The Nymphs

The Nymphs are the divine spirits of the natural world — beautiful young goddesses who embody the life of springs and rivers (the naiads), of trees and groves (dryads), of mountains (oreads), and of the sea. Neither quite immortal nor mortal, they are the very soul of place, attendants of Artemis, Pan, and Dionysus, and the nurturers of gods and heroes in their infancy.

Porphyry devoted a famous allegorical treatise, On the Cave of the Nymphs, to a passage of Homer, reading the nymphs' cave as an image of the cosmos and of the descent of souls into the world of generation — turning the spirits of the springs into a symbol of the soul's own journey into body and back.