Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Nereus, called the Old Man of the Sea, is son of Pontus (and, in Hesiod, of Gaia with him). He is truthful, unerring, gentle, and mindful of justice—remembering what is lawful and knowing the deep’s counsel. By the Oceanid Doris he fathers the Nereids, fifty sea-nymphs who dwell in the wine-dark deep and dance in its halls. Hesiod names them in a formal catalogue: Proto, Eucrante, Sao, Amphitrite, Eudora, Thetis, Galene, Glauce, Cymothoe, Speo, Thoe, Halie, Pasithea, Erato, Eunice, Melite, Eulimene, Agaue, Doto, Proto (again in tradition’s lists), Pherusa, Dynamene, Nesaie, Actaea, Protomedeia, Doris, Panope, Galatea, Hippothoe, Hipponoe, Cymodoce, Cymo, Eione, Halimede, Glauconome, Pontoporeia, Liagore, Euagore, Laomedeia, Polynoe, Autonoe, Lysianassa, Euarne, Psamathe, Menippe, Neso, Eupompe, Themisto, Pronoe, Nemertes—and Nemertes has her father’s mind. Apollodorus preserves a matching list with small name-variants (Amphitrite married to Poseidon; Thetis foremost in epic; Galatea of later Sicilian romance; Psamathe mother of Phocus). Homer’s mourning scene on the shore of Troy gathers Thetis’s sisters by name as they rise to comfort her, confirming the Nereids as a living epic chorus, not only a theogonic table. The catalogue’s work is genealogical and cultic: Amphitrite becomes Poseidon’s queen; Thetis, married against her will to Peleus, bears Achilles; other Nereids attach to local shores and fishermen’s prayers. Nereus himself appears as a shape-shifting, truth-telling sea-elder whom Heracles wrestles for the road to the Hesperides (03/027). Catalogue father and daughters here as Hesiod’s and Apollodorus’s sea-nymph host—the Pontic counterpart to Oceanus’s Oceanids.