Tethys

Tethys is a Titaness, the great mother of the waters — wife of Oceanus and, by him, the mother of all the rivers and of the three thousand Oceanid nymphs. She personifies the fertile, nourishing power of the sea and the springs, the watery source from which, some of the earliest thinkers held, all things arise.

In the Orphic hymn she is the venerable nurse who feeds the world with moisture — the maternal deep that underlies the dry land and circles it about.