OCEANUS (Gr. 'Slrceavts)  , in Greek mythology, the greatest of rivers and at the same time a divine personification . Never mingling with the sea which it encloses, according to Homer it has neither source nor mouth . On its southern banks, from east to west, dwell the " blameless Aethiopians " in perfect happiness, and beyond it on the west, in the realms of eternal night, the " Cimmerians," wrapped in fogs and darkness . Here are the grove of Persephone and the entrance of the underworld . Personified, Oceanus is in Hesiod (Theog . 133, 337-370) the son of Uranus and Gaea, the husband of Tethys. father of 3000 streams and 4000 ocean nymphs . In Homer he is the origin of all things, even the father of the gods, and the equal in rank of all of them save Zeus . This conception recurs in the theory of Thales, who made water the first principle of all things . The idea of Oceanus as a river flowing unceasingly round the earth, which was regarded as a flat circle, was of long continuance . Euripides was the first among the tragic poets to speak of it as a sea, but Herodotus before him ridiculed the notion of Oceanus as a river as an invention of the poets and described it as the great world sea . As the geographical knowledge of the Greeks extended, the name was applied to the outer sea (especially the Atlantic) . In art, Oceanus was represented as an old man of noble presence and benevolent expression, with the horns of an ox and sometimes crab's claws on his head .

His attributes are a )itcher, cornucopiae ("

horn of plenty "), rushes, marine animals and a sceptre . On the altar of Pergamum he is depicted taking part in the battle of the giants . Homer, Iliad, i . 423, xiv . 201, 215, xxi . 196; Odyssey, x . 508, xi . 14; Herodotus ii . 23, iv . 8; Euripides, Orestes, 1376; Caesar, Bell . Gall. iii . 7, iv .

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