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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Dans la
mythologie grecque, les Naïades (en
grec ancien / Naiádes ou / Naídes ou / Náitides de / náein, « couler »), étaient les
nymphes qui présidaient aux fontaines, aux rivières et aux fleuves. Elles étaient l'objet d'une vénération et d'un culte particulier. Elles passaient pour les filles de
Zeus, et sont parfois comptées au nombre des prêtresses de
Dionysos. Quelques auteurs en font les mères des
satyres.
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