Editing Oceanus (section)

==Cosmography==

[[File:Head of Oceanus, found at Hadrian's Villa, Vatican Museums (12014574136).jpg|thumb|right|Head of Oceanus from [[Tivoli, Lazio|Tivoli]]'s second century [[Hadrian's Villa]], [[Vatican Museum]]]]

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.<ref name="Stecchini">{{Cite web|url=http://www.metrum.org/mapping/cosmol.htm|title=Ancient Cosmology|website=www.metrum.org|author=Livio Catullo Stecchini|access-date=2017-03-30|archive-date=2017-10-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171029113455/http://www.metrum.org/mapping/cosmol.htm|url-status=bot: unknown}} (archived)</ref>

[[Herodotus]] was skeptical about the physical existence of Oceanus and rejected the reasoning—proposed by some of his coevals—according to which the uncommon phenomenon of the summerly [[Nile flood]] was caused by the river's connection to the mighty Oceanus. Speaking about the Oceanus myth itself he declared: 
<blockquote>As for the writer who attributes the phenomenon to the ocean, his account is involved in such obscurity that it is impossible to disprove it by argument. For my part I know of no river called Ocean, and I think that Homer, or one of the earlier poets, invented the name, and introduced it into his poetry.<ref>''[[Histories (Herodotus)|Histories]]'' II, 21 ff.</ref></blockquote>

Some scholars{{who|date=April 2017}} 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.{{citation needed|date=April 2017}} 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 Sea.{{citation needed|date=April 2017}}

Late attestations for an equation with the [[Black Sea]] abound, the cause being&nbsp;– as it appears&nbsp;– Odysseus' travel to the [[Cimmerians]] whose fatherland, lying beyond the Oceanus, is described as a country divested from sunlight.<ref name="Odyssey XI, 13-19">[[Homer]], ''[[Odyssey]]'' [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Od.+11.13&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136:book=11:chapter=13&highlight=Oceanus 11.13–19].</ref> In the fourth century BC, [[Hecataeus of Abdera]] writes that the Oceanus of the [[Hyperboreans]] is neither the Arctic nor Western Ocean, but the sea located to the north of the ancient Greek world, namely the [[Black Sea]], called "the most admirable of all seas" by [[Herodotus]],<ref>[[Herodotus]], ''[[Histories (Herodotus)|Histories]]'' [https://topostext.org/work/22 4.85].</ref> labelled the "immense sea" by [[Pomponius Mela]]<ref>''De situ orbis'' I, 19.</ref> and by [[Dionysius Periegetes]],<ref>''Orbis Descriptio'' V, 165.</ref> and which is named ''Mare majus'' on medieval geographic maps. [[Apollonius of Rhodes]], similarly, calls the lower Danube the ''Kéras Okeanoío'' ("Gulf" or "Horn of Oceanus").<ref>[[Apollonius of Rhodes]], ''[[Argonautica]]'' [https://topostext.org/work/126#4.261 4.282].</ref>

[[Hecataeus of Abdera]] also refers to a holy island, sacred to the Pelasgian (and later, Greek) [[Apollo]], situated in the westernmost part of the ''Okeanós Potamós'', and called in different times Leuke or Leukos, Alba, Fidonisi or [[Snake Island (Black Sea)|Isle of Snakes]]. It was on Leuke, in one version of his legend, that the hero [[Achilles]], in a hilly tumulus, was buried (which is [[Folk etymology|erroneously]] connected to the modern town of [[Kiliya]], at the [[Danube delta]]). <!-- These remarks seem to have no connection to the article's subject: [[Leto]], the Hyperborean goddess, after nine days and nine nights of labour on the island of Delos ([[Pelasgian]] for hill, related to [[Tell (archaeology)|tell]]) "gave birth to the great god of the antique light".<ref>[[Pseudo-Apollodorus]], ''Bibliotheca'' I, 4.1.</ref> 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.<ref name=Densusianu>[http://www.pelasgians.org ''Dacia Preistorica''], Nicolae Densusianu (1913).</ref> --> ''Accion'' ("ocean"), in the fourth century AD [[Gallo-Romance languages|Gaulish Latin]] of [[Avienius]]' ''Ora maritima'', was applied to great lakes.<ref>Mullerus in ''Cl. Ptolemaei Geographia'', ed. Didot, p.&nbsp;235.</ref>