TETHYS MOTHER OF CREATION, NURSE OF HERA

[GateKeeper]

Homer, Iliad 14. 200 ff (trans. Lattimore) (Greek epic C8th B.C.) :
"[Hera addresses Aphrodite :] Since I go now to the ends of the generous earth on a visit to Okeanos, whence the gods have risen, and Tethys our mother who brought me up kindly in their own house, and cared for me and took me from Rheia, at that time when Zeus of the wide brows drove Kronos underneath the earth and the barren water. I shall go to visit these, and resolve their division of discord, since now for a long time they have stayed apart from each other and from the bed of love, since rancour has entered their feelings. Could I win over with persuasion the dear heart within them and bring them back to their bed to be merged in love with each other I shall be forever called honoured by them, and beloved."

Homer, Iliad 14. 300 ff :
"[Hera addresses Zeus :] I [Hera] am going to the ends of the generous earth, on a visit to Okeanos, whence the gods have risen, and Tethys our mother, who brought me up kindly in their own house, and cared for me. I shall go to visit these, and resolve their division of discord, since now for a long time they have stayed apart from each other and from the bed of love, since rancour has entered their feelings."

Plato, Theaetetus 152e (trans. Fowler) (Greek philosopher C4th B.C.) :
"And on this subject [i.e. that all things are derived from flow and motion] all the philosophers . . . may be marshalled in one line--Protagoras and Herakleitos and Empedokles--and the chief poets in the two kinds of poetry, Epikharmos, in comedy, and in tragedy, Homer, who, in the line `Oceanus the origin of the gods, and Tethys their mother,' has said that all things are the offspring of flow and motion."

Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 5. 395 ff (trans. Way) (Greek epic C4th A.D.) :
"Hera, even then returned to Olympos back from Tethys, unto whom but yester-morn she went [i.e. in the last days of the Trojan War]."

Nonnus, Dionysiaca 23. 280 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"Tethys! Agemate and bedmate of Okeanos, ancient as the world, nurse of commingled waters, selfborn, loving mother of children."


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