in the Pagan theology, sea nymphs, daughters of Nereus and Doris.—The Nereids were esteemed very handsome; inasmuch that Caephe, the wife of Cepheus king of Ethiopia, having triumphed over all the beauties of the age, and daring to vie with the Nereids, they were so enraged that they sent a prodigious sea monster into the country, and, to appease them, she was commanded by the oracle to expose her daughter Andromeda, bound to a rock, to be devoured by the monster. In ancient monuments, the Nereids are represented riding upon sea horses; sometimes with an entire human form, and at other times with the tail of a fish.