river godn.

1595 F. Sabie Pans Pipe sig. C^v With leauy wreaths on his head sat great Syluanus adorned. Next sate rusticke Pan, next him sate beautiful Alphus. Alphus a riuer god.

1632 G. Sandys tr. Ovid Metamorphosis (new ed.) xiii. 443 River-Gods were fained to haue hornes, as resembled to Bulls.

a1667 A. Cowley Several Disc. by Way of Ess., Verse & Prose 123 in Wks. (1668) The water every whit as clear.., as if it darted from..the Urn of a River-God.

1713 J. Gay Rural Sports 1 The River-Gods and Nymphs about thee throng, To hear the Syrens warble in thy Song.

1775 R. Chandler Trav. Asia Minor xx. 74 The River-God is represented on medals leaning on an urn with a cornucopia in his hand, to signify that he dispensed fertility.

1832 Ld. Tennyson Œnone in Poems (new ed.) 53 I am the daughter of a River-God.

1859 ‘G. Eliot’ Adam Bede I. i. xiii. 251 It was as if she had been wooed by a river-god, who might any time take her to his wondrous halls below a watery heaven.

1909 Times 6 Nov. 10/3 To Mediterranean peoples the river-god was horned and voiced like a bull.

1949 Oxf. Classical Dict. 616/1 Oceanus,..husband of Tethys, and father of the Oceanids and River gods.

1996 P. Godwin Mukiwa xi. 198 In their carvings they [sc. the Tonga] always portrayed the river god as a coiled snake with bared fangs.

2007 K. S. Rothwell Nature, Culture, & Origins Greek Comedy ii. 49 Although there was no uniformity in descriptions of river gods, their bull attributes remained unquestionable.