Definitions for oceanusoʊˈsi ə nəs
This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word oceanus
Random House Webster's College Dictionary
O•ce•a•nusoʊˈsi ə nəs(n.)
(in Greek myth) a Titan who rules over a great stream of water that encircles the earth.
(Greek mythology) god of the stream that flowed around the earth in ancient mythology
Personification of vast waters or the world ocean. He was the first-born of the Titans, son of Uranus and Gaia, the god u03A9u03BAu03B5u03B1u03BDu03CCu03C2 u03A0u03BFu03C4u03B1u03BCu03CCu03C2 (River Ocean) that encircled the earth. With his sister Tethys fathered all rivers and the Oceanids.
Origin: From Ὠκεανός (Okeanos).
Oceanus was a pseudo-geographical feature in classical antiquity, believed by the ancient Greeks and Romans to be the divine personification of the World Ocean, an enormous river encircling the world. Strictly speaking, Oceanus was the ocean-stream at the Equator in which floated the habitable hemisphere. In Greek mythology, this world-ocean was personified as a Titan, a son of Uranus and Gaea. 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 body of a serpent. On a fragmentary archaic vessel of circa 580 BC, 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, such as that from Bardo he might carry a steering-oar and cradle a ship. Some scholars believe that Oceanus originally represented all bodies of salt water, including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, the two largest bodies known to the ancient Greeks. However, as geography became more accurate, Oceanus came to represent the stranger, more unknown waters of the Atlantic Ocean, while the newcomer of a later generation, Poseidon, ruled over the Mediterranean.
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
or Okeanos, in the Greek mythology the great world-stream which surrounds the whole earth, and is the parent source of all seas and streams, presided over by a Titan, the husband of Tethys, and the father of all river-gods and water-nymphs. He is the all-father of the world, as his wife is the all-mother, and the pair occupy a palace apart on the extreme verge of the world.
Find a translation for the oceanus definition in other languages:
Select another language: