Nereus

The eldest child of Sea

Nereus is one of the oldest gods of the sea. The early Greek poet Hesiod makes him the first child of Pontus, the Sea, and Gaia, the Earth. His brothers and sisters are Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia. This generation shapes the sea long before the Olympian gods draw lots to share out the world and Poseidon receives the sea as his kingdom.

Age is part of who Nereus is from the start. Hesiod says people call him the Old Man because he is gentle, trustworthy and mindful of what is right. He is truthful and never lies. He remembers the laws of the gods, and his thoughts are just and kind.

The title does not make him the only old man of the sea. Homer uses similar words for Phorcys, and another sea god, Proteus, fits the same type. What sets Nereus apart is the moral reason Hesiod gives for the name.

The daughters of Nereus

Nereus marries Doris, a daughter of Oceanus. Together they have 50 daughters, the Nereids. Hesiod lists them by name. Among them are Thetis, Amphitrite, Galatea and Psamathe, and many of the names describe the movement and appearance of the sea.

Few stories about Nereus himself survive. Through his daughters, though, his family enters some of the largest stories in Greek myth. Amphitrite becomes Poseidon’s wife and shares his sanctuary, a sacred place of worship, on the island of Tinos. Thetis marries the mortal Peleus and becomes the mother of the hero Achilles. She protects him, and she persuades Zeus to change the course of the Trojan War.

Nereus himself often stands behind these better-known stories.

The god who must be held

One story shows how hard his knowledge is to reach. It comes from Apollodorus, whose book, the Library, retells the Greek myths.

The hero Heracles is searching for the golden apples of the Hesperides, whose garden lies at the edge of the world. He comes to the nymphs of the river Eridanus, and they tell him where to find Nereus. Heracles waits until the sea god is asleep and seizes him. Nereus changes into one shape after another, but Heracles will not let go.

Apollodorus does not list the shapes. What matters is that Heracles holds on. Nereus knows the way to the garden, but one question will not get it from him. Heracles has to hold a god who keeps changing until the god speaks.

This scene puts into action the qualities Hesiod describes. Once Nereus is forced to answer, his answer can be trusted. The hard part is stopping him from escaping before he gives it.

Nereus at the wedding on Pelion

When Thetis marries Peleus, the gods hold the celebration on Mount Pelion. The Greek poet Pindar describes the scene. The Muses, goddesses of song, sing on the mountain, Apollo leads them with his lyre, and the gods give the mortal bridegroom gifts.

Nereus belongs to the Pelion story by more than family, because early Greek art places him at the wedding itself. The François Vase, a painted pot from the sixth century BC, shows the gods walking in a procession towards Peleus and Thetis, each figure labelled with a name. Nereus and Doris walk beside Athena’s chariot. The old sea god has white hair and a beard. He turns back towards the goddesses and points the way to the wedding. On the vase, the bride’s parents take part instead of remaining names in a family tree.

A household beneath the water

In the Iliad, Homer’s epic poem about the Trojan War, the wedding is long past and Achilles is a grown warrior. When his friend Patroclus is killed, Achilles cries out on the shore at Troy. Thetis hears him from the depths of the sea, where she sits beside her old father. Her sisters gather around her until their bright cave is full. Then they follow her through water that parts before them.

Nereus stays below while the Nereids go to Achilles. He does not speak in the scene, but it shows the household of the gods: a father and his daughters living beneath the waves, from where grief travels to the battlefield of mortals. Later Thetis sends her sisters back to their father’s house while she goes to the god Hephaestus for new armour for her son.

Pelion and the sources

The Roman poet Catullus gives another version of the father’s consent. He says Thetis’s father approved her marriage to Peleus. His poem does not set the wedding on Pelion by itself. Pindar provides the Greek setting, and the earlier vase provides Nereus’s place in the procession.

So the link to Pelion depends on reading these sources together. No surviving line says that Nereus stood on Pelion. One tradition sets the wedding of the gods on the mountain. A second, from the same early period, shows the labelled father of the bride walking towards it. Nereus usually stays under the water while his daughters act, and here he is seen in the open.