Homer makes Juno visit Oceănus at the remotest limits of the earth, and acknowledge him and Tethys as the parents of the gods, adding, that she herself had been brought up under their tuition. Many of his children are mentioned in poetical story, whose names it would be endless to enumerate, and, indeed, they are only the appellations of the principal rivers of the world. Oceănus was described with a bull's head, to represent the rage and bellowing of the ocean when agitated by storms. Oceănus and Tethys are ranked in the highest classes of sea-deities, and as governors in chief over the whole world of waters.
NEREUS, a sea-deity, was son of Oceănus, by Tethys. Apollodōrus gives him Terra for his mother. His education and authority were in the waters, and his residence, more particularly, the Ægean seas. He had the faculty of assuming what form he pleased. He was regarded as a prophet; and foretold to Paris the war which the rape of Helen would bring upon his country. When Hercules was ordered to fetch the golden apples of the Hesperĭdes, he went to the Nymphs inhabiting the grottoes of Eridănus, to know where he might find them; the Nymphs sent him to Nereus, who, to elude the inquiry, perpetually varied his form, till Hercules having seized him, resolved to hold him till he resumed his original shape, on which he yielded the desired information. Nereus had, by his sister Doris, fifty daughters called Nereids. Hesiod highly celebrates him as a mild and peaceful old man, a lover of justice and moderation. Nereus and Doris, with their descendants the Nereids, or Oceaniads, so called from Oceănus, are ranked in the third class of water deities.
PALÆMON, or MELICERTES, was son of Athămas, king of Thebes and Ino. The latter fearing the rage of her husband, who in his madness had killed his son Learchus, took Melicertes in her arms, and leaped with him from the rock Molyris into the sea. Neptune received them with open arms, and gave them a place among the marine gods, only changing their names, Ino being called Leucothea, or Leucothŏe, and Melicertes, Palæmon. Ino, under the name Leucothea, is supposed, by some, to be the same with Aurora: the Romans gave her the name of Matuta, she being reputed the goddess that ushers in the morning; and Palæmon, they called Portumnus, or Portunnus, and painted him with a key in his hand, to denote that he was the guardian of harbors. Adorations were paid to him chiefly at Tenĕdos, and the sacrifice offered to him was an infant.
Pausanias says that the body of Melicertes was thrown on the Isthmus of Corinth where Sisyphus, his uncle, who reigned in that city, instituted the Isthmian games in his honor. For this fable we are indebted to the fertile invention of the Greeks, Melicertes being no other than the Melcarthus or the Hercules of Tyre, who, from having been drowned in the sea, was called a god of it, and from his many voyages, the guardian of harbors.
GLAUCUS, a sea-deity. His story, which is very fanciful, shows the extravagance of poetical fiction amongst the ancients. Before his deification, Glaucus is said to have been a fisherman of Anthēdon, who having one day remarked that the fishes which he laid on a particular herb revived and threw themselves into the sea, resolved himself to taste it, and immediately followed their example: the consequence was, that he became a Triton, and ever after was reputed a marine deity, attending with the rest on the car of Neptune.
The descent of this deity is exceeding dubious. He is said to have carried off Ariadne from the island Dia, for which Bacchus bound him fast with vine-twigs. The ship Argo is said to have been constructed by him, and he is not only mentioned as commanding her, when Jason fought with the Tyrrhenians, but as being the only one of her crew that came off without a wound. He dwelt some time at Delos, and, besides prophesying with the Nereids, is affirmed to have instructed Apollo in the art.
SCYLLA was the daughter of Phorcus, or Phorcys, by Ceto. Glaucus, being passionately fond of Scylla, after vainly endeavoring to gain her affections, applied to Circe, and besought her, by her art, to induce her to return his affection. On this, Circe disclosed to him her passion, but Glaucus remaining inexorable, the enchantress vowed revenge, and by her magic charms so infected the fountain in which Scylla bathed, that on entering it, her lower parts were turned into dogs; at which the nymph, terrified at herself, plunged into the sea, and there was changed to a rock, notorious for the shipwrecks it occasioned.
Authors are disagreed as to Scylla's form; some say she retained her beauty from the neck downwards, but had six dog's heads: others maintain, that her upper parts continued entire, but that she had below the body of a wolf, and the tail of a serpent. The rock named Scylla, lies between Italy and Sicily, and the noise of the waves beating on it is supposed to have occasioned the fable of the barking of dogs, and howling of wolves, ascribed to the imaginary monster.
CHARYBDIS was a rapacious woman, a female robber, who, it is said, stole the oxen of Hercules, for which she was thunder-struck by Jupiter, and turned into a whirlpool, dangerous to sailors. This whirlpool was situated opposite the rock Scylla, at the entrance of the Faro from Messina, and occasioned the proverb of running into one danger to avoid another. Some affirm that Hercules killed her himself; others, that Scylla committed this robbery, and was killed for it by Hercules.