Naiad

Admin Number of posts : 41 Registration date : 2008-01-01

, the Naiads (from the Greek νάειν, "to flow," and νἃμα, "running water") were a type of nymph who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks, as river gods embodied rivers, and some very ancient spirits inhabited the still waters of marshes, ponds and lagoon-lakes, such as pre-Mycenaean Lerna in the Argolid. Naiads were associated with fresh water, as the Oceanids were with saltwater and the Nereids specifically with the Mediterranean; but because the Greeks thought of the world's waters as all one system, which percolated in from the sea in deep cavernous spaces within the bosom of the earth, to rise freshened in seeps and springs, there was some overlap. Arethusa, the nymph of a spring, could make her way through subterranean flows from the Peloponnesus, to surface on the island of Sicily. In his Dionisiaca, (XVI.356; XXIV.123) Nonnus gave the naiads the nonce-name Hydriades ("water ladies").

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