Thalassa

Thalassa (/θəˈlæsə/; Greek: Θάλασσα, translit. Thálassa, lit. "sea";^[1] Attic Greek: Θάλαττα, Thálatta^[2]) was the general word for 'sea' and for its divine female personification in Greek mythology. The word may have been of Pre-Greek origin.^[3]

For other uses, see Thalassa (disambiguation).

Mythology[edit]

According to a scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes, the fifth-century BC poet Ion of Chios had Thalassa as the mother of Aegaeon (Briareus, one of the Hecatoncheires).^[4] Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC), in his Bibliotheca historica, states that "Thalatta" is the mother of the Telchines and the sea-nymph Halia,^[5] while in the Orphic Hymn to the Sea, Tethys, who is here equated with Thalassa,^[6] is called the mother of Kypris (Aphrodite).^[7]

The Roman mythographer Hyginus (c. 64 BC – AD 17), in the preface to his Fabulae, calls Mare (Sea, another name for Thalassa)^[8] the daughter of Aether and Dies (Day), and thus the sister of Terra (Earth) and Caelus (Sky).^[9] With her male counterpart Pontus, she spawns the species of fish.^[10]

and Benjamin M. Wolkow, The Orphic Hymns, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4214-0882-8.

Athanassakis, Apostolos N.

Phaedrus, Fables. Translated by Ben Edwin Perry. Loeb Classical Library No. 436. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1965. Online version at Harvard University Press.

Babrius

Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2 vols, Leiden, Brill, 2009. ISBN 978-90-04-17418-4. Online version at Brill.

Beekes, Robert S. P.

Campbell, David A., Greek Lyric, Volume IV: Bacchylides, Corinna, No. 461. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0-674-99508-6. Online version at Harvard University Press.

Loeb Classical Library

Library of History, Volume III: Books 4.59-8, translated by C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library No. 340, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1939. ISBN 978-0-674-99375-4. Online version at Harvard University Press. Online version by Bill Thayer.

Diodorus Siculus

Eraslan, Şehnaz, "Tethys and Thalassa in mosaic art", in Art Sanat, Vol. 4, pp. 1–13. .

PDF

Fabulae in Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, translated, with Introductions by R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Hackett Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-0-87220-821-6. Google Books.

Hyginus, Gaius Julius

Hygini Fabulae, edited by Herbert Jennings Rose, Leiden, Sijthoff, 1934. Online version at Packhum.

Hyginus, Gaius Julius

Lucian of Samosata, from the Greek, with the Comments and Illustrations of Wieland and others, Volume I, translated by William Tooke, London, 1820. Google Books.

Lucian

Morand, Anne-France, Études sur les Hymnes Orphiques, , 2001. ISBN 978-900-4-12030-3. Online version at Brill.

Brill

, revised third edition, Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (editors), Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-860641-9. Internet Archive.

Oxford Classical Dictionary

Silva, Moises, God, Language and Scripture: Reading the Bible in the light of general linguistics, Zondervan, 1990. 978-0-310-87743-1.

ISBN

Wendel, Carl, Scholia in Apollonium Rhodium vetera, Hildesheim, Weidmann, 1999. 978-3-615-15400-9.

ISBN

Media related to Thalassa (mythology) at Wikimedia Commons