Arethusa
Part of The Encyclopedia of Southern Italy.
Arethusa (Grk Arethousa): a Nereid nymph in ancient Sicily who watched over a spring of the same name, on the island of Ortygia (Syracuse). She was said to be the daughter of the river-god Nereus and an attendant of Artemis. Her beauty attracted the attention of the river-god Alpheus whom she fled from by plunging into the sea and swimming from Greece to Ortygia. There she prayed to Artemis to protect her and was turned into spring. Alpheus, however, was not thwarted. From his river bed, he plunged his waters so deeply underground that he was able to tunnel beneath the Ionian Sea and emerge on Ortygia where he mixed with Arethusa spring. It was reputed that the “proof” for this story was that any object thrown into the Alpheus river in Greece would eventually surface in Arethusa’s fountain.
Scholars today believe that Arethusa’s myth was originally attached to several fountains in mainland Greece. When the Greeks began to colonize Sicily, they brought the myth with them, attaching them to a fountain in their new home.