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47-421: The project currently includes editions of thirteen mappamundi : Traditionally, western European medieval mappaemundi , or world maps, have been divided into two categories: T–O maps and zonal maps. T–O maps are named as such because of their tripartite structure – a T rests inside an O, dividing the world into the three known continents. At the top is Asia, the bottom left quadrant contains areas of Europe, and

94-564: A Titan (being the brother of Cronus and Rhea), and the mythographer Apollodorus 's inclusion of Dione , the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus, as a thirteenth Titan, suggests an Orphic tradition in which the Titan offspring of Oceanus and Tethys consisted of Hesiod's twelve Titans, with Phorcys and Dione taking the place of Oceanus and Tethys. According to Epimenides , the first two beings, Night and Aer, produced Tartarus , who in turn produced two Titans (possibly Oceanus and Tethys) from whom came

141-640: A convenient projection of the known northern temperate region. It was believed that no one could cross the torrid equatorial clime and reach the unknown lands to the south, the antipodes . The T is the Mediterranean , the Nile , and the Don (formerly called the Tanais) dividing the three continents , Asia , Europe and Africa , and the O is the encircling ocean . Jerusalem was generally represented in

188-482: A disc-shaped Earth. However, other writings by Isidore make it clear that he considered the Earth to be spherical . Indeed, the spherical Earth had been the prevailing scholarly assumption since at least Aristotle , who had delineated a frigid clime at the poles , a torrid clime near the equator , and a habitable temperate clime in between. The T and O map represents only half of the spherical Earth, presumably

235-648: A few cities and the most important bodies of water noted. The four sacred rivers of the Holy Land were always present. Different cartographic material, which represented more useful tools for the traveler, were the itinerarium , which listed in order the names of towns between two points, and the periplus that did the same for harbors and landmarks along a seacoast. Later maps of the T-and-O conceptual format featured many rivers and cities of Eastern as well as Western Europe , and other features encountered during

282-440: A figure thought to be Tethys: a part of a chiton below Oceanus' left arm and a hand clutching a large tree branch visible behind Oceanus' head. In Hellenistic and Roman mosaics, this Titan was often depicted as having the upper body of a muscular man with a long beard and horns (often represented as the claws of a crab) and the lower body of a serpent ( cfr. Typhon ). In Roman mosaics, such as that from Bardo , he might carry

329-458: A later Iliad passage, Hypnos also describes Oceanus as " genesis for all", which, according to Gantz, is hard to understand as meaning other than that, for Homer, Oceanus was the father of the Titans. Plato , in his Timaeus , provides a genealogy (probably Orphic) which perhaps reflected an attempt to reconcile this apparent divergence between Homer and Hesiod, in which Uranus and Gaia are

376-481: A person (such as Oceanus visiting Prometheus in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound , see above) Oceanus is more usually considered to be a place, that is, as the great world-encircling river. Twice Hesiod calls Oceanus "the perfect river" ( τελήεντος ποταμοῖο ), and Homer refers to the "stream of the river Oceanus" ( ποταμοῖο λίπεν ῥόον Ὠκεανοῖο ). Both Hesiod and Homer call Oceanus "backflowing" ( ἀψορρόου ), since, as

423-519: A poem (probably Orphic) which has an angry Oceanus brooding aloud as to whether he should join Cronus and the other Titans in the attack on Uranus. And, according to Proclus, Oceanus did not in fact take part in the attack. Oceanus seemingly also did not join the Titans in the Titanomachy , the great war between the Cronus and his fellow Titans, and Zeus and his fellow Olympians , for control of

470-576: A section of the Iliad called the Deception of Zeus , suggest the possibility that Homer knew a tradition in which Oceanus and Tethys (rather than Uranus and Gaia, as in Hesiod) were the primeval parents of the gods. Twice Homer has Hera describe the pair as "Oceanus, from whom the gods are sprung, and mother Tethys". According to M. L. West , these lines suggests a myth in which Oceanus and Tethys are

517-469: A steering-oar and cradle a ship. 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. Herodotus was skeptical about the physical existence of Oceanus and rejected the reasoning—proposed by some of his coevals—according to which the uncommon phenomenon of the summerly Nile flood

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564-539: A very similar procession of Peleus and Thetis' wedding guests, on another early sixth century BC Attic black-figure pot, the François Vase (Florence 4209). As in Sophilos' dinos, Oceanus appears at the end of the long procession, following after the last chariot, with Hephaestus on his mule bringing up the rear. Although little remains of Oceanus, he was apparently shown here with a bull's head. The similarity in

611-399: Is a type of early world map that represents world geography as first described by the 7th-century scholar Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) in his De Natura Rerum and later his Etymologiae (c. 625) A later manuscript added the names of Noah's sons ( Sem , Iafeth and Cham ) for each of the three continents (see Biblical terminology for race ). A later variation with more detail

658-514: Is called round after the roundness of a circle, because it is like a wheel [...] Because of this, the Ocean flowing around it is contained in a circular limit, and it is divided in three parts, one part being called Asia, the second Europe, and the third Africa. Although Isidore taught in the Etymologiae that the Earth was "round", his meaning was ambiguous and some writers think he referred to

705-513: Is the Beatus map drawn by Beatus of Liébana , an 8th-century Spanish monk , in the prologue to his Commentary on the Apocalypse . De Natura Rerum , Chapter XLVIII, 2 (translation): So the earth may be divided into three sides (trifarie), of which one part is Europe , another Asia , and the third is called Africa . Europe is divided from Africa by a sea from the end of the ocean and

752-607: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation . Virtual Mappa: Digital Editions of Early Medieval Maps of the World, edit. Martin Foys, Heather Wacha, et al. (Philadelphia, PA: Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies, 2018): https://sims2.digitalmappa.org/36 . DOI: 10.21231/ef21-ev82. T and o map A T and O map or O–T or T–O map ( orbis terrarum , orb or circle of the lands; with the letter T inside an O), also known as an Isidoran map ,

799-517: The Charites ; Doris , the wife of Nereus and mother of the Nereids ; Callirhoe , the wife of Chrysaor and mother of Geryon ; Clymene , the wife of Iapetus, and mother of Atlas , Menoetius , Prometheus , and Epimetheus ; Perseis , wife of Helios and mother of Circe and Aeetes ; Idyia , wife of Aeetes and mother of Medea ; and Styx , the great river of the underworld river, and

846-582: The Cimmerians , the Aethiopians , and the Pygmies as living nearby Oceanus. In Homer, Helios the sun, rises from Oceanus in the east, and at the end of the day sinks back into Oceanus in the west, and the stars bathe in the "stream of Ocean". According to later sources, after setting, Helios sails back along Oceanus during the night from west to east. Just as Oceanus the god was the father of

893-642: The Crusades . Decorative illustrations were also added in addition to the new geographic features. The most important cities would be represented by sketches of fortifications and towers in addition to their names, and the empty spaces would be filled with mythical creatures. Oceanus Many Oceanids including: In Greek mythology , Oceanus ( / oʊ ˈ s iː ə n ə s / oh- SEE -ə-nəs ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ὠκεανός [ɔːke.anós] , also Ὠγενός [ɔːɡenós] , Ὤγενος [ɔ̌ːɡenos] , or Ὠγήν [ɔːɡɛ̌ːn] )

940-733: 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 the newcomer of a later generation, Poseidon , ruled over the Mediterranean Sea. Late attestations for an equation with the Black Sea abound,

987-750: The Pillars of Hercules . And Asia is divided from Libya with Egypt by the Nile ... Moreover, Asia – as the most blessed Augustine said – runs from the southeast to the north ... Thus we see the earth is divided into two to comprise, on the one hand, Europe and Africa, and on the other only Asia. Etymologiae , chapter 14, de terra et partibus : Latin : Orbis a rotunditate circuli dictus, quia sicut rota est [...] Undique enim Oceanus circumfluens eius in circulo ambit fines. Divisus est autem trifarie: e quibus una pars Asia, altera Europa, tertia Africa nuncupatur. Etymologiae , chapter 14, de terra et partibus (translation): The [inhabited] mass of solid land

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1034-717: The Theogony , or near Elysium , in the Iliad , and in the Odyssey , has to be crossed in order to reach the "dank house of Hades ". And for both Hesiod and Homer, Oceanus seems to have marked a boundary beyond which the cosmos became more fantastical. The Theogony has such fabulous creatures as the Hesperides , with their golden apples, the three-headed giant Geryon , and the snake-haired Gorgons , all residing "beyond glorious Ocean". While Homer located such exotic tribes as

1081-651: The nymph Arethusa and pursued her to Syracuse where she was transformed into a spring by Artemis ; and Scamander who fought on the side of the Trojans during the Trojan War and got offended when Achilles polluted his waters with a large number of Trojan corpses, overflowed his banks nearly drowning Achilles. According to Hesiod, there were also three thousand Oceanids. These included: Metis , Zeus ' first wife, whom Zeus impregnated with Athena and then swallowed; Eurynome , Zeus' third wife, and mother of

1128-468: The world egg . When Cronus, the youngest of the Titans, overthrew his father Uranus , thereby becoming the ruler of the cosmos, according to Hesiod, none of the other Titans participated in the attack on Uranus. However, according to the mythographer Apollodorus , all the Titans—;except Oceanus—attacked Uranus. Proclus , in his commentary on Plato's Timaeus , quotes several lines of

1175-439: The "first parents of the whole race of gods." However, as Timothy Gantz points out, "mother" could simply refer to the fact that Tethys was Hera's foster mother for a time, as Hera tells us in the lines immediately following, while the reference to Oceanus as the genesis of the gods "might be simply a formulaic epithet indicating the numberless rivers and springs descended from Okeanos" (compare with Iliad 21.195–197 ). But, in

1222-678: The "immense sea" by Pomponius Mela and by Dionysius Periegetes , and which is named Mare majus on medieval geographic maps. Apollonius of Rhodes , similarly, calls the lower Danube the Kéras Okeanoío ("Gulf" or "Horn of Oceanus"). Hecataeus of Abdera also refers to a holy island, sacred to the Pelasgian (and later, Greek) Apollo , situated in the westernmost part of the Okeanós Potamós , and called in different times Leuke or Leukos, Alba, Fidonisi or Isle of Snakes . It

1269-471: The Virtual Mappa project. The project came out of digital humanities research by project leader Martin Foys of medieval artifacts and media that resisted traditional modes of print-based scholarship. Medieval mappamundi represented a problem of representation and analysis that digital tools and techniques could help address. The digital humanities resource of digital annotation and linking tools that

1316-475: The bottom right quadrant Africa. The orientation of T–O maps is usually shifted 90 degrees to the left, such that the cardinal direction of east, i.e. paradise, India and parts of Asia for a medieval mind are located at the very top of the map. Zonal maps, however, are usually oriented with north at the top, and the world is divided into four latitudinal zones that represent climate and indicate appropriateness for habitation. Both types of medieval maps are included in

1363-629: The cause being – as it appears – Odysseus' travel to the Cimmerians whose fatherland, lying beyond the Oceanus, is described as a country divested from sunlight. In the fourth century BC, Hecataeus of Abdera writes that the Oceanus of the Hyperboreans is neither the Arctic nor Western Ocean, but the sea located to the north of the ancient Greek world, namely the Black Sea , called "the most admirable of all seas" by Herodotus , labelled

1410-621: The center of the map as the navel of the world, the umbilicus mundi . Asia was typically the size of the other two continents combined. Because the Sun rose in the east, Paradise (the Garden of Eden) was generally depicted as being in Asia, and Asia was situated at the top portion of the map. This qualitative and conceptual type of medieval cartography could yield extremely detailed maps in addition to simple representations. The earliest maps had only

1457-435: The cosmos; and following the war, although Cronus and the other Titans were imprisoned, Oceanus certainly seems to have remained free. In Hesiod, Oceanus sends his daughter Styx , with her children Zelus (Envy), Nike (Victory), Cratos (Power), and Bia (Force), to fight on Zeus' side against the Titans, And in the Iliad , Hera says that during the war she was sent to Oceanus and Tethys for safekeeping. Sometime after

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1504-448: The end of a long procession of gods and goddesses arriving at the palace of Peleus for the wedding. Oceanus follows a chariot driven by Athena and containing Artemis . Oceanus has bull horns, holds a snake in his left hand and a fish in his right, and has the body of a fish from the waist down. He is closely followed by Tethys and Eileithyia , with Hephaestus following on his mule ending the procession. Oceanus also appears, as part of

1551-421: The great stream encircles the earth, it flows back into itself. Hesiod also calls Oceanus "deep-swirling" ( βαθυδίνης ), while Homer calls him "deep-flowing" ( βαθυρρόου ). Homer says that Oceanus "bounds the Earth", and Oceanus was depicted on the shield of Achilles , encircling its rim, and so also on the shield of Heracles. Both Hesiod and Homer locate Oceanus at the ends of the earth, near Tartarus, in

1598-696: The name being a loanword . However, according to West, no "very convincing" foreign models have been found. A Semitic derivation has been suggested by several scholars, while R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a loanword from the Aegean Pre-Greek non- Indo-European substrate . Nevertheless, Michael Janda sees possible Indo-European connections. Oceanus was the eldest of the Titan offspring of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth). Hesiod lists his Titan siblings as Coeus , Crius , Hyperion , Iapetus , Theia , Rhea , Themis , Mnemosyne , Phoebe , Tethys , and Cronus . Oceanus married his sister Tethys, and

1645-564: The new ruler Zeus, and so avoid making his situation any worse. But Prometheus replies: "I envy you because you have escaped blame for having dared to share with me in my troubles." According to Pherecydes , while Heracles was travelling in Helios 's golden cup, on his way to Erytheia to fetch the cattle of Geryon , Oceanus challenged Heracles by sending high waves rocking the cup, but Heracles threatened to shoot Oceanus with his bow, and Oceanus in fear stopped. Although sometimes treated as

1692-537: The order of the wedding guests on these two vases, as well as on the fragments a second Sophilos vase (Athens Akr 587), suggests the possibility of a literary source. Oceanus is depicted (labeled) as one of the gods fighting the Giants in the Gigantomachy frieze of the second century BC Pergamon Altar . Oceanus stands half nude, facing right, battling a giant falling to the right. Nearby Oceanus are fragments of

1739-412: The parents of Oceanus and Tethys, and Oceanus and Tethys are the parents of Cronus and Rhea and the other Titans, as well as Phorcys . In his Cratylus , Plato quotes Orpheus as saying that Oceanus and Tethys were "the first to marry", possibly also reflecting an Orphic theogony in which Oceanus and Tethys, rather than Uranus and Gaia, were the primeval parents. Plato's apparent inclusion of Phorcys as

1786-515: The personification of the sea. However elsewhere the distinction between fresh and salt water seems not to apply. For example, in Hesiod Nereus and Thaumus , both sons of Pontus, marry daughters of Oceanus, and in Homer (who makes no mention of Pontus), Thetis , the daughter of Nereus, and Eurynome the daughter of Oceanus, live together. In any case, Oceanus can also to be identified with

1833-461: The river gods, Oceanus the river was said to be the source of all other rivers, and in fact all sources of water, both salt and fresh. According to Homer, from Oceanus "all rivers flow and every sea, and all the springs and deep wells". Being the source of rivers and springs would seem logically to require that Oceanus was himself a freshwater river, and so different from the salt sea, and in fact Hesiod seems to distinguish between Oceanus and Pontus ,

1880-643: The sea. The concept of the surrounding Ocean, as expressed by Homer and Hesiod, remained in common use throughout antiquity. The Roman geographer Pomponius Mela said that the inhabited earth ‘is entirely surrounded by the Ocean, from which it receives four seas’. These four seas were the Caspian Sea , the Persian Gulf , the Arabian Gulf , and the Mediterranean Sea . However increasing knowledge of

1927-613: The seas led to modifications in this view. The Greek geographer Ptolemy identified various different oceans. One of these, the Western Ocean (the Atlantic Ocean ) was often called simply ‘the Ocean’, for instance by Julius Caesar . Oceanus is represented, identified by inscription, as part of an illustration of the wedding of Peleus and Thetis on the early sixth century BC Attic black-figure "Erskine" dinos by Sophilos ( British Museum 1971.111–1.1). Oceanus appears near

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1974-498: The war, Aeschylus ' Prometheus Bound , has Oceanus visit his nephew the enchained Prometheus , who is being punished by Zeus for his theft of fire. Oceanus arrives riding a winged steed, saying that he is sympathetic to Prometheus' plight and wishes to help him if he can. But Prometheus mocks Oceanus, asking him: "How did you summon courage to quit the stream that bears your name and the rock-roofed caves you yourself have made ..." Oceanus advises Prometheus to humble himself before

2021-544: The wife of Pallas and mother of Zelus , Nike , Kratos , and Bia . According to Epimenides ' Theogony , Oceanus was the father, by Gaia , of the Harpies . Oceanus was also said to be the father, by Gaia, of Triptolemus . Nonnus , in his poem Dionysiaca , described "the lakes" as "liquid daughters cut off from Oceanos". He was said to have fathered the Cercopes on one of his daughters, Theia . Passages in

2068-532: Was a Titan son of Uranus and Gaia , the husband of his sister the Titan Tethys , and the father of the river gods and the Oceanids , as well as being the great river which encircled the entire world. According to M. L. West , the etymology of Oceanus is "obscure" and "cannot be explained from Greek". The use by Pherecydes of Syros of the form Ōgenós ( Ὠγενός ) for the name lends support for

2115-556: Was by her the father of numerous sons, the river gods and numerous daughters, the Oceanids . According to Hesiod, there were three thousand (i.e. innumerable) river gods. These included: Achelous , the god of the Achelous River , the largest river in Greece, who gave his daughter in marriage to Alcmaeon and was defeated by Heracles in a wrestling contest for the right to marry Deianira ; Alpheus , who fell in love with

2162-517: Was caused by the river's connection to the mighty Oceanus. Speaking about the Oceanus myth itself he declared: As for the writer who attributes the phenomenon to the ocean, his account is involved in such obscurity that it is impossible to disprove it by argument. For my part I know of no river called Ocean, and I think that Homer, or one of the earlier poets, invented the name, and introduced it into his poetry. Some scholars believe that Oceanus originally represented all bodies of salt water, including

2209-743: Was developed to collect, annotate and network medieval maps was Digital Mappa, which is now its own freely available online workspace and digital publishing platform. As part of the Digital Mappa (DM) platform, Virtual Mappa has been funded by grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison , and

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