Eurynome

Pronunciation

Titles and Epithets

As a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, Eurynome was often called an “Oceanid” (Ὠκεανίς, Ōkeanís). One source mentions, rather obscurely, that she was also referred to as “Titanian” (Τιτηνιάς, Titēniás).^[1] But Eurynome was not usually called a Titan in other sources, despite being the daughter of two Titans.

In her cult in the Arcadian town of Phigalia, Eurynome was identified with the Olympian goddess Artemis.^[2]

Origins

In Greek mythology, the Titans and the Olympians were represented as fierce enemies, fighting a ten-year war known as the Titanomachy. But Eurynome belonged to a select group of Titans who were friends with the Olympians. Her parents, despite being Titans, did not fight alongside their brethren during the Titanomachy. Instead, they and their children made the wise choice of supporting Zeus.

When the Titanomachy was over, the Olympians became the new rulers of the cosmos, and the defeated Titans were cast into Tartarus. But the Titans who had helped the Olympians—including Eurynome, her parents, and her siblings—continued to thrive and received great honors under the new regime.

Mother of the Charites

After Zeus came to power, he took many lovers. He was originally married to Eurynome’s sister Metis, and then to the Titan Themis, but those marriages did not last. Eventually, Zeus made his sister Hera his wife and queen. But this did not stop the new ruler of the gods from pursuing numerous affairs with mortals and immortals alike.

One of Zeus' early divine lovers was Eurynome. In the Theogony, the poet Hesiod describes how

Eurynome, the daughter of Ocean, beautiful in form, bore [Zeus] three fair-cheeked Charites (Graces), Aglaea, and Euphrosyne, and lovely [Thalia], from whose eyes as they glanced flowed love that unnerves the limbs: and beautiful is their glance beneath their brows.^[9]

Their daughters, the Charites, were goddesses who represented and personified beauty, happiness, and abundance. Hesiod knew of three Charites: Aglaea (“Radiance”), Euphrosyne (“Joy”), and Thalia (“Flowering”). But other goddesses were also referred to as Charites, including the Homeric deities Pasithea^[10] and Charis.^[11] The Charites lived on Mount Olympus with Himerus, the personification of desire.12

Though Hera was usually vengeful and cruel towards her husband’s illegitimate children, she does not seem to have been jealous of the Charites. In fact, Hera even allowed her son Hephaestus to marry one of them, the fair Aglaea.^[13]

Eurynome and Hephaestus

In one myth, Hephaestus was cast out of Olympus by his mother Hera, who was ashamed of his deformed, crippled body. Badly hurt, he was found by Eurynome, his mother-in-law, and Thetis, one of the Nereids who eventually became the mother of Achilles. The two goddesses took Hephaestus in and nursed him back to health. Because of this kindness, Hephaestus always loved and honored both Eurynome and Thetis.^[14]

An Alternate Cosmogony: Eurynome and Ophion

In a little-known alternative to the familiar Greek cosmogony, Eurynome was originally married to a god named Ophion. It was said that they ruled the cosmos together before the reign of Cronus and Rhea:

… first of all Ophion and Eurynome, daughter of Ocean, held the sway of snowy Olympus, and how through strength of arm one yielded his prerogative to Cronos and the other to Rhea, and how they fell into the waves of Ocean; but the other two meanwhile ruled over the blessed Titan-gods, while Zeus, still a child and with the thoughts of a child, dwelt in the Dictaean cave…^[15]

This strange tradition, which sharply diverges from the standard cosmogony (known from Hesiod), may reflect an earlier stage in Eurynome’s mythos in which she was a more important and central goddess in the Greek pantheon.