may have been named so after its mythological counterpart, but it is also possible that this Arcadian stream was the model for the mythological Styx. The latter seems to be the case, at least, for the Styx in Apuleius 's Metamorphoses , which has Venus , addressing Psyche , give the following description: Do you see that steep mountain-peak standing above

1725-504: The Greek Helios ) promised his son Phaethon whatever he desired, which also resulted in the boy's death. The goddess Styx, like her father Oceanus, and his sons the Potamoi , was also a river, in her case, a river of the Underworld. According to Hesiod, Styx was given one-tenth of her father's water, which flowed far underground, and came up to the surface to pour out from a high rock: the famous cold water ... trickles down from

1794-638: The Musée départemental de Gap . 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". Doré's naiads, engaged in

1863-528: The Oceanid nymphs were associated with water, as the personification of springs. Hesiod says they are "dispersed far and wide" and everywhere "serve the earth and the deep waters", while in Apollonius of Rhodes ' Argonautica , the Argonauts , stranded in the desert of Libya, beg the "nymphs, sacred of the race of Oceanus" to show them "some spring of water from the rock or some sacred flow gushing from

1932-569: The account of Cadmus, estimates that Semele lived either 1,000 or 1,600 years prior to his visit to Tyre in 450 BC at the end of the Greco-Persian Wars (499–449 BC) or around 2050 or 1450 BC. In Rome, the goddess Stimula was identified as Semele. According to some linguists the name Semele is Thraco - Phrygian , derived from a PIE root meaning 'earth'. A Phrygian inscription refers to diōs zemelō ( διως ζεμελω ). The first word corresponds to Greek Zeus (genit. Dios) and

2001-635: The blessed gods". Homer has Hera (in the Iliad ) say this when she swears by Styx to Zeus, that she is not to blame for Poseidon's intervention on the side of the Greeks in the Trojan War , and he has Calypso (in the Odyssey ) use the same words when she swears by Styx to Odysseus that she will cease to plot against him. Also Hypnos (in the Iliad ) makes Hera swear to him "by the inviolable water of Styx". Examples of oaths sworn by Styx also occur in

2070-454: The conception as virginal; rather, the editor's notes say that Zeus swallowed Zagreus' heart, and visited the mortal woman Semele, whom he seduced and made pregnant. Nonnus classifies Zeus's affair with Semele as one in a set of twelve, the other eleven women on whom he begot children being Io , Europa , Pluto , Danaë , Aigina, Antiope , Leda , Dia , Alcmene , Laodameia, the mother of Sarpedon , and Olympias . The most usual setting for

2139-554: The cult, without banning it. Religious beliefs and myths associated with Dionysus were successfully adapted and remained pervasive in Roman culture, as evidenced for instance by the Dionysian scenes of Roman wall painting and on sarcophagi from the 1st to the 4th centuries AD. The Greek cult of Dionysus had flourished among the Etruscans in the archaic period, and had been made compatible with Etruscan religious beliefs . One of

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2208-406: The earth". The Oceanids are not easily categorized, nor confined to any single function, not even necessarily associated with water. 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. The Oceanid Doris , like her mother Tethys,

2277-473: The earth. Mallory and Adams suggest that, although Semele is "etymologically related" to other mother Earth/Earth goddess cognates, her name might be a borrowing "from another IE source ", not inherited as part of the Ancient Greek lexicon. Burkert says that while Semele is "manifestly non-Greek", "it is no more possible to confirm that Semele is a Thraco-Phrygian word for earth than it is to prove

2346-523: The gates of Hades" and join the other dead "beyond the River". So too in Virgil 's Aeneid , where the Styx winds nine times around the borders of Hades, and the boatman Charon is in charge of ferrying the dead across it. More usually, however, Acheron is the river (or lake) which separates the world of the living from the world of the dead. In the Odyssey , Circe says that the Underworld river Cocytus

2415-505: The goddess is named after stimulae , 'goads, whips,' by means of which a person is driven to excessive actions. The goddess's grove was the site of the Dionysian scandal that led to official attempts to suppress the cult . The Romans viewed the Bacchanals with suspicion, based on reports of ecstatic behaviors contrary to Roman social norms and the secrecy of initiatory rite. In 186 BC, the Roman senate took severe actions to limit

2484-493: The gods without incinerating, and she perished, consumed in a lightning-ignited flame. Zeus rescued the fetal Dionysus , however, by sewing him into his thigh (whence the epithet Eiraphiotes, 'insewn', of the Homeric Hymn ). A few months later, Dionysus was born. This leads to his being called "the twice-born". When he grew up, Dionysus rescued his mother from Hades , and she became a goddess on Mount Olympus , with

2553-427: The hoof of a female mule was the only material not "rotted" by its water. According to Plutarch the poisonous water could only be held by an ass's hoof, since all other vessels would "be eaten through by it, owing to its coldness and pungency." While according to Pausanias, the only vessel that could hold the Styx's water (poisonous to both men and animals) was a horse's hoof. There were ancient suspicions that Alexander

2622-450: The main principles of the Dionysian mysteries that spread to Latium and Rome was the concept of rebirth, to which the complex myths surrounding the god's own birth were central. Birth and childhood deities were important to Roman religion ; Ovid identifies Semele's sister Ino as the nurturing goddess Mater Matuta . This goddess had a major cult center at Satricum that was built 500–490 BC. The female consort who appears with Bacchus in

2691-718: The mother of Iris and the Harpies . Other notable Oceanids include: Perseis , wife of the Titan sun god Helios and mother of Circe , and Aeetes the king of Colchis ; Idyia , wife of Aeetes and mother of Medea ; and Callirhoe , the wife of Chrysaor and mother of Geryon . 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

2760-455: The name of one of Pluto's moons . The other moons of Pluto ( Charon , Nix , Hydra , and Kerberos ) also have names from Greco-Roman mythology related to the underworld. Oceanids In Greek mythology , the Oceanids or Oceanides ( / oʊ ˈ s iː ən ɪ d z , ˈ oʊ ʃ ə n ɪ d z / oh- SEE -ə-nidz, OH -shə-nidz ; Ancient Greek : Ὠκεανίδες , romanized :  Ōkeanídes , pl. of Ὠκεανίς , Ōkeanís ) are

2829-575: The name of 41 Oceanids, with other ancient sources providing many more. While some were important figures, most were not. Some were perhaps the names of actual springs, others merely poetic inventions. Some names, consistent with the Oceanids' charge of having "youths in their keeping", represent things which parents might hope to be bestowed upon their children: Plouto ("Wealth"), Tyche ("Good Fortune"), Idyia ("Knowing"), and Metis ("Wisdom"). Others appear to be geographical eponyms , such as Europa, Asia, Ephyra ( Corinth ), and Rhodos ( Rhodes ). Several of

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2898-636: The names of Oceanids were also among the names given to the Nereids . As a group, the Oceanids form the chorus of the ancient Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound , coming up from their cave beneath the ground to console the chained Titan Prometheus . There they are described as moving with haste, in contrast to the hero's immobility. In his new interpretation of the Greek play's continuation, Prometheus Unbound (1820), Percy Bysshe Shelley included three Oceanids among his characters. Ione and Panthea accompany

2967-497: The new name Thyone , presiding over the frenzy inspired by her son Dionysus. At a later point in the epic Dionysiaca , Semele, now resurrected, boasts to her sister Ino how Cronida ('Kronos's son', that is, Zeus), "the plower of her field", carried on the gestation of Dionysus and now her son gets to join the heavenly deities in Olympus, while Ino languishes with a murderous husband (since Athamas tried to kill Ino and her son), and

3036-531: The paintings in some respects. In Johann Eduard Müller's marble statue of "Prometheus and the Oceanides" (1868–79), the nymphs scramble upwards in an attempt to alleviate the Titan's suffering, as they do in Lehmann's canvas. The smaller-scale Océanides (1905) of Auguste Rodin cluster like waves breaking at the base of a rock, their "supple feminine forms emerging from rough marble". A larger scale version of

3105-422: The personifications Zelus (Glory, Emulation), Nike (Victory), Kratos (Strength, Dominion), and Bia (Force, Violence). The geographer Pausanias tells us that, according to Epimenides of Crete , Styx was the mother of the monster Echidna , by an otherwise unknown Perias. Although usually Demeter was the mother, by Zeus, of the underworld-goddess Persephone, according to the mythographer Apollodorus , it

3174-480: The prehistoric site of Lerna , Dionysus, guided by Prosymnus or Polymnus, descended to Tartarus to free his once-mortal mother. Annual rites took place there in classical times; Pausanias refuses to describe them. Though the Greek myth of Semele was localized in Thebes , the fragmentary Homeric Hymn to Dionysus makes the place where Zeus gave a second birth to the god a distant one, and mythically vague: Semele

3243-655: The priority of the Lydian baki- over Bacchus as a name for Dionysos ". M.L.West derives the Phrygian zemelo , Old Slavonic zemlya , Lithuanian zēmē from the Indo-European name *dʰéǵʰōm (earth). Semele seems to be a Thracian name of the earth goddess from gʰem-elā . The pronunciation was probably Zemelā. Etymological connections of Thraco-Phrygian Semele with Balto-Slavic earth deities have been noted, since an alternate name for Baltic Zemyna

3312-568: The river Asopus to cleanse herself of the blood. Flying over the scene in the guise of an eagle, Zeus fell in love with Semele and repeatedly visited her secretly. Zeus's wife, Hera , a goddess jealous of usurpers, discovered his affair with Semele when she later became pregnant. Appearing as an old crone , Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that her lover was actually Zeus. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semele's mind. Curious, Semele asked Zeus to grant her

3381-650: The river Titaressus , a tributary of the river Peneius in Thessaly , was a branch of the Styx. However Styx has been most commonly associated with an Arcadian stream and waterfall (the Mavronéri ) that runs through a ravine on the North face of mount Chelmos and flows into the Krathis river. The fifth-century BC historian Herodotus , locates this stream—calling it "the water of Styx"—as being near Nonacris

3450-501: The same occupation, were eventually identified more elegantly by Dorothea Tanning as akin to mermaids. 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); and William-Adolphe Bouguereau 's Océanide (1904), portraying

3519-525: The sculpture was finally cast in bronze in 1925 and is in Philadelphia's Rodin Museum . 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. Henri Laurens created

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3588-788: The seaside rocks off Manly, New South Wales . A musical interpretation of these mythical figures was the result of the visit by Jean Sibelius to the US in 1914, before which he was commissioned to compose a tone poem . Though this is generally titled The Oceanides (Opus 73), Sibelius referred to it in his diary as Aallottaret : the Finnish word for "nymphs of the waves". Semele Semele ( / ˈ s ɛ m ɪ l i / ; Ancient Greek : Σεμέλη , romanized :  Semélē ), or Thyone ( / ˈ θ aɪ ə n i / ; Ancient Greek : Θυώνη , romanized :  Thyṓnē ) in Greek mythology ,

3657-458: The second century AD, was already a partially-buried ruins), saying that: Not far from the ruins is a high cliff; I know of none other that rises to so great a height. A water trickles down the cliff, called by the Greeks the water of the Styx. According to Aelian , Demeter caused the water of this Arcadian Styx "to well up in the neighbourhood of Pheneus". An ancient legend apparently also connected Demeter with this Styx. According to Photius ,

3726-509: The second to earth in some Indo-European languages . Julius Pokorny reconstructs her name from the PIE root * dgem- meaning 'earth' and relates it with Thracian Zemele , ' mother earth '. Compare Žemyna (derived from žemė – earth), the goddess of the earth (mother goddess) in Lithuanian mythology , and Zeme, also referred to as Zemes-mãte , a Slavic and Latvian goddess of

3795-477: The second-century Metamorphoses of Apuleius , one of the impossible trials which Venus imposed on Psyche was to fetch water from the Styx. Apuleius has the water guarded by fierce dragons ( dracones ), and from the water itself came fearsome cries of deadly warning. The sheer impossibility of her task caused Psyche to become senseless, as if turned into stone. Jupiter's eagle admonishes Psyche saying: Do you ... really expect to be able to steal, or even touch,

3864-540: The story of Semele is the palace that occupied the acropolis of Thebes , called the Cadmeia . When Pausanias visited Thebes in the 2nd century CE, he was shown the very bridal chamber where Zeus visited her and begat Dionysus. Since an Oriental inscribed cylindrical seal found at the palace can be dated 14th-13th centuries, the myth of Semele must be Mycenaean or earlier in origin. At the Alcyonian Lake near

3933-472: The suffering hero and are joined by his lover, Asia . The setting is in the Caucasus mountains and Shelley describes these characters as winged beings. 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

4002-592: The towering cliff? Dark waves flow down from a black spring on that peak and are enclosed by the reservoir formed by the valley nearby, to water the swamps of Styx and feed the rasping currents of Cocytus. That Apuleius has his "black spring" being guarded by dragons, also suggests a connection between his Styx and two modern local names for the waterfall: the Black Water ( Mavro Nero ) and the Dragon Water ( Drako Nero ). On 2 July 2013, "Styx" officially became

4071-524: The waters of Styx when he promises Semele : Whatever thy wish, it shall not be denied, and that thy heart shall suffer no distrust, I pledge me by that Deity, the Waves of the deep Stygian Lake,—oath of the Gods. and was then obliged to follow through even though he realized to his horror that Semele's request would lead to her death. Similarly Phoebus (here identified with Sol , the Roman equivalent of

4140-487: The young. 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". 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. Doris

4209-513: Was Styx. However, when Apollodorus relates the famous story of the abduction of Persephone, and the search for her by her angry and distraught mother, as usual, it is Demeter who conducts the search. Styx was the oath of the gods. Homer calls Styx the "dread river of oath". In both the Iliad and the Odyssey , it is said that swearing by the water of Styx, is "the greatest and most dread oath for

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4278-479: Was abducted by Hades . According to the Achilleid , written by the Roman poet Statius in the 1st century AD, when Achilles was born his mother Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx; however, he was left vulnerable at the part of the body by which she held him: his left heel. And so Paris was able to kill Achilles during the Trojan War by shooting an arrow into his heel. In

4347-465: Was an important sea-goddess. While their brothers, the Potamoi, 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 underworld 's river Styx. And some, like Europa, and Asia , seem associated with areas of land rather than water. The Oceanids were also responsible for keeping watch over

4416-427: Was banished from the realm by her father Cadmus . Their sentence was to be put into a chest or a box ( larnax ) and cast in the sea. Luckily, the casket they were in washed up by the waves at Prasiae . However, it has been suggested that this tale might have been a borrowing from the story of Danaë and Perseus. Semele was a tragedy by Aeschylus ; it has been lost, save a few lines quoted by other writers, and

4485-405: Was the first to side with Zeus, bringing her children by Pallas along with her. And so in return Zeus appointed Styx to be "the great oath of the gods, and her children to live with him always." According to Hesiod, Styx lived at the entrance to Hades, in a cave "propped up to heaven all round with silver pillars". Hesiod also tells us that Zeus would send Iris , the messenger of the gods, to fetch

4554-495: Was the king of the place. Hiding her divinity, Saturn’s daughter cleverly Incited the Latian Bacchae with deceiving words:" "lucus erat, dubium Semelae Stimulae ne vocetur; maenadas Ausonias incoluisse ferunt: quaerit ab his Ino quae gens foret. Arcadas esse audit et Euandrum sceptra tenere loci; dissimulata deam Latias Saturnia Bacchas in stimula t fictis insidiosa sonis:" Augustine notes that

4623-424: Was the wife of the sea-god Nereus , and the mother of the fifty sea nymphs, the Nereids . Styx was the wife of the Titan Pallas , and the mother of Zelus , Nike , Kratos , and Bia . Eurynome , Zeus' third wife, was the mother of the Charites . Clymene was the wife of the Titan Iapetus , and mother of Atlas , Menoetius , Prometheus , and Epimetheus . Electra was the wife of the sea god Thaumas and

4692-432: Was the youngest daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia , and the mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths . Certain elements of the cult of Dionysus and Semele came from the Phrygians . These were modified, expanded, and elaborated by the Ionian Greek invaders and colonists. Doric Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC), born in the city of Halicarnassus under the Achaemenid Empire , who gives

4761-470: Was worshipped at Athens at the Lenaia , when a yearling bull, emblematic of Dionysus, was sacrificed to her. One-ninth was burnt on the altar in the Hellenic way; the rest was torn and eaten raw by the votaries. A unique tale, "found nowhere else in Greece" and considered to be a local version of her legend, is narrated by geographer Pausanias in his Description of Greece : after giving birth to her semi-divine son, Dionysus , fathered by Zeus , Semele

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