Oceanids- Greek GroupCollective"Daughters of Oceanus"

Three Thousand Daughters

Hesiod named forty-one of them in the Theogony and admitted the rest were beyond any poet's count — three thousand freshwater nymphs, daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. They haunted every form of freshwater, from the world-encircling river of their father to springs in nameless valleys. Each spring had its nymph, each fountain its guardian. Hesiod gave them a charge alongside Apollo and the river gods: the nurture of the young.

A few stood apart. Styx answered Zeus's call against the Titans before any other god and was honored with the oath of the gods — no vow sworn on her waters could be broken. Metis became Zeus's first wife, and Calypso held Odysseus captive on her island for seven years. But most of the three thousand remained unnamed, presiding spirits of particular waters where the Greeks poured offerings before drawing what they needed.

Witnesses and Companions

The Oceanids appear as a collective in two scenes, and in both they witness divine violence. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, a company of Oceanids was gathering flowers with Persephone in a meadow when Hades burst from the earth and seized her — Leucippe, Phaino, Electra, Ianthe among them, helpless as the ground opened and closed and the girl vanished.

In Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, the Oceanids form the chorus. They fly to the Caucasus on winged chariots, having heard the ring of the hammer from their sea caves. Their father Oceanus arrives separately to counsel submission, then departs when Prometheus refuses. His daughters stay. They spend the play grieving with Prometheus and urging a caution he refuses to hear. At the play's end, Hermes orders them to leave before Prometheus is swallowed into the earth. They refuse. They sink into the ground at his side, choosing his punishment over their own safety.