Oceanus
Oceanus in the Trevi Fountain, Rome
Titan of Water, Seas, Lakes, Rivers, Oceans, Streams and Ponds
Abode	Arcadia
Symbol	Ocean, Sea and Waters
Consort	Tethys
Parents	Uranus and Gaia[1]
Siblings	Tethys, Cronus, Rhea, Theia, Hyperion, Themis, Crius, Mnemosyne, Coeus, Phoebe, Iapetus, The Cyclopes and The Hundred-Handers
Children	Thetis, Metis, Amphitrite, Dodone, Pleione, Neda, Nephele, Amphiro and the Other Oceanids and Inachus, Amnisos and the Other Potamoi

Oceanus ( /oʊˈsiːənəs/; Ancient Greek: Ὠκεανός (Ōkeanós)^[2]; pronounced [ɔːkeanós]) was a pseudo-geographical feature in classical antiquity, believed by the ancient Greeks and Romans to be the World Ocean, an enormous river encircling the world.

Strictly speaking, Oceanus was the ocean-stream at the Equator in which floated the habitable hemisphere (οἰκουμένη, oikoumene).^[3] In Greek mythology, this world-ocean was personified as a Titan, a son of Uranus and Gaia. In Hellenistic and Roman mosaics, this Titan was often depicted as having the upper body of a muscular man with a long beard and horns (often represented as the claws of a crab) and the lower body of a serpent (cf. Typhon). On a fragmentary archaic vessel of circa 580 BC (British Museum 1971.11-1.1), among the gods arriving at the wedding of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis, is a fish-tailed Oceanus, with a fish in one hand and a serpent in the other, gifts of bounty and prophecy. In Roman mosaics, such as that from Bardo (illustration below) he might carry a steering-oar and cradle a ship.

Some scholars believe that Oceanus originally represented all bodies of salt water, including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, the two largest bodies known to the ancient Greeks. However, as geography became more accurate, Oceanus came to represent the stranger, more unknown waters of the Atlantic Ocean (also called the "Ocean Sea"), while the newcomer of a later generation, Poseidon, ruled over the Mediterranean.

Oceanus' consort is his sister Tethys, and from their union came the ocean nymphs, also known as the three-thousand Oceanids, and all the rivers of the world, fountains, and lakes.^[4] From Cronus, of the race of Titans, the Olympian gods have their birth, and Hera mentions twice in Iliad book XIV her intended journey "to the ends of the generous earth on a visit to Oceanus, whence the gods have risen, and Tethys our mother who brought me up kindly in their own house."^[5]

In most variations of the war between the Titans and the Olympians, or Titanomachy, Oceanus, along with Prometheus and Themis, did not take the side of his fellow Titans against the Olympians, but instead withdrew from the conflict. In most variations of this myth, Oceanus also refused to side with Cronus in the latter's revolt against their father, Uranus.

Excerpts from Hesiod and Homer[link]

This excerpt regards Oceanus's role in the Titanomachy:

After the first Dionysus [Zagreus] had been slaughtered, Father Zeus ... attacked the mother of the Titanes [Gaia the Earth] with avenging brand, and shut up the murderers of horned Dionysus [the Titans dismembered the godling Zagreus] within the gate of Tartarus [after a long war]: the trees blazed, the hair of suffering Gaia (Earth) was scorched with heat . . . Now Okeanos poured rivers of tears from his watery eyes, a libation of suppliant prayer. Then Zeus claimed his wrath at the sight of the scorched earth; he pitied her, and wished to wash with water the ashes of ruin and the fiery wounds of the land. Then Rainy Zeus covered the whole sky with clouds and flooded all the earth [in the Great Deluge of Deukalion].

—Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6. 155 ff^[1]

In the Iliad, the rich iconography of Achilles' shield, which was fashioned by Hephaestus, is enclosed, as the world itself was believed to be, by Oceanus:

Then, running round the shield-rim, triple-ply,
he pictured all the might of the Ocean stream.

When Odysseus and Nestor walk together along the shore of the sounding sea (Iliad IX.182) their prayers are addressed "to the great Sea-god who girdles the world." It is to Oceanus, not to Poseidon, that their thoughts are directed.

Invoked in passing by poets and figured as the father of rivers and streams, thus the progenitor of river gods, Oceanus appears only once in myth, as a representative of the archaic world that Heracles constantly threatened and bested.^[6] Heracles forced the loan from Helios of his golden bowl, in order to cross the wide expanse of the Ocean on his trip to the Hesperides. When Oceanus tossed the bowl, Heracles threatened him and stilled his waves. The journey of Heracles in the sun-bowl upon Oceanus was a favored theme among painters of Attic pottery.

In cosmography[link]

Oceanus, at right, with scaly tail, in the Gigantomachy of the Pergamon Altar.

Oceanus appears in Hellenic cosmography as well as myth. Cartographers continued to represent the encircling equatorial stream much as it had appeared on Achilles' shield.^[7]

Though Herodotus was skeptical about the physical existence of Oceanus, he rejected snowmelt as a cause of the annual flood of the Nile river; according to his translator and interpreter, Livio Catullo Stecchini, he left unsettled the question of an equatorial Nile, since the geography of Sub-Saharan Africa was unknown to him.

Apollonius of Rhodes calls the lower Danube the Keras Okeanoio (Gulf or Horn of Oceanus) in Argonautica (IV. 282).

Accion (Ocean) in the fourth century Gaulish Latin of Rufus Avienus', Ora maritima, was applied to great lakes.^[8]

Both Homer (Odyssey, XII. 1) and Hesiod (Theogonia, v.242. 959) refer to Okeanos Potamos, the "Ocean Stream",

Hecateus of Abdera writes that the Oceanus of the Hyperboreans is neither the Arctic Ocean nor Western Ocean, but the sea located to the north of the ancient Greek world, called "the most admirable of all seas" by Herodotus (lib. IV 85), called the "immense sea" by Pomponius Mela (lib. I. c. 19) and by Dionysius Periegetes (Orbis Descriptio, v. 165), and which is named Mare majus on medieval geographic maps.

At the end of the Okeanos Potamos, is the holy island of Alba (Leuke, Pytho Nisi, Isle of Snakes), sacred to the Pelasgian (and later, Greek) Apollo, greeting the sun rising in the east. Hecateus of Abdera refers to Apollo's island from the region of the Hyperboreans, in the Oceanus. It was on Leuke, in one version of his legend, that the hero Achilles, in a hilly tumulus, was buried (to this day, one of the mouths of the Danube is called Chilia). Leto, the Hyperborean goddess, after nine days and nine nights of labour on the island of Delos (Pelasgian for hill, related to tell) "gave birth to the great god of the antique light" (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, I. 4.1). Old Romanian folk songs sing of a white monastery on a white island with nine priests, nine singers, nine altars, on a part of the Black Sea known as the White Sea.^[9]

Genealogy of the Olympians in Greek mythology[link]

See also[link]

• Oceanid
• Ogyges
• Rasā

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Karl Kerenyi. The Gods of the Greeks. Thames and Hudson, 1951.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Oceanus

• Livio Catullo Stecchini, "Ancient Cosmology"
• Theoi Project - Okeanos

David Arkenstone is an American New Age musician. His music is primarily instrumental, with occasional vocalizations. He was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 1, 1952. He has three children—Quillon, Dashiell and Valinor—with his first wife, Julie.^[1][2] His second wife was Diane Arkenstone, also a musician.^[3]

Biography[link]

After moving from Chicago to California at the age of ten,^[4] he was involved in various high school bands playing guitars and keyboards, playing baseball in his spare time. He studied music in college and started a progressive rock band named after himself, but he soon discovered the music of Kitaro and was heavily influenced by it. Arkenstone was influenced by writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien and Ian Fleming, and grew up listening to bands like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Deep Purple and Yes, as well as listening to classical music.^[1]

Arkenstone went solo and found his own sound in New Age music. Arkenstone says that has been greatly aided by technology: "Technology has produced some wonderful tools for making music. The computer allows me to fully orchestrate my pieces and really fine tune them."^[5] His music is primarily instrumental. His albums, often fantasy themed, often come packaged with literature and art. He worked with fantasy novel writer Mercedes Lackey on a few of his albums.^[6] Arkenstone and his ex-wife, Diane, created their own record label called Neo Pacifica. In addition to releasing their own music on the label, they have included other bands such as Earth Trybe, Enaid, and the Marquis Ensemble.^[1]

He has also composed music for television; channels such as the History Channel, the Discovery Channel and NBC Sports include his music. He has also written music for trailers and film soundtracks, including the independent film PRISM,^[7] as well as computer game soundtracks such as World of Warcraft, Lands of Lore 2 and 3, Blade Runner, Earth and Beyond, and Emperor: Battle for Dune; he also features on 20 Years of Narada Piano.

Arkenstone earned three Grammy nominations for his work: In the Wake of the Wind in 1992,^[8] Citizen of the World in 2000,^[9] and Atlantis in 2004.^[10]

Arkenstone has learned to play a large variety of musical instruments including the bouzouki, mandolin, guitar, bass guitar, harp, cello, flute, electronic keyboards, piano, Turkish saz, pennywhistle, melodica and pan pipes. He also plays drums and percussion and has performed some vocalizations on his albums.^[1]

Arkenstone is also involved in the band Troika; their sound is similar to his solo work. The band members like to remain anonymous, although the compositions are credited to Arkenstone.

His theme "The Journey Begins / Kyla's Ride" was used for the FIFA World Cup France '98 broadcastings intro by the Mexican television network TV Azteca.

He signed with Domo Records and re-released the album Echoes of Light and Shadow in 2010.

Arkenstone was a member of the composing team who developed the music for Blizzard Activision's World of Warcraft videogame'sCataclysm expansion. Along with Arkenstone, the team consists of Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, and Neal Acree.^[11]

Discography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Official Page on Domo Records
• Domo Records
• Narada

Ralph Towner
Background information
Birth name	Ralph Towner
Born	(1940-03-01) 1 March 1940 (age 72)
Origin	Chehalis, Washington
Genres	Jazz, classical, folk, world
Occupations	Guitarist
Instruments	12-string guitar, classical guitar, piano
Labels	ECM Records
Associated acts	Oregon, Weather Report Gary Burton, Gary Peacock Jan Garbarek
Website	http://www.ralphtowner.com/

Ralph Towner (b. Chehalis, Washington, March 1, 1940) is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and bandleader. He plays the twelve-string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion and trumpet.^[1]

Biography[link]

Born in 1940 in Chehalis, Washington, Towner has made notable recordings of jazz, classical music, folk music, and world music. He began his career as a conservatory-trained classical pianist, who picked up guitar in his senior year in college, then joined world music pioneer Paul Winter's "Consort" ensemble in the late 1960s. Along with bandmates Paul McCandless, Glen Moore, and Collin Walcott, Towner left the Winter Consort in 1970 to form the group Oregon, which over the course of the 1970s issued a number of highly influential records mixing folk music, Indian classical forms, and avant-garde jazz-influenced free improvisation. At the same time, Towner began a longstanding relationship with the influential ECM record label, which has released virtually all of his non-Oregon recordings since his 1972 debut as a leader Trios / Solos. Towner has also made numerous appearances as a sideman, perhaps most famously on jazz fusion heavyweights Weather Report's 1972 album I Sing the Body Electric.

Unlike most jazz guitarists, Towner eschews amplification, using only 6-string nylon-string and 12-string steel-string guitars. As a result, he tends to avoid high-volume musical environments, preferring small groups of mostly acoustic instruments that emphasize dynamics and group interplay. Towner also obtains a percussive effect (e.g., "Donkey Jamboree" from Slideshow with Gary Burton) from the guitar by weaving a matchbook among the strings at the neck of the instrument. Both with Oregon and as a solo artist, Towner has made significant use of overdubbing, allowing him to play piano (or synthesizer) and guitar on the same track; his most notable use of the technique came on his 1974 album Diary, in which he plays guitar-piano duets with himself on most of the album's 8 tracks. In the 1980s, Towner began using the Prophet V synthesizer fairly extensively, but has since deemphasized his synthesizer and piano playing in favor of guitar.

Born into a musical family, his mother a piano teacher and his father a trumpet player, Towner learned to improvise on the piano at the age of three. He started trumpet lessons at the age of five, but did not take up guitar until attending the University of Oregon, where he also studied composition with Homer Keller. He first played jazz in New York City in the late 1960s as a pianist and was strongly influenced by the renowned jazz pianist Bill Evans. He began improvising on classical and 12-string guitars in the late 1960s/early 1970s; formed alliances with musicians who had worked with Evans, including flautist Jeremy Steig, bassists Eddie Gomez, Marc Johnson, Gary Peacock, and drummer Jack DeJohnette;

Towner now lives in Rome, Italy.

Discography[link]

• Trios / Solos (ECM, 1972) — with Glen Moore
• Diary (ECM, 1974)
• Matchbook (ECM, 1975) - with Gary Burton
• Solstice (ECM, 1975)
• Sargasso Sea (ECM, 1976) — with John Abercrombie
• Solstice/Sound and Shadows (ECM, 1977)
• Batik (ECM, 1978)
• Old Friends, New Friends (ECM, 1979)
• Solo Concert (ECM, 1979)
• Five Years Later (ECM, 1982) - with John Abercrombie
• Blue Sun (ECM, 1983)
• Slide Show (ECM, 1986) - with Gary Burton
• City of Eyes (ECM, 1989)
• Open Letter (ECM, 1992)
• Oracle (ECM, 1994) - with Gary Peacock
• A Closer View (ECM, 1995 [1998]) - with Gary Peacock
• Lost and Found (ECM, 1996)
• Ana (ECM, 1997)
• If Summer Had Its Ghosts (1997) - with Bill Bruford & Eddie Gomez
• Anthem (ECM, 2001)
• Time Line (ECM, 2006)
• From a Dream (Material, 2008) - with Slava Grigoryan and Wolfgang Muthspiel
• Chiaroscuro (ECM, 2009) - with Paolo Fresu

With Oregon

1- OUR FIRST RECORD (1970 recorded in 1980)

2- MUSIC OF ANOTHER PRESENT ERA (1973)

3- DISTANT HILLS (1973)

4- WINTER LIGHT (1974)

5- IN CONCERT (1975)

6- TOGHETER (with Elvin Jones) (1976)

7- FRIENDS (1977)

8- VIOLIN (with Zbigniew Seifert) (1978)

9- OUT OF THE WOODS (1978)

10- MOON AND MIND (1979)

11- ROOTS IN THE SKY (1979)

12- IN PERFORMANCE (1980)

13- ESSENTIAL (Collectanea) (1981)

14- OREGON (1983)

15- CROSSING (1985)

16- ECOPATIA (1987)

17- 45th PARALLEL (1989)

18- ALWAYS, NEVER AND FOREVER (1992)

19- TROIKA (1993)

20- BEYOND WORDS (Collectanea) (1995)

21- NORTHWEST PASSAGE (1997)

22- A MIDSUMMER NIGHT DREAM (1998)

23- OREGON IN MOSCOW(with orchestra)(2000)

24- LIVE AT YOSHI’S (2002)

25- PRIME (2005)

26- THE GLIDE (2005)

27- VANGURD VISIONARIES(Collectanea)(2007)

28- 1000 KILOMETERS (2007)

29- IN STRIDE (2010)

As sideman[link]

With Egberto Gismonti

• Sol Do Meio Dia (ECM, 1978)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ralph Towner's Official Website
• Ralph Towner on ECM Records
• Ralph Towner interview by Anil Prasad from Innerviews
• Ralph Towner interview by Anil Prasad from Frets
• Ralph Towner guitar tabs
• Guitar Player magazine interview.
• Ralph Towner on NPR, 2006
• Home Page Bio
• Music Guide Bio