A nymph ( Ancient Greek : νύμφη , romanized : nýmphē ; Attic Greek : [nýmpʰɛː] ; sometimes spelled nymphe ) is a minor female nature deity in ancient Greek folklore . Distinct from other Greek goddesses , nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature; they are typically tied to a specific place, landform, or tree, and are usually depicted as maidens . Because of their association with springs, they were often seen as having healing properties; other divine powers of the nymphs included divination and shapeshifting . Nymphs, like other goddesses, were immortal except for the Hamadryads , whose lives were bound to a specific tree.
32-455: The Auloniads ( / ə ˈ l oʊ n i æ d / ; Αὐλωνιάς from the classical Greek αὐλών "valley, ravine") were nymphs who were found in mountain pastures and vales , often in the company of Pan , the god of nature. Eurydice , for whom Orpheus traveled into dark Hades , was an Auloniad, and it was in the valley of the Thessalian river Pineios where she met her death, indirectly, at
64-470: A Roman sculpture of a nymph at a fountain above the River Danube . The report, and an accompanying poem supposedly on the fountain describing the sleeping nymph, are now generally concluded to be a fifteenth-century forgery , but the motif proved influential among artists and landscape gardeners for several centuries after, with copies seen at neoclassical gardens such as the grotto at Stourhead . All
96-490: A love motif, being the lovers of heroes and other deities. Desirable and promiscuous, nymphs can rarely be fully domesticated, being often aggressive to their mortal affairs. Since the Middle Ages , nymphs have been sometimes popularly associated or even confused with fairies . The Greek word nýmphē has the primary meaning of "young woman; bride, young wife" but is not usually associated with deities in particular. Yet
128-460: A physical snatching or abduction of a person by the nymphs, as in the myth of Hylas , and by extension became a euphemism or metaphor for death, as evidenced by both Greek and Roman epitaphs. A person who was a religious devotee of the nymphs might also be called a "nympholept." The Latin verb lympho, lymphare meant "to drive crazy" or "to be in a state of frenzy," with the adjectives lymphaticus and lymphatus meaning "frenzied, deranged" and
160-423: Is a word for "fountain," but who is also invoked as a deity. When she appears in a list of proper names for deities , Lympha is seen as an object of religious reverence embodying the divine aspect of water. Like several other nature deities who appear in both the singular and the plural (such as Faunus / fauni ), she has both a unified and a multiple aspect. She was the appropriate deity to pray to for maintaining
192-566: Is an Italic concept is indicated by the Oscan cognate diumpā- (recorded in the dative plural, diumpaís , "for the lymphae"), with a characteristic alternation of d for l . These goddesses appear on the Tabula Agnonensis as one of 17 Samnite deities, who include the equivalents of Flora, Proserpina, and possibly Venus (all categorized with the Lymphae by Vitruvius), as well as several of
224-518: Is an ancient Roman deity of fresh water. She is one of twelve agricultural deities listed by Varro as "leaders" ( duces ) of Roman farmers , because "without water all agriculture is dry and poor." The Lymphae are often connected to Fons , meaning "Source" or "Font," a god of fountains and wellheads . Lympha represents a "functional focus" of fresh water, according to Michael Lipka's conceptual approach to Roman deity, or more generally moisture. Vitruvius preserves some of her associations in
256-450: Is equivalent to, but not entirely interchangeable with nympha , " nymph ." One dedication for restoring the water supply was made nymphis lymphisque augustis , "for the nymphs and august lymphae," distinguishing the two as does a passage from Augustine of Hippo . In poetic usage, lymphae as a common noun , plural or less often singular, can mean a source of fresh water, or simply "water"; compare her frequent companion Fons, whose name
288-514: Is not the authentic Greek classification, but is intended as a guide: The following is a list of individual nymphs or groups thereof associated with this or that particular location. Nymphs in such groups could belong to any of the classes mentioned above (Naiades, Oreades, and so on). The following is a selection of names of the nymphs whose class was not specified in the source texts. For lists of Naiads, Oceanids, Dryades etc., see respective articles. Lympha The Lympha (plural Lymphae )
320-1097: The Meliae ( ash tree nymphs), the Dryads ( oak tree nymphs), the Alseids ( grove nymphs), the Naiads ( spring nymphs), the Nereids (sea nymphs), the Oceanids (ocean nymphs), the Oreads (mountain nymphs), and the Epimeliads (apple tree and flock nymphs). Other nymphs included the Hesperides (evening nymphs), the Hyades (rain nymphs), and the Pleiades (companions of Artemis ). Nymphs featured in classic works of art , literature , and mythology . They are often attendants of goddesses and frequently occur in myths with
352-653: The abstract noun lymphatio referring to the state itself. Vergil uses the adjective lymphata only once, in the Aeneid to describe the madness of Amata , wife of Latinus , goaded by the Fury Allecto and raving contrary to mos , socially sanctioned behavior. Among the Greeks, the Cult of the Nymphs was a part of ecstatic Orphic or Dionysiac religion . The adjective lymphatus
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#1732852153145384-610: The Lymphae to the Latin Camenae , who became identified with the Muses . In his entry on Lymphae , the lexicographer Festus notes that the Greek word nympha had influenced the Latin name, and elaborates: Popular belief has it that whoever see a certain vision in a fountain, that is, an apparition of a nymph, will go quite mad. These people the Greeks call numpholêptoi ["Nymph-possessed"] and
416-457: The Romans, lymphatici . Because the states of madness, possession, and illness were not always strictly distinguished in antiquity, "nympholepsy" became a morbid or undesirable condition. Isidore compares Greek hydrophobia , which literally means "fear of water," and says that " lymphaticus is the word for one who contracts a disease from water, making him run about hither and thither, or from
448-537: The Saint Artemidos. Nymphs are often depicted in classic works across art, literature, mythology, and fiction. They are often associated with the medieval romances or Renaissance literature of the elusive fairies or elves . A motif that entered European art during the Renaissance was the idea of a statue of a nymph sleeping in a grotto or spring. This motif supposedly came from an Italian report of
480-558: The Vires, "(Physical) Powers, Vigor", personified as a set of masculine divinities, a connection that in his monumental work Zeus Arthur Bernard Cook located in the flowing or liquid aspect of the Lymphae as it relates to the production of seminal fluid . As a complement to the Vires, the Lymphae and the nymphs with whom they became so closely identified embody the urge to procreate, and thus these kinds of water deities are also associated with marriage and childbirth. When Propertius alludes to
512-682: The disease gotten from a flow of water." In poetic usage, he adds, the lymphatici are madmen. During the Christianization of the Empire in late antiquity , the positive effects of possession by a nymph were erased, and nymphs were syncretized with fallen angels and dangerous figures such as the Lamia and Gello . Tertullian amplifies from a Christian perspective anxieties that unclean spirits might lurk in various water sources, noting that men whom waters (aquae) have killed or driven to madness or
544-508: The etymology of the noun nýmphē remains uncertain. The Doric and Aeolic ( Homeric ) form is nýmphā ( νύμφα ). Modern usage more often applies to young women, contrasting with parthenos ( παρθένος ) "a virgin (of any age)", and generically as kore ( κόρη < κόρϝα ) "maiden, girl". The term is sometimes used by women to address each other and remains the regular Modern Greek term for " bride ". Nymphs were sometimes beloved by many and dwelt in specific areas related to
576-682: The gods on Varro's list of the 12 agricultural deities . On the Oscan tablet, they appear in a group of deities who provide moisture for crops. In the Etruscan-based cosmological schema of Martianus Capella , the Lymphae are placed in the second of 16 celestial regions, with Jupiter , Quirinus , Mars (these three constituting the Archaic Triad ), the Military Lar , Juno , Fons, and the obscure Italo-Etruscan Novensiles . A 1st-century A.D. dedication
608-466: The hands of Aristaeus , son of the god Apollo and the nymph Cyrene . It was Aristaeus's wish to ravish Eurydice and either disgust or fear compelled her to run away from him without looking where she was going. Eurydice trod on a venomous serpent and died. This article relating to a Greek deity is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Nymph Nymphs are divided into various broad subgroups based on their habitat, such as
640-481: The less common lympha . In the religions of ancient Greece , Rome, and the Celtic territories, water goddesses are commonly sources of inspiration or divine revelation, which may have the appearance of madness or frenzy. In Greek , "nympholepsy" ("seizure by the nymphs") was primarily "a heightening of awareness and elevated verbal skills" resulting from the influence of the nymphs on an individual. The term also meant
672-442: The names for various classes of nymphs have plural feminine adjectives, most agreeing with the substantive numbers and groups of nymphai. There is no single adopted classification that could be seen as canonical and exhaustive. Some classes of nymphs tend to overlap, which complicates the task of precise classification. e.g. dryads and hamadryads as nymphs of trees generally, meliai as nymphs of ash trees . The following
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#1732852153145704-410: The natural environment: e.g. mountainous regions; forests; springs. Other nymphs were part of the retinue of a god (such as Dionysus , Hermes , or Pan ) or of a goddess (generally the huntress Artemis ). The Greek nymphs were also spirits invariably bound to places, not unlike the Latin genius loci , and sometimes this produced complicated myths like the cult of Arethusa to Sicily. In some of
736-428: The poetry of Horace , lymphae work, dance, and make noise; they are talkative, and when they're angry they cause drought until their rites are observed. Some textual editors have responded to this personification by emending manuscript readings of lymphae to nymphae . When the first letter of a form of -ympha is obliterated or indistinct in an inscription, the word is usually taken as nympha instead of
768-578: The rites and cults of individual nymphs venerated by country people in the springs and clefts of Latium . Among the Roman literate class, their sphere of influence was restricted and they appear almost exclusively as divinities of the watery element. The ancient Greek belief in nymphs survived in many parts of the country into the early years of the twentieth century when they were usually known as " nereids ". Nymphs often tended to frequent areas distant from humans but could be encountered by lone travelers outside
800-589: The section of his work On Architecture in which he describes how the design of a temple building ( aedes ) should reflect the nature of the deity to be housed therein: The character of the Corinthian order seems more appropriate to Venus , Flora , Proserpina , and the Nymphs [Lymphae] of the Fountains; because its slenderness, elegance and richness, and its ornamental leaves surmounted by volutes , seem to bear an analogy to their dispositions. The name Lympha
832-462: The story of how Tiresias spied the virgin goddess Pallas Athena bathing, he plays on the sexual properties of lympha in advising against theophanies obtained against the will of the gods: "May the gods grant you other fountains (fontes) : this liquid (lympha) flows for girls only, this pathless trickle of a secret threshold." The Augustan poets frequently play with the ambiguous dual meaning of lympha as both "water source" and "nymph". In
864-409: The village, where their music might be heard, and the traveler could spy on their dancing or bathing in a stream or pool, either during the noon heat or in the middle of the night. They might appear in a whirlwind. Such encounters could be dangerous, bringing dumbness, besotted infatuation, madness or stroke to the unfortunate man. When parents believed their child to be nereid-struck, they would pray to
896-512: The water supply, in the way that Liber provided wine or Ceres bread. The origin of the word lympha is obscure. It may originally have been lumpa or limpa , related to the adjective limpidus meaning "clear, transparent" especially applied to liquids. An intermediate form lumpha is also found. The spelling seems to have been influenced by the Greek word νύμφα nympha , as the upsilon (Υ,υ) and phi (Φ,φ) are normally transcribed into Latin as u or y and ph or f . That Lympha
928-648: The works of the Greek-educated Latin poets , the nymphs gradually absorbed into their ranks the indigenous Italian divinities of springs and streams ( Juturna , Egeria , Carmentis , Fontus ) while the Lymphae (originally Lumpae), Italian water goddesses, owing to the accidental similarity of their names, could be identified with the Greek Nymphae. The classical mythologies of the Roman poets were unlikely to have affected
960-426: Was "strongly evocative of Bacchic frenzy," and the Roman playwright Pacuvius (220–130 BC) explicitly connects it to sacra Bacchi , "rites of Bacchus ." R.B. Onians explained the "fluidity" of the ecstatic gods in the context of ancient theories about the relation of body and mind, with dryness a quality of rationality and liquid productive of emotion. Water as a locus of divine, even frenzied inspiration links
992-407: Was a spring-fed lacus in the forum which attracted cure-seekers, and Propertius connected its potency to Lake Albano and Lake Nemi , where the famous sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis was located. Juturna's cult, which Servius identifies as a fons , was maintained to ensure the water supply, and she was the mother of the deity Fons. In Cisalpine Gaul , an inscription links the Lymphae to
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1024-452: Was made to the Lymphae jointly with Diana . The Italic lymphae were connected with healing cults. Juturna , who is usually called a "nymph," is identified by Varro as Lympha : "Juturna is the Lympha who aids: therefore many ailing people on account of her name customarily seek out this water", with a play on the name Iu-turna and the verb iuvare , "to help, aid." Juturna's water shrine
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