In
Greek mythology, the Naiads (from the
Greek νάειν, "to flow," and νἃμα, "running water") were a type of
nymph who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks, as
river gods embodied rivers, and some very ancient spirits inhabited the still waters of marshes, ponds and lagoon-lakes, such as pre-Mycenaean
Lerna in the Argolid. Naiads were associated with fresh water, as the
Oceanids were with saltwater and the
Nereids specifically with the
Mediterranean; but because the Greeks thought of the world's waters as all one system, which percolated in from the sea in deep cavernous spaces within the bosom of the earth, to rise freshened in seeps and springs, there was some overlap.
Arethusa, the nymph of a spring, could make her way through subterranean flows from the
Peloponnesus, to surface on the island of Sicily. In his Dionisiaca, (XVI.356; XXIV.123)
Nonnus gave the naiads the nonce-name Hydriades ("water ladies"). Otherwise, the essence of a naiad was bound to her spring. If a naiad's body of water dried, she died. Though Walter Burkert points out, "When in the
Iliad [xx.4–9] Zeus calls the gods into assembly on Mount Olympus, it is not only the well-known
Olympians who come along, but also all the nymphs and all the rivers;
Okeanos alone remains at his station," (Burkert 1985), Greek hearers recognized this impossibility as the poet's
hyperbole, which proclaimed the universal power of Zeus over the ancient natural world: "the worship of these deities," Burkert confirms, "is limited only by the fact that they are inseparably identified with a specific locality."
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[Greek] The Naiads were nymphs of bodies of fresh water and were one of the three main classes of water nymphs - the others being the Nereids (nymphs of the Mediterranean Sea) and the Oceanids (nymphs of the oceans). The Naiads presided over rivers, streams, brooks, springs, fountains, lakes, ponds, wells, and marshes. They were divided into various subclasses: Crinaeae (fountains), Pegaeae (springs), Eleionomae (marshes), Potameides (rivers), and Limnades or Limnatides (lakes). Roman sources even assigned custody of the rivers of Hades to Naiads classified as Nymphae Infernae Paludis or the Avernales. The Naiad was intimately connected to her body of water and her very existence seems to have depended on it. If a stream dried up, its Naiad expired. The waters over which Naiads presided were thought to be endowed with inspirational, medicinal, or prophetic powers. Thus the Naiads were frequently worshipped by the ancient Greeks in association with divinities of fertility and growth. ...
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