The goddess Ceto aiding her father Pontus in the mythological war known as the
Gigantomachy — c. 166–156 BC — Gigantomachy Frieze,
Pergamon Altar of Zeus
Ceto was also variously called Crataeis[citation needed] (Κράταιις, Krataiis, from
κραταιίς "mighty") and Trienus[citation needed] (Τρίενος, Trienos, from
τρίενος "within three years"), and was occasionally conflated by scholars with the goddess
Hecate (for whom Crataeis and Trienus are also
epithets).
This goddess should not be confused with the minor
Oceanid also named Ceto, or with various mythological beings referred to as ketos (plural kētē or ketea); this is a general term for "sea monster" in Ancient Greek.[1]
Family
Besides Ceto,
Gaia (Earth) and
Pontus had four other offspring,
Nereus,
Thaumas,
Phorcys and
Eurybia.[2]Hesiod's Theogony lists the children of Ceto and Phorcys as the two
Graiae:
Pemphredo and
Enyo, and the three
Gorgons:
Sthenno,
Euryale, and
Medusa,[3] with their last offspring being an unnamed serpent (later called
Ladon, by
Apollonius of Rhodes) who guards the golden apples.[4] Also according to Hesiod, the half-woman, half-snake
Echidna was born to a "she" who was probably meant by Hesiod to be Ceto, (with Phorcys the likely father); however the "she" might instead refer to the
OceanidCallirhoe.[5] The mythographer
Pherecydes of Athens (5th century BC) has Echidna as the daughter of Phorcys, without naming a mother.[6]
The mythographers
Apollodorus and
Hyginus, each name a third Graiae, as the offspring of Ceto and Phorcys,
Dino and
Persis respectively.[7] Apollodorus and Hyginus also make Ladon the offspring of Echidna and Typhon, rather than Ceto and Phorcys.[8]
The Scholiast on
Apollonius Rhodius cites Phorcys and Ceto as the parents of the
Hesperides, but this assertion is not repeated in other ancient sources.
Homer refers to
Thoosa, the mother of
Polyphemus in the Odyssey, as a daughter of Phorcys, but does not indicate whether Ceto is her mother.
Cult
Pliny the Elder mentions worship of "storied Ceto" at Joppa (now
Jaffa), in a single reference, immediately after his mention of
Andromeda, whom
Perseus rescued from a sea-monster. S. Safrai and M. Stern suggest the possibility that someone at Joppa established a cult of the monster under the name Ceto. As an alternative explanation, they posit that Pliny or his source misread the name cetus—or that of the Syrian goddess
Derceto.[10]
Notes
^"κῆτος" in Liddell, Henry and Robert Scott. 1996. A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised by H.S. Jones and R. McKenzie. Ninth edition, with revised supplement. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
^Hesiod, Theogony270-300. Though
Herbert Jennings Rose says simply that it is "not clear which parents [for Echidna] are meant",
Athanassakis,
p. 44, says that Ceto and Phorcys are the "more likely candidates for parents". The problem arises from the ambiguous referent of the pronoun "she" in Theogony295. While some have read this "she" as referring to Callirhoe (e.g. Smith
s.v. Echidna; Morford, p. 162), according to Clay,
p. 159 n. 32, "the modern scholarly consensus" reads Ceto, see for example Most,
p. 27 n. 16 ("Probably Ceto"); Gantz, p. 22 ("Phorkys and Keto produce Echidna"); Caldwell, pp. 7, 46 lines 295–303 ("presumably Keto"); West, p. 249 line 295 ("probably Keto"); Grimal, s.v. Echidna ("Phorcys and Ceto").
^Hesiod, Theogony326–327. Who is meant as the mother is unclear, the problem arising from the ambiguous referent of the pronoun "she" in line 326 of the Theogony, see Clay,
p.159, note 34
^Colitur illic fabulosa Ceto. Pliny, Book 5, chapter 14, §69; this same paragraph will be referred to as v.14, v.69, V.xiv.69; and v.13 (one of the chapter divisions is missing in some MSS). For Ceto as a transferred name, see Rackham's Loeb translation; for emendations, see The Jewish people in the first century. Historical geography, political history, social, cultural and religious life and institutions. Ed. by S. Safrai and M. Stern in co-operation with D. Flusser and W. C. van Unnik, Vol II, p. 1081, and Oldfather's translation of Pliny (Derceto).
Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes:
ISBN978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1),
ISBN978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).
Hard, Robin (2004), The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004,
ISBN9780415186360.
Google Books.
Rose, Herbert Jennings, "Echidna" in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Hammond and Scullard (editors), Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 1992.
ISBN0-19-869117-3