Oceanus

For the early Greeks the world was a disc and Oceanus was the river that ran round its edge. Homer calls him the origin of the gods and the source of everything. The sun and stars rise from his waters and sink back into them.

Hesiod makes him the eldest of the twelve Titans, and the husband of his sister Tethys. Their children were the three thousand river gods and the three thousand Oceanids, the nymphs of springs and streams. In Apollodorus, Oceanus alone among the Titans refused to join the attack on Uranus.

In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Oceanus visits the chained Prometheus and offers to plead with Zeus for him. Prometheus tells him not to bother.