Okeanos

Okeanos (Oceanus) is the Titan of the great river Ocean — the vast freshwater stream that the early Greeks believed encircled the whole disc of the earth, the source of all rivers, springs, and seas. With his wife Tethys he fathered the rivers of the world and the three thousand Oceanid nymphs.

Homer calls Okeanos the origin of all the gods and of all things — a hint that the earliest Greek thought, like the Milesian philosophers after it, looked to water as the first principle of the world. Vast, ancient, and life-giving, he girdles the cosmos and feeds it endlessly from his waters.

Epithets

• Apsorrhoos Ἀψόρροος — the back-flowing river that circles the world
• Oceanus Lat. — his Roman name