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POSEIDON
Poseidon (Neptune to Romans) was the god of the sea and of earthquakes and associated with storms and other natural disaster and violent forces of nature. Zeus's brother, he lived in an underwater golden palace and traveled around on a wave-skimming sea-shell chariot pulled by snow-white horses. His attendants included dolphins, Nereids and Tritons. He carried a trident with a three-prong spear. Poseidon appears in Homer's "Iliad" and Hesiod's "Theogony."
One of the most powerful gods, Poseidon he could produce earthquakes by striking the Earth with his trident and huge waves and storms by striking it to the sea. When in a mellow moon he used his power to calm seas and bring forth new land from the water. Sailors prayed to him for calms seasons, raised temples to honor him and went out their way not to provoke his anger. Poseidon challenged Athena to become the patron of Athens. Each god was asked to perform a miracle. Poseidon produced a spring that turned out to be salty while Athenian produced an olive tree and was judged the winner.
Poseidon not only looked after the seas; he was also in charge of earthquakes and horses. He used his mighty trident not only to create earthquakes and stir ocean waves, but also to raise new land from beneath the sea or cause existing land to sink below the waters. Although often helpful to humans — protecting sailors at sea, guiding ships to safety, and filling nets with fish — Poseidon could be a terrifying figure as well. .
Quarrelsome, surly, petulant and greedy were some of the adjectives used to describe Poseidon and he was reputed to hold a grudge for a long time. Quick to anger, he directed his fury at anyone who acted against him or failed to show proper respect. When angry, he could stir the sea to a fury, but he could also calm the raging waters with just a glance. Another name for Poseidon was Hippios, meaning lord of horses, a reference to the fact that he was believed to be the creator of the first horse. [Source: Encyclopedia.com]
Poseidon's Family
Poseidon was the son of the Titan Cronos (Saturn) and Rhea and brother of Zeus, Hades, Hestia, Demeter and Hera. At birth Poseidon was swallowed at birth by his father and saved by Zeus, who tricked Cronus into taking a potion that caused him to vomit up Poseidon and the other siblings — Hades, Demeter, Hera, and Hestia. Poseidon later joined Zeus and Hades in overthrowing Cronus, and the three brothers then divided the universe among themselves. Zeus received the sky, Hades ruled the underworld or land of the dead, and Poseidon became god of the seas. [Source: Encyclopedia.com]
Poseidon was married to Amphitrite, a sea nymph, but like Zeus, he fathered many children outside his marriage. Among his descendants were nymphs, sea gods, and monsters such as the Hydra. Amphitrite was the daughter of Doris, an Oceanid, and Nereus. She was s a 'Nereid' and thus sister of Thetis (Achilles' mother). [Source: John Adams, California State University, Northridge (CSUN), “Classics 315: Greek and Roman Mythology class]
Couplings (Poseidon's partner: form of coupling; offspring)
Demeter: horse; Despoina ('mistress'), Arion
Medusa: bird; Pegasus & Chrysaor
Theophane: ram; Ram of the Golden Fleece
Canace: bull
Melantho: dolphin
Tritonis: Athena
Libya: Lelex, Belus, Agenor
Thoosa (Nereid): Polyphemus
Aithra: Theseus
Poseidon’s Wild Love Life and Children
According to Encyclopedia.com: Poseidon had a turbulent love life and fathered many children, including a number of monsters and sea creatures. With his wife, the sea nymph Amphitrite, he had three offspring. One of the children, Triton, was a sea god and a merman (male version of a mermaid) who resembled a human above the waist and a fish from the waist down. [Source:Encyclopedia.com]
Poseidon had children with other partners as well. After seducing his sister Demeter while disguised as a horse, he had two children: the divine horse Arion and a daughter Despina . Medusa is also sometimes mentioned as a lover of Poseidon. According to myth, Medusa was once a beautiful woman, and Poseidon seduced her inside one of the goddess Athena's temples. Athena, angered by this sign of disrespect, transformed Medusa into a hideous Gorgon. The two children of Poseidon and Medusa were born from the blood spilled when the hero Perseus cut off Medusa's head. These two children were the winged horse Pegasus, and a son named Chrysaor . Through his son Chrysaor, Poseidon became ancestor to some of the most fearsome monsters in Greek mythology, including the three-headed hound Cerberus, the Hydra, the Nemean Lion, and the Sphinx.
Gaia, the earth, bore Poseidon two children: Antaeus, a giant, and Charybdis, a sea monster that almost destroyed Odysseus during his journey home after the Trojan War. Another giant offspring of Poseidon — the one-eyed Cyclops Polyphemus — also threatened Odysseus on his voyage home. When Odysseus blinded the giant, he became a target of Poseidon's hatred.
When Poseidon tried to seduce the beautiful sea nymph Scylla, his wife Amphitrite became jealous and transformed her into a horrible sea monster with six dog-heads. Like Charybdis, Scylla terrorized sailors, and she devoured several of Odysseus's companions. Among Poseidon's other children were the evil Cercyon and Sciron, normal-sized offspring who threatened and killed travelers in Greece, and the giant Amycus, who forced people to fight with him and then killed them. Various ordinary mortals also claimed Poseidon as their father, including the famous Greek hero Theseus.
Poseidon, The Iliad and the Trojan War
In Homer's Iliad, dated to around the eighth century B.C., Poseidon is cast as the ruler of the sea. When he drives over the waves, his chariot remains dry and the monsters of the deep play beneath him: "They know their lord" (Iliad 12.28). In the post-Homeric period, he was not so much the god of the sailors as of the fisherman, whose tool, the trident, became his symbol.
As punishment for his rebellion against Zeus, Zeus made Poseidon serve as a slave to King Laomedon of Troy for a year. During this time, Poseidon helped build great walls around the city. When the king refused to pay for this work, Poseidon took revenge by siding with the Greeks against Troy in the Trojan War. The hero Nestor was the grandson of Poseidon and king of Pylos. He brought 90 ships to Troy with 4500 men. Laomedon, for whom Poseidon and Apollo built the walls of Troy, had nine children including Priam (his successor as King of Troy).
According to legend, Poseidon sent a sea monster to destroy Homer’s Troy. More likely the city was brought down by earthquakes. Some even think that the Trojan horse story may have it roots in an earthquake story. Perhaps an earthquakes brought down the walls, letting the Greeks in and they in turn erected a horse to thank Poseidon, the god of earthquakes, whose symbol is a horse.
Temples of Hera and Poseidon in Paestum, Italy
Poseidon Myths and Quarrels
Although Zeus was king of the gods, Poseidon often asserted his independence. Once he even plotted with the goddesses Hera and Athena to overthrow Zeus. Together they managed to put Zeus in chains. However, the sea goddess Thetis saved Zeus by bringing a giant from Tartarus — a realm beneath the underworld — to release the king of the gods from his chains. [Source Encyclopedia.com]
Poseidon competed: 1) With Athena for Athens (Olive/salt Spring); 2) With Hera for Argos; 3) With Helios for Corinth (Helios Got the Acropolis); 4) With Athena for Troezen (Theseus' Home Town)
According to Encyclopedia.com: Poseidon had numerous quarrels with other gods. One of his most famous disputes involved the goddess Athena. Both Poseidon and Athena claimed the region of Attica and its capital city as their own. A contest was held to see which god could give Athens the best gift; whoever won would have the capital city named after them. Athena created an olive tree; Poseidon produced a saltwater spring (or, in some versions, the first horse). When the citizens judged Athena's gift to be superior, the angry Poseidon flooded the surrounding plain.
Poseidon also quarreled with the sun god Helios over control of the Greek city of Corinth. The giant Briareus settled the argument by giving the hill overlooking the city to Helios and the surrounding land to Poseidon. Satisfied with this decision, Poseidon caused no problems for the people of Corinth.
Another of Poseidon's famous quarrels was with Minos, the king of Crete. Minos asked Poseidon to send him a bull that he could sacrifice to the god. Poseidon sent such a magnificent bull that the king decided to keep it for himself instead of sacrificing it. Furious, Poseidon caused Minos's wife, Pasiphae, to fall in love with the bull and to give birth to the Minotaur, a monstrous beast that had the body of a man and the head of a bull.
Poseidon and People
Poseidon’s frequent outbursts at not receiving proper respect may have been viewed as cautionary tales. In ancient art, Poseidon was often portrayed riding in a chariot pulled by horses or hippocamps — creatures with front halves similar to horses and back halves like fish. He was usually seen holding his trident. The trident — itself an important symbol of Poseidon — indicates his stronger association with fishermen than sailors, since the trident is an important tool in the fishing trade.
Poseidon chasing a woman
According to Encyclopedia.com: Poseidon was also widely associated with horse breeding and racing; Greek myth even made him the father of the first horse, and the father or grandfather of the famous horses Pegasus and Areion. Whereas the goddess Athena was considered to be responsible for the technique of horse racing, Poseidon was connected with the wild, nervous, and powerful nature of the horse. Consequently, Athena was invoked during the race, but Poseidon before or after. Another animal associated with Poseidon is the dolphin; a sighting of a dolphin by Greek sailors was considered a good sign of a smooth trip.
Poseidon was connected with men's associations. His temples were the meeting places of the pan-Ionic league and of the early amphictyony that comprised Athens and its neighbors. Various epithets of the god connect him with specific clans and tribes. Elsewhere Poseidon was worshiped with the epithet phutalmios ("the fostering one"), which points to an association with rites of initiation. Indeed, myth relates that the god's love turned the girl Kaineus into an adult man; her sex change is a mythical reflection of the ritual transvestism of the initiands. At a festival for Poseidon in Ephesus, boys acting as wine pourers were called "bulls," just as the god himself was sometimes called "Bull." All this evidence seems to point to a onetime connection of the god with Archaic men's associations (Männerbünde ) and their ecstatic bull-warriors, which also could be found among the early Germanic peoples.
Places Associated with Poseidon
Favorite Residences of Poseidon: 1) Aegae (Aigai) a town on the northern shore of the Peloponnesus, on the Corinthian Gulf (aigos means 'goat'; compared to the Aegean Sea and Aegeus, father of Theseus.) 2) Corinth, not on the acropolis of Corinth, but on the Isthmus, where an international festival in honor of Poseidon was founded in 573 B.C. in competition with Olympia (776 B.C.) and Delphi (582 B.C.); and 3) Athens, a large temple survives at the southern tip of Athenian territory at Sounion. In the sea off Sounion was found the famous full-size nude statue of Zeus-hurling-a-thunderbolt, or maybe Poseidon-hurling-a-trident
Based on available historical evidence, some experts believe that Poseidon was among the most worshipped of all the Greek and Roman deities. This may also reflect the importance these people placed upon the sea as both a provider and a pathway to trade. But though the Greeks worshipped and respected Poseidon, it is important to note that places of worship to Poseidon were always located outside city walls, indicating that he was too violent and unpredictable for civilized, orderly city life. [Source Encyclopedia.com]
In many cities (especially on the western coast of Asia Minor) Poseidon was worshiped with the epithet asphaleios ("the immovable one"). When volcanic activity in 198 B.C. caused the emergence of a new, small island, the inhabitants of neighboring Thera, as was typical, dedicated a temple to Poseidon Asphaleios on it.
Poseidon Temples
Benjamin Leonard wrote in Archaeology magazine: The ancient city of Paestum in southern Italy is well known for its three massive stone temples, which were built in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. by Greek colonists who founded the settlement in 600 B.C. and named it Poseidonia. Archaeologists recently unearthed the remnants of another, smaller stone temple dating to the early fifth century B.C. along the city’s western wall. Measuring just 51 by 25 feet, the temple had four Doric columns along its facade and seven on each side, enclosing the building’s single room. The team also found terracotta decorations that once adorned the roof, including lion-shaped waterspouts and figures of Gorgons and the goddess Aphrodite. [Source: Benjamin Leonard, Archaeology magazine, November/December 2023]
Around an altar not far from the entrance, researchers uncovered hundreds of votive offerings, including miniature temples, bulls’ heads, figurines representing deities and humans, and a statuette depicting the god Eros riding a dolphin. This maritime figurine — and the temple’s location overlooking the sea — has led archaeologists to theorize that the building might have been dedicated to Poseidon, the god of the sea and the city’s patron deity.
In his encyclopedic Geography, the first-century A.D. Greek historian Strabo mentions an important sanctuary dedicated to the sea god Poseidon that was situated in the hilly region of Triphylia along the west coast of Greece’s Peloponnese. Its exact location has long eluded scholars, but now a team of researchers led by Birgitta Eder of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, in cooperation with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Elis, believe they have finally discovered possible traces of the sanctuary. At the site of Kleidi-Samikon, the team unearthed stone foundations of a temple measuring at least 90 feet long, as well as a fragment of a large marble water basin of a kind found in sanctuaries throughout Greece. Eder explains that the structure’s layout and the terracotta roof tiles used to fill in the space between its walls suggest that it was built in the sixth century B.C. “This was a major monumental building with two interior rooms and probably a front and back hall,” she says. “It would have been a prominent site and a central meeting point for the regional cities of Triphylia.” [Source: Benjamin Leonard, Archaeology Magazine, May/June 2023]
Live Science reportedly Archaeologists excavating a 2,800-year-old temple at a sanctuary dedicated to Poseidon, is located in the ancient city of Elikis (also known as Helike) on the northern coast of the Peloponnese in Greece, uncovered several artifacts, including figurines of a dog, a woman and a snake that are believed to have been votive offerings intended for Poseidon, a Greek god of the sea. [Source Owen Jarus, Live Science, September 5, 2023]
Poseidon Temples in Corinth around A.D. 160
Pausanias wrote in “Description of Greece” Book II: Corinth (A.D. 160): “A legend of the Corinthians about their land is not peculiar to them, for I believe that the Athenians were the first to relate a similar story to glorify Attica. The Corinthians say that Poseidon had a dispute with Helius (Sun) about the land, and that Briareos arbitrated between them, assigning to Poseidon the Isthmus and the parts adjoining, and giving to Helius the height above the city.Ever since, they say, the Isthmus has belonged to Poseidon. Worth seeing here are a theater and a white-marble race-course. Within the sanctuary of the god stand on the one side portrait statues of athletes who have won victories at the Isthmian games, on the other side pine trees growing in a row, the greater number of them rising up straight.[Source: Pausanias, “Description of Greece,” with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D. in 4 Volumes. Volume 1.Attica and Cornith, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1918]
“On the temple, which is not very large, stand bronze Tritons. In the fore-temple are images, two of Poseidon, a third of Amphitrite, and a Sea, which also is of bronze. The offerings inside were dedicated in our time by Herodes the Athenian, four horses, gilded except for the hoofs, which are of ivory, and two gold Tritons beside the horses, with the parts below the waist of ivory. On the car stand Amphitrite and Poseidon, and there is the boy Palaemon upright upon a dolphin. These too are made of ivory and gold. On the middle of the base on which the car is has been wrought a Sea holding up the young Aphrodite, and on either side are the nymphs called Nereids. I know that there are altars to these in other parts of Greece, and that some Greeks have even dedicated to them precincts by shores, where honors are also paid to Achilles. In Gabala is a holy sanctuary of Doto, where there was still remaining the robe by which the Greeks say that Eriphyle was bribed to wrong her son Alcmaeon. Among the reliefs on the base of the statue of Poseidon are the sons of Tyndareus, because these too are saviours of ships and of sea-faring men. The other offerings are images of Calm and of Sea, a horse like a whale from the breast onward, Ino and Bellerophontes, and the horse Pegasus.
“Within the enclosure is on the left a temple of Palaemon, with images in it of Poseidon, Leucothea and Palaemon himself. There is also what is called his Holy of Holies, and an underground descent to it, where they say that Palaemon is concealed. Whosoever, whether Corinthian or stranger, swears falsely here, can by no means escape from his oath. There is also an ancient sanctuary called the altar of the Cyclopes, and they sacrifice to the Cyclopes upon it. The graves of Sisyphus and of Neleus — for they say that Neleus came to Corinth, died of disease, and was buried near the Isthmus — I do not think that anyone would look for after reading Eumelus. For he says that not even to Nestor did Sisyphus show the tomb of Neleus, because it must be kept unknown to everybody alike, and that Sisyphus is indeed buried on the Isthmus, but that few Corinthians, even those of his own day, knew where the grave was. The Isthmian games were not interrupted even when Corinth had been laid waste by Mummius, but so long as it lay deserted the celebration of the games was entrusted to the Sicyonians, and when it was rebuilt the honor was restored to the present inhabitants.
“The names of the Corinthian harbors were given them by Leches and Cenchrias, said to be the children of Poseidon and Peirene the daughter of Achelous, though in the poem called The Great Eoeae1 Peirene is said to be a daughter of Oebalus. In Lechaeum are a sanctuary and a bronze image of Poseidon, and on the road leading from the Isthmus to Cenchreae a temple and ancient wooden image of Artemis. In Cenchreae are a temple and a stone statue of Aphrodite, after it on the mole running into the sea a bronze image of Poseidon, and at the other end of the harbor sanctuaries of Asclepius and of Isis. Right opposite Cenchreae is Helen's Bath. It is a large stream of salt, tepid water, flowing from a rock into the sea. As one goes up to Corinth are tombs, and by the gate is buried Diogenes1 of Sinope, whom the Greeks surname the Dog. Before the city is a grove of cypresses called Craneum. Here are a precinct of Bellerophontes, a temple of Aphrodite Melaenis and the grave of Lais, upon which is set a lioness holding a ram in her fore-paws.”
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.
Last updated September 2024