Doris

Doris is the wife of Nereus. Hesiod says that children were born of Nereus and rich-haired Doris, daughter of Ocean, and he then names the Nereid daughters one by one, Amphitrite and Thetis among them (Theogony 240-264). Apollodorus gives the same pair. He says the Nereids were born to Nereus and Doris and lists their names, with Amphitrite, Thetis and Galatea among them (Library 1.2.7). Nereus is the truthful old god of the sea, so Doris is the mother in the best-known sea family of Greek myth.

Hesiod's own parentage for Doris is clear. She is a daughter of Ocean. In his catalogue of the Oceanids, the daughters of Ocean and Tethys, the name Doris appears again (Theogony 346-366). The two entries fit together, because the Oceanid Doris is the one who marries Nereus. The Theogony gives no separate story for her. Her place is set by parentage and marriage, and by the line of daughters that follows. The sources checked here do not say how she met Nereus or whether Ocean approved the match. For her father, see Oceanus.

The name Doris occurs a second time among her children. Hesiod's list of Nereids includes Doris, beside Panopea and Galatea (Theogony 250). Homer has the same arrangement. In the Iliad, the daughters of Nereus crowd into a cave around Thetis, and the catalogue of those present names Doris, Panope and Galatea together (Iliad 18.35-50). Neither poet says whether the daughter was named for her mother. Ancient readers thus met Doris as a mother in one passage and as a sister of Thetis in another.

Doris has no cult, no speech and no domain assigned to her in these texts. Her importance is genealogical. Every Nereid traces back to her and Nereus, and the Nereids supply some of the sea's most active figures. Amphitrite marries Poseidon, and Thetis bears Achilles. Doris belongs to the wider group treated in nymphs and minor divinities, where many figures are known mainly through the family they belong to.