Thaumas

Thaumas was a son of Pontus and Gaia who personified the quality of wonder itself — specifically the wonder provoked by the sea's inexplicable phenomena. His name came from the Greek word thauma, meaning "marvel" or "miracle," the same root that gives us the English word "thaumaturgy" (wonder-working). Where his brother Phorcys fathered the ocean's monsters and his brother Nereus represented its wisdom, Thaumas presided over its capacity to astonish: strange lights on the water, sudden calms, and above all the rainbow that appears when sun strikes sea spray. This last connection was literal, because Thaumas married the Oceanid Electra and with her fathered Iris, the goddess of the rainbow who served as messenger between gods and mortals. The rainbow — that bridge of colour linking sky and sea — was perfectly suited to be the daughter of Wonder. But Thaumas and Electra also produced the Harpies: Aello, Ocypete, and sometimes Celaeno — vicious wind spirits with women's faces and birds' bodies who snatched food from the starving and carried the dead to the underworld. This parentage revealed a truth about the Greek concept of wonder: it was not always pleasant. The sea could fill you with awe through beauty or through terror. A rainbow and a storm were equally marvellous in the original sense of the word. Thaumas united both responses under a single divine name.