Nereus

Numen — the primordial Old Man of the Sea, eldest son of Pontus and Gaia, father of the fifty Nereids by the Oceanid Doris. A gentle, truthful shape-shifting sea-prophet; Heracles wrestled him through his metamorphoses to learn the road to the Hesperides. Father of Thetis.

Children

• Thetis

Domains

• sea
• prophecy
• truth

Powers

• Protean shape-shifting
• Infallible prophecy

Epithets

• ἅλιος γέρων grc · halios geron · titlethe Old Man of the SeaHesiod, Theogony 233-236; Homer, Iliad 1.358 (of his daughter Thetis's father) (primary)
• ἀψευδής grc · apseudes · epithetthe unlying, truthful oneHesiod, Theogony 233 (truthful and gentle, who forgets not the laws of right) (primary)

Relations

• father of: ThetisHes. Theog. 240-244; Hom. Il. 1.358 (primary)
• counterpart of: NereusThe hymn addresses this deity in an Orphic ritual context; Greek genealogy is not imported.Orphic Hymns, 22 (Thomas Taylor numbering; modern hymn 23) (primary)

Sources

• existence: Hes. Theog. 233-264; Hom. Il. 18.36-49; Apollod. 2.5.11 (primary)