Ourea

In Greek mythology, the ourea (Greek: Oὔρεα "mountains," plural of Oὔρος) were progeny of Gaia, members of the Protogenoi, who were the first-born elemental gods and goddesses, children of Gaia:

And she brought forth long hills, graceful haunts
of the goddess Nymphs who dwell amongst the glens of the hills.^[1]

The ten ourea, Aitna, Athos, Helikon, Kithairon, Nysos, Olympus 1, Olympus 2, Oreios, Parnes, and Tmolus, like Uranus, and Pontus, were parthenogetic offspring of Gaia alone. The Greeks rarely personified an individual mountain; an exception might be Tmolus, both a king and a mountain in Lydia. Each mountain was said to have its own local nymph, an oread.

Peak sanctuaries, a feature of Minoan civilization on Crete, are also identified in some archaic sites in mainland Greece.^[2] They are not thought to be dedicated to the mountain itself.

Notes

1. ^ Hesiod, Theogony, 129–131; Argonautica, 1.498.
2. ^ Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, 1985:26-28.

References

• Littleton, Scott and the Marshall Cavendish Corporation Gods, Goddesses, and Mythology, Volume 1. Marshall Cavendish, 2005. ISBN 9780761475590. pp. 1020, 1134
• Fitz Simon, James A., Vincent Alphonso Fitz Simon, The Gods of Old: and The Story That They Tell, T. Fisher Unwin, 1899. p. 27
• Hard, Robin, Herbert Jennings Rose, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek mythology", Routledge, 2004. ISBN 9780415186360. p. 24