Sea
Tethys
ΤηθύςRoman: Tethys
Mother of every river and three thousand springs, and Hera's foster-mother.
- 1
- epithet
- 0
- cult sites
- 3
- offspring
- 1
- union
- 1
- recorded birth
Vitals
- Kind
- Titan
- Generation
- 1
- Domains
- fresh water, nursing, the sources of rivers
- Accent
- Sea — salt and fresh water, the swell, the river
- Sacred symbols
- the river-source, the winged brow
- Principal cult sites
- No cult attested
What they were called
Τηθὺς πότνια
lady Tethys
Lineage
See in the tree
Notable myths
The House at the End of the Earth
Hera claims she is travelling to the limits of the earth to see Okeanos and Tethys, who took her in and raised her when Rhea gave her up during the war against Kronos. She says the pair have quarrelled and no longer share a bed, and that she means to settle it. Everything about the errand is invented; the household is not.
Homer, Iliad 14.200-210
The account
Tethys and Okeanos between them produce all the world's moving water. Hesiod lists forty-one Okeanid daughters by name and then gives up, saying there are three thousand of them and as many river-sons, and that only those who live near a given river know its name. She appears in person rarely. Her one substantial scene is in the Iliad, where Hera tells a story to explain a journey: she says she is going to the ends of the earth to visit Okeanos and mother Tethys, who received her from Rhea and raised her in their house while Zeus was putting Kronos under the earth. She adds that the two of them have stopped sleeping together out of anger, and that she intends to reconcile them. The story is a lie Hera is telling to cover something else, but it is built out of details the audience was expected to accept, which tells us what Tethys was: a nurse of the second generation, and a marriage that had gone quiet.
Ancient sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 132-138
- Homer, Iliad 14.200-210
Where a line reference is not given, the work is cited without one rather than guessed at.
Image credit
No classical portrait of this figure survives, so the mark on this page is generated from their Greek initial and their domain accent rather than taken from an artwork.