The river

River

A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including...

 Ladon (modern Greek: Λάδωνας, Ládonas) features in Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

. It rises in Arcadia

Arcadia

Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...

, west of Tripoli

Tripoli, Greece

Tripoli is a city of about 25,000 inhabitants in the central part of the Peloponnese, in Greece. It is the capital of the prefecture of Arcadia and the centre of the municipality of Tripolis, pop...

. It is a tributary to the river Alfeios

Alfeios River

Alfeiós is the longest river in the Peloponnese, in Greece. The river is 110 km long, flowing through the prefectures of Arcadia and Ilia. Its source is near Megalopoli in the highlands of Arcadia. The river begins near Davia in central Arcadia, then flows between Leontari and Megalopoli through a...

, which empties into the Ionian Sea

Ionian Sea

The Ionian Sea , is an arm of the Mediterranean Sea, south of the Adriatic Sea. It is bounded by southern Italy including Calabria, Sicily and the Salento peninsula to the west, southern Albania to the north, and a large number of Greek islands, including Corfu, Zante, Kephalonia, Ithaka, and...

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The river was among those mentioned by Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

 in Theogony

Theogony

The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogies of the gods of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC...

; they were "all sons of Oceanus

Oceanus

Oceanus ; , Ōkeanós) was a pseudo-geographical feature in classical antiquity, believed by the ancient Greeks and Romans to be the world-ocean, an enormous river encircling the world....

 and queenly Tethys

Tethys (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Tethys , daughter of Uranus and Gaia was an archaic Titaness and aquatic sea goddess, invoked in classical Greek poetry but not venerated in cult. Tethys was both sister and wife of Oceanus...

" http://www.loggia.com/myth/rivers.html for, according to the image of world hydrography common to the ancients, the fresh water that welled up in springs came from the underworld caverns and pools and was connected with the salt sea. Rain fertilized crops, but the sense that its runoff filled the rivers did not figure in the Greek mythic picture.

Rivers were personified and credited with wooing nymph

Nymph

A nymph in Greek mythology is a female minor nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from gods, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing;...

s and human maidens and fathering children. One daughter, the nymph Metope

Metope (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Metope was a river nymph, the daughter of the river Ladon. Her waters were near the town of Stymphalus in the Peloponnesus...

 was wed to the river Asopus

Asopus

Asopus or Asôpos is the name of four different rivers in Greece and one in Turkey. In Greek mythology, it was the name of the gods of those rivers.-The rivers in Greece:...

.

Rivers have cleansing effect in Greek mythology. When Poseidon

Poseidon

Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...

 assaulted Demeter, she washed away the insult in the waters of the River Ladon.

See also: Asopus

Asopus

Asopus or Asôpos is the name of four different rivers in Greece and one in Turkey. In Greek mythology, it was the name of the gods of those rivers.-The rivers in Greece:...

, Tripotamia

Tripotamia

Tripotamia is a village located in the municipal unit of Tropaia in the westernmost part of Arcadia in the west-central Peloponnese. It is passed with GR-74 with a narrow one-lane bridge over the Erymanthus river...

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