- Looks after
- The mountains, as divine beings
Ourea
Οὔρεα
The Ourea are the mountains, born from Gaia without a father, and the first of her children after the sky.
Family at a glance
Ourea is the plural of the Greek word for mountain. Hesiod says Gaia bore the high hills, the pleasant haunts of the goddess nymphs who live among the wooded mountains, before she bore the sea.
He names none of them. In later Greek religion individual mountains had a strong divine character: Olympus as the home of the gods, Helicon as the seat of the Muses, Parnassus as Apollo's, Ida as the place where Zeus was hidden in some accounts. Mount Athos and Mount Cithaeron were also sacred.
The Ourea sit in the family tree as one of the three first children of Gaia, alongside Uranus and Pontus.
In later art and language
English words such as orography and orogeny, about mountains and their formation, come from the related Greek word oros.
The ancient evidence for Ourea is limited, so this page is short on purpose.
Ancient sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 129-130