Sea
Thaumas
ΘαύμαςRoman: Thaumas
Wonder itself, and the father of the rainbow.
- 1
- epithet
- 0
- cult sites
- 1
- offspring
- 0
- unions
- 1
- recorded birth
Vitals
- Kind
- Minor god
- Generation
- 1
- Domains
- the wonders of the sea, the marvel one stops to look at
- Accent
- Sea — salt and fresh water, the swell, the river
- Sacred symbols
- the rainbow over water, the sea-marvel
- Principal cult sites
- No cult attested
What they were called
Θαύμας
wonder, the thing that astonishes
Lineage
See in the tree
Offspring in this roster
Ties
Notable myths
The Rainbow and the Snatchers
Thaumas married Elektra, daughter of deep-flowing Okeanos, and she bore swift Iris and the long-haired Harpies, Aello and Okypete, who keep pace with the winds and the birds. Hesiod puts the rainbow and the storm that carries things off in the same sentence, as siblings.
Hesiod, Theogony 265-269
The account
Thaumas is a son of Pontos and Gaia whose name is simply the noun for wonder — the reaction, not the object. He appears in the Theogony's list of the older sea powers between Nereus and Phorkys, and his one recorded union is with the Okeanid Elektra, by whom he fathers Iris the rainbow and the Harpies, the snatching winds. That is a strikingly split brood: the most benign atmospheric phenomenon and one of the nastiest, out of one father named after astonishment. It is a fair reading of what the sea and sky over it actually deliver. He has no episode, no cult and no image, and he is included here because without him Iris has no ancestry at all and the rainbow floats free of the genealogy, which is exactly the kind of gap a flat entity registry makes visible.
Ancient sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 233-239
- Hesiod, Theogony 265-269
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.