Wonderful Long-Lived Nymphs In Greek And Roman Mythologies

A. Sutherland  – AncientPages.com – Nymphs (in Greek “nýmphē”) were long-lived, wonderful female spirits of the natural world who were invisible to mortals but occasionally could be heard by humans. But what did these minor goddesses have in common?

A nymph signed “Blanche Paymal-Amouroux (1860 – 1910)”. Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain

They were divided into Oceanids, Nereids, Naiads, Dryads, Hamadryads, and Oreads, and the domain of all of them was a wilderness known to be rarely modified by human activity. The ocean and the sea were the domain of the Okeanids, the daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys.

According to Hesiod’s “Theogony,” they were parents of six thousand children (three thousand sons, three thousand daughters), the largest single source of nymphs in mythology. The fifty Nereids were offspring of Nereus, an old deity of pre-Olympic origin, and his wife Doris. The Nereids dwelt with their father in the kingdom of the Aegean Sea.

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