Oceanus (
Greek , Okeanos) was believed to be the
world-ocean in
classical antiquity, which the
ancient Romans and
Greeks considered to be an enormous
river encircling the world. Strictly speaking, Okeanos was the
ocean-stream at the
Equator in which floated the habitable
hemisphere (oikoumene). In
Greek mythology, this world-ocean was personified as a
Titan, a son of
Uranus and
Gaia. In Hellenistic and Roman mosaics, this Titan was often depicted as having the upper body of a muscular man with a long beard and horns, and the lower torso of a
serpent (cf.
Typhon). On a fragmentary archaic vessel (British Museum 1971.11-1.1) of ca 580 BCE, among the gods arriving at the wedding of
Peleus and the sea-nymph
Thetis, is a fish-tailed Oceanus, with a fish in one hand and a serpent in the other, gifts of bounty and prophecy. In Roman mosaics he might carry a steering-oar and cradle a ship.
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[Greek] The personification of the vast ocean. As geography became more precise, Oceanus began to refer to the water outside of the Pillars of Heracles, or the Atlantic Ocean. He was the eldest of the Titans and a son of Uranus and Gaia. He was the father of all rivers by his sister Tethys. The couple also had the Oceanids which personified springs and smaller bodies of waters, like lakes and ponds.
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