(As I devote myself to Iris as my patroness, She's encouraged me to reach out to Her family. I figured Her mother is a wonderful place to start. I wasnt entirely sure how to do the citing, so if anyone has any better-formatted ideas let me know haha.)
Elektra (lit. "amber," from êlektron) was an Okeanid-nymph, the daughter of Okeanos and Tethys. [1] Okeanos was the great river that encircled the entire world, and the father of the many river gods and naiades. As he became associated with saltwater as well as freshwater, his daughters were as well. Tethys was a sea titaness, said to be the nurse of Hera. [2]
The Theoi Project suggests her name denotes her role as one of the nephelai, cloud nymphs, specifically over amber-trimmed clouds. [3] Her name could hypothetically be connected to the epithet Elektor, often translated as beaming/radiant, used of Helios. [4]
Elektra is also listed as one of the many Okeanids which accompanied Kore-Persephone before her abduction. [1]
She was the mother of the Harpyiai and Iris by Thaumas, first mentioned in Hesiod's Theogony. [1, 5] There are various names for the Harpyiai. Both Apollodorus and Hesiod name them Okypete and Aello, though Apollodorus also names a third named Nikothoe or Aellopos. Hyginus names for them varies in his work, as he names an Aellopos, Ocypete, Calaeno, and Podarke (though not all at once; they are typically listed as three). [5]
Hyginus calls her another name, Ozomene (lit. strong branches/branching), perhaps connected to the rainbow. [6]
In the Dionysiaca, she is the mother (with Thaumas) of only Iris and a river god, Hydaspes (a personification of the modern Jhelum river). [7]
However the most interesting child listed, to me, is the goddess Arke, attested only by Ptolemy Hephaestion. [8] During the Titanomachy, Arke was the sister of Iris, daughter of Thaumas (and assumedly Elektra), who sided with the titans and became their messenger. Zeus punished her by stripping her wings and throwing her into Tartaros. He gives this as an explanation of Achilles' epithet podarkes (swift-footed).
Okeanids are primordial nymphs which rarely feature in cult, and are often portrayed as kourotrophoi (protectors of the young) in both myth and cult. [9] With Okeanos gaining a saltwater association, the Okeanids were prayed to by sailors wishing safe travel, just like the Nereids. [10]
I thought I would list out some UPG and ways to worship her, in case anyone else was interested in her as well.
Domain:
Freshwater (rivers, streams, ponds, creeks, etc)
Saltwater (though I personally associate her more with freshwater)
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Styx is often referred to as Oceanus and Tethys’ eldest daughter, but do you know a source stating she is his eldest child? Narrative-wise it makes sense she is his favorite by seniority, but I think some of the Potamoi are older than her, since we have Asterion, a river god, whose children became Hera’s nurses
Also a bonus question if you know: Do River-goddesses and Oceanids have a distinction? Theoi.com does a thing of placing Lethe at the Potamoi section and not at the Oceanid section, since she is technically a river, but the Potamoi are notably called “sons” (unless Lethe was actually trans, which isn’t possible at all by old accounts but fun to think about)
I only know of her being oldest of all the daughters of Okeanos, as Hesiod calls her: "terrible Styx, eldest daughter of backflowing Ocean." (δεινὴ Στύξ, θυγάτηρ ἀψορρόου Ὠκεανοῖο πρεσβυτάτη), πρεσβυτάτη being a world that can mean both eldest in age or most revered, most honoured.
Personally I think that the best contenders for the title of eldest child of Okeanos are Styx herself and Acheloos. She because Hesiod says that Okeanos gave her a whole tenth of his waters and it makes sense for me (and feels less awkward) if he would have done so out of enthusiasm for the birth of his first child and since he did not yet have other offspring to consider; him because Acheloos seems to have been considered an especially important river, greatest/mightiest after Okeanos himself, as in this passage from Iliad 21: "And as Zeus is a greater god than the gods of the sea-bound rivers, so is his offspring greater than a river’s child. Now a great river washes your feet, but cannot save you, for none can fight a scion of Zeus. Not even Achelous vies with him or the mighty and deep-flowing Ocean, source of the rivers and the sea, the springs and the deep wells: even he fears Zeus’ lightning, when dread thunder crashes from the sky." His name is sometimes used to refer to water in general, in the Derveni Papyrus Zeus recreates Okeanos and after him Acheloos, and it seems that the historian Ephoros of Kyme and the mythographer Akousilaos of Argos referred to this river as most ancient and honoured among the 3000 sons of Okeanos. I guess Acheloos and Styx could be twins, why not?
As I discuss at more length elsewhere, I believe Okeanos and Tethys to be the eldest Titans and to have started having children long before any of their other siblings did, but even without that interpretation I find it quite likely that many of their river sons and Okeanid daughters are actually closer in age to their aunts and uncles than to their cousins. So Asterion (assuming that he is a son of Okeanos) being younger than Styx and nevertheless being the father of Hera's nurses would still make sense to me.
River goddesses seem exceedingly rare. I can't even think of any others besides Styx and Lethe. Female water divinities usually seem to be springs, wells and the like, or to have their dwelling in the sea in the rarer instances when they aren't deities of fresh water. So the major difference between river goddesses and Okeanids is that the latter are in their vast majority not rivers, with the notable exception of Styx (since Lethe is never as far as I know called a daughter of Okeanos).
Me just imagining the titans as 1000s of years older than Kronos who's more or less the equivalent of a 10 year old when he murders Uranus and becomes king. Que having nieces and nephews who are bigger and older than him for shenanigans sake. Kronos skipping meeting to play in dirt and Rhea dragging him to give him a bath. Also having the Oceanids babysitting him. And everyone telling stories of young Kronos while splutters and looks annoyed is just hilarious.
Lmao, just imagining small Kronos who kicked his dad's ass getting bored with meetings and leaving mid meeting- it would be so funny.
Chorus of Okeanids: Never, oh never, immortal Fates, may you see me the partner of the bed of Zeus, and may I be wedded to no bridegroom who descends to me from heaven. … When marriage is on equal terms, in my opinion it is no cause for dread; so never may the love of the mightier gods cast on me its irresistible glance. That would indeed be a war that cannot be fought, a source of resourceless misery; and I do not know what would be my fate, for I do not see how I could escape the designs of Zeus. - Aischylos, Prometheus Bound 895-906
For whatever reason, Persephone has a lot of connections with the Okeanids, more than any other goddess.
In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, they appear as her companions with whom she is picking flowers before her abduction (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 5), and after she is reunited with her mother Persephone even lists each of them by name (418–423); in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodoros 1.3.1, Styx is mentioned as Persephone's mother by Zeus; in Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae, the Okeanid Electra is Proserpina's nurse: "Electra, loving nurse of Proserpine, best known among the old Nymphs of Ocean; she who loved Proserpine as did Ceres. ‘Twas she who, when Proserpine had left her cradle, would bear her in her loving bosom and bring the little girl to mighty Jove and set her to play on her father’s knee. She was her companion, her guardian, and could be deemed her second mother." And then there is Daeira, a very elusive figure connected with the Eleusinian Mysteries. According to Pausanias (Description of Greece 1.38.7) she was a daughter of Okeanos and mother of Eleusis, and Pherekydes calls her the sister of Styx. Her identity is far from fixed though and she can be identified with a whole lot of goddesses, but most frequently she is associated with Persephone in one way or another.
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Given that in Kallimachos hymn to her Artemis asks for 60 daughters of Okeanos who are all 9 years of age to be her choir, I imagine that Tethys casually gives birth to dozens of children at a time and that being pregnant with a single baby almost never happens to her.
We know from Hesiod that Styx is the oldest daughter of Okeanos, but are we ever told anything else about the birth order of the Okeanides in other sources? We are, by Kallimachos who says: „Neda, eldest of the nymphs who then were about [Rhea's] bed, earliest birth after Styx and Philyra.” (Kallimachos, Hymn 1. To Zeus)
So it is agreed that Styx is the eldest, followed, in this account at least, by Philyra (consort of Kronos) and Neda (nurse of Zeus). These two names don't appear in Hesiod's catalogue of daughters of Okeanos and Tethys, but Hesiod himself says that there are 3000 Okeanides out of which he only mentions around 40. And I suppose it is also possible (if unlikely) for them to be daughters of Okeanos by someone other than Tethys
“In mainstream Greek myth, Okeanos is conceived of as a freshwater stream surrounding the whole of the earth, and the source of all streams and rivers as well as the sea. (Hes. Th. 337-70; Il. 21.1957, 18.607-8). The sun and the stars, the thirsty Bear excepted, rise and set in the bath of Okeanos (Il. 7.422, 8.485, 18.240; Od. 5.275, 19.434, 23.244, 347, etc.); the idea of the sun returning to the east in Okeanos' stream during the night is also early (Eumel. fr. 10 West, Mimn. fr. 12, Stesich. PMGF 185). Hesiod (Th. 133-6) makes Okeanos and Tethys ordinary Titans, children of Ouranos and Gaia. As mentioned above, however, an intriguing line in the Iliad (1+201 = 302) suggests an alternative theogony, according to which Okeanos and Tethys were the original parents; . . . The notion of the primeval 'waters comes to Greece ultimately from Mesopotamia. At the very beginning of the Babylonian epic Enūma Eliš, Apsu (fresh water) unites with Tiamat (the sea) to produce Anu (Sky) and Ea (Earth). The idea is found also in Genesis 1, where God separates the waters as the first step in creation, and in all versions of the creation story throughout the Near East and in Hesiod, 'the first separation [is] anthropomorphized as a quarrel . . . between either Sky and Earth, or the aquatic parents of Sky and Earth' (Janko, on Il. 14.200-7). "Tethys name could even be derived from that of Tiamat, and a Semitic derivation has also been suggested for Okeanos;" that Pherekydes of Syros calls him Ogenos also suggests that the name is a loan-word. We have seen that an Orphic theogony reflected in Plato's Timaios puts Okeanos and Tethys in their own generation after Ouranos and Ge, as parents of the Titans; and at Krat. 402b Plato quotes an Orphic couplet (fr. 15) in which Okeanos and Tethys were 'first to marry', a notion which must also reflect their status as alternatives to Ouranos and Ge. . . .
The children of Okeanos mentioned in our corpus are mostly daughters: Hesione, wife of Prometheus and mother of Deukalion (Akous. fr. 34); Europe and Thraike, daughters of Okeanos by Parthenope, and Asia and Libye, daughters by Pompholyge (Andron fr. 7); Styx (Epimen. fr. 7); Seirenes by Ge (Epimen. fr. 8, suppl.); Rhodos (Epimen. fr. 11); Ephyra wife of Epimetheus (Eumel. fr. 1); Perseis (Hek. fr. 35A); Daeira, sister of Styx (Pher. fr. 45); Philyra, mother of Cheiron (Pher. fr. 50); Peitho, wife of Argos (Pher. fr. 66); Aithra, wife of Atlas (Pher. fr. 9). Of sons, we hear of Triptolemos, son by Ge (Pher. fr. 53); possibly also the text of Apollodoros should be emended so that Asopos is a son of Okeanos in Akous. fr. 21. In Archaic poetry rivers are sons of Okeanos, springs are daughters. The names of the latter therefore often suggest qualities associated with water; however, because they are kourotrophoi (Th. 347), their names sometimes connote wealth, bounty, or desirable moral and intellectual qualities: e.g. Plouto, Tyche, Idyia, Metis, Melobosis, Peitho (if not rather an erotic association), Eurynome. Their generally benevolent and sympathetic nature is on display in the Prometheus Bound, whose chorus they form, and in vase painting where they are companions of Persephone at her unfortunate abduction.”
- Early Greek Mythography: Volume 2: Commentary by Robert Louis Fowler
