The Gods of the Greeks QUOTES

21 " The sea-goddesses were also oracular goddesses. The oldest of them, Tethys, had an oracular shrine amongst the Etruscans. Her granddaughters, the daughters of Nereus, could often—or so it was believed—rescue seamen in danger of shipwreck. It was they, too, who revealed to men the mysteries of Dionysos and of Persephone. "

― Karl Kerényi , The Gods of the Greeks

23 " Rhea was, admittedly, no more our Great Mother than the great love-goddess was ours alone. Amongst our Oriental neighbours, in Asia Minor and Syria and in regions still farther east, it is not always easy to distinguish between the two.) In Asia Minor, especially, Rhea was worshipped as Meter ereia, “Mountain-mother”, to mention one of her many names, which were almost always formed from the name of a mountain and indicated a relationship to a mountain landscape—such names as Berekyntia, Dindymene, Idaia. In the territory of Asia Minor, from which her cult was spread and, indeed, often came back to us, she was called, in Phrygia, Matar Kubile, which in our language is Kybele. She can be recognised in the Cretan Mistress of the Beasts, who appears, flanked by two lions, on the summit of a mountain. Her well-known enthroned figure, however, she first acquired as Phrygian Mother of the Gods. She usually wears a rampart-crown, like a city on her head, and plays with a lion or drives a chariot drawn by lions. "

― Karl Kerényi , The Gods of the Greeks

25 " Hekate, the third of this group, was always closest to us—although her name perhaps means “the Distant One”. It is not only her name that links her with Apollon and Artemis, who are also named Hekatos and Hekate, but also her family origin—if Hesiod is right in his account of it. She is elsewhere supposed to have been one of the Daughters of Night.{58} Hesiod, however, gives us the following genealogy:{59} the Titan couple Phoebe and Koios had two daughters: Leto, the mother of Apollon and Artemis, and Asteria, a star-goddess who bore Hekate to Persaios or Perses, the son of Eurybia. Hekate is therefore the cousin of Apollon and Artemis, and at the same time a reappearance of the great goddess Phoibe, whose name poets often give to the moon. Indeed, Hekate used to appear to us carrying her torch as the Moon-Goddess, whereas Artemis, although she, too, sometimes carries a torch, never did so. Hesiod seeks further to distinguish Hekate from Artemis by repeatedly emphasising that the former is monogenes, “an only child”. In this respect, too, Hekate resembled Persephone, the goddess of the Underworld. For the rest, she was an almighty, threefold goddess. Zeus revered her above all others,{60} and let her have her share of the earth, the sea and the starry sky; or rather, he did not deprive her of this threefold honour, which she had previously enjoyed under the earlier gods, the Titans, but let her retain what had been awarded to her at the first distribution of honours and dignities. She was therefore a true Titaness of the Titans, even though this is never expressly stated. "

― Karl Kerényi , The Gods of the Greeks