Tethys

Tethys was a daughter of Uranus and Gaia and an aquatic sea goddess. Tethys was both the sister and wife of Oceanus. She was mother of the chief rivers of the world and had about three thousand daughters called the Oceanides. Considered as an embodiment of the waters of the world, she also may have been seen as a counterpart of Thalassa, the embodiment of the sea.

One of the few representations of Tethys to be identified securely by an accompanying inscription in the Late Antique mosaic from the flooring of a thermae at Antioch, now at Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts after being moved from Dumbarton Oaks. In the bust of Tethys, she is surrounded by fish and is rising, bare-shouldered, from the waters. Against her shoulder rests a golden ship's rudder. Gray wings sprout from her forehead.

During the war against the Titans, Tethys raised and educated Hera as her step-child.

Indicative of the power exercised by Tethys, one myth relates that the prominent goddess of the Olympians, Hera, was not pleased with the placement of Callisto and Arcas in the sky, as the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, so she asked Tethys to help. Tethys caused the constellations to forever circle the sky and never drop below the horizon, hence explaining why they are circumpolar.

Some of Tethys' most notable children are Achelous, Acheron, Alpheus, Amaltheia, Amphitrite, Asia, Asopus, Callirrhoe, Calypso, Catillus, Cebren, Cephissus, Circe, Clymene, Clytia, Crinisus, Dione, Doris, Electra, Enipeus, Eurynome, Inachus, Lysithea, Meliboea, Metis, Nilus, the Oceanides, Peneus, Pleione, Rhode, Scamander, Styx, Telesto, and Tyche.