οὔτ’ ἄρα Νυμφάων.
He is the father of the rivers, and the feeder of the Sea. Even of the gods he is the ‘Genesis,’ perhaps as their physical source, or as affording material for their formation; perhaps as the outer band of that world to which they belong, as much as we do, and outside of which there was no attempt to conceive them as existing. Lastly, it is perhaps because Homer meant to assign to Oceanus and Tethys the actual first parentage of the gods. This supposition is favoured by the fact that Juno applies the name μήτηρ[518] to Tethys, in a connection which may make it equivalent to ‘our Mother Tethys.’
It is clearly on a principle that Oceanus is not summoned to Olympus, and not from mere defect or immaturity of personality. For in conjunction with his wife Tethys, he took over the infant Juno from Rhea, at the time when there was trouble between Jupiter and his father; and afterwards he reared the child in his own domain. He can be lulled into slumber by Ὕπνος like any other deity: he has a daughter, Eurynome[519]: and he is capable of conjugal quarrels[520].
Again, Ocean is water, and Oceanus is the father of all the Rivers: but yet he was not included in the great lottery which divided the world between the Kronid brothers. This shows us afresh, that he is outside and independent of their rule: he forms the framework of the visible creation, while they are parts of the picture that is within the framework.
The same thing is true of Κρόνος and Ῥέα in the metaphysical order. They represent anterior conditions of thought and of existence to all other Beings, human and divine. Their personality is established; but it is, even more than that of Oceanus, in abeyance: for Oceanus is at least ever-flowing, while Time, and Space, or Matter, are with Homer wholly passionless, mute, and still. When once the Kronid family has been brought into existence, and the attempt of Time to impose the law of death on Deity has been put down by Jupiter, then the impersonations are virtually withdrawn from him and his partner, and they relapse into the torpid state of purely abstract ideas.
The Elemental Powers have nowhere what may be called a strong position in Homer, except in the invocations of solemn swearing; where they give force to the Oath, because they are the avengers of perjury. Thus their connection is not with deity in general, but with that nether world, which the ideas of mankind have always associated with the lower parts of the Earth[521].
Even on grounds larger than those derived from a particular phrase, it may be probable, that we ought to consider Oceanus as the Homeric parent of all the deities, Κρόνος and Ῥέα included. To a state of the human mind not yet familiar with abstractions, Time and Place, imperfectly conceived, might be more limited, less comprehensive, than the great all-infolding Ocean, which encircled and wrapped in the world. And in this conception there may lie hid the embryo of what afterwards grew into the aquarian cosmogony, a system which appears not to be without support from other passages of the poem, especially from the very curious verse (Il. vii. 99),
ἀλλ’ ὑμεῖς μὲν πάντες ὕδωρ καὶ γαῖα γένοισθε.
If, however, this idea was really in the mind of the Poet, still we should consider it as having been with him an instinct rather than a theory.