Sea Gods

Greek Mythology Sea Gods

Greek poets filled the sea with divine figures of different ages. Pontus was the sea itself, Oceanus the river around the world, and Poseidon the Olympian who won the sea by lot. Between them stand the Old Men of the Sea: Nereus, Proteus, Phorcys and Glaucus, minor gods who can see the future and appear to sailors and heroes.

Pontus

Pontus, “Sea”, was one of the earliest beings. Hesiod (Theogony 131–132) says Gaia bore him “without sweet union of love”, “the fruitless deep with his raging swell”. With Gaia he fathered Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto (Keto) and Eurybia (Theogony 233–239).

Oceanus

Oceanus, a Titan, was the son of Uranus and Gaia and the husband of Tethys (Hesiod, Theogony 132–136). His children were the rivers and the three thousand Oceanids (Theogony 337 ff.). Homer thinks of him as the stream that circles the earth, and in the Iliad (14.201) Hera calls him the one “whence the gods have risen”.

Poseidon

Poseidon, son of Cronus and Rhea and brother of Zeus and Hades, received the sea when the three brothers drew lots for the world (Iliad 15.187 ff.). Homer places his palace at Aegae in the depths (Iliad 13.21 ff.). He married the Nereid Amphitrite, and their son was Triton (Hesiod, Theogony 930–933). Homer also calls him the “earth-shaker”, and he was worshipped as a god of horses as well as of the sea: Pausanias saw an altar of Poseidon Horse God beside one of Athena Horse Goddess at Colonus near Athens (1.30.4). He has his own page.

Nereus

Nereus, the eldest son of Pontus and Gaia, was the “Old Man of the Sea”. Hesiod (Theogony 233–236) calls him true and without deceit, a god who “thinks just and kindly thoughts”. With the Oceanid Doris he fathered fifty daughters, the Nereids. In the Iliad (1.357; 18.36 ff.) Thetis sits with her old father in the depths when she hears Achilles weeping. Apollodorus (2.5.11) tells how Heracles, on his way to the golden apples of the Hesperides, was shown Nereus by nymphs; Heracles seized and bound him as he slept, held on while Nereus changed into many shapes, and released him only when Nereus told him where the Hesperides were.

Proteus

Proteus is the Old Man of the Sea in the Odyssey (4.351–570). He serves Poseidon and, as the herdsman of Poseidon’s seals, comes ashore at midday on the island of Pharos off Egypt. His daughter Eidothea tells the stranded Menelaus how to catch him: hold him while he changes into a lion, a snake, a leopard, a boar, running water and a tree, until he returns to his shape and answers questions. Proteus then tells Menelaus why the gods hold him back and how to sail home.

Homer does not name his parents. Apollodorus (2.5.9) calls Proteus a son of Poseidon, and says that his sons Polygonus and Telegonus challenged Heracles to wrestle at Torone and were killed by him. Euripides (Helen) makes Proteus a king of Egypt who kept the true Helen safe during the Trojan War.

Triton

Triton is the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite. Hesiod (Theogony 930–933) says he lives with his parents in their golden house under the sea and calls him an “awful god”. In art and in later poetry he has a man’s upper body and a fish’s tail, and blows a conch shell to calm or rouse the waves (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.333 ff.). In the Argonautica (4.1552 ff.) a god of Lake Tritonis in Libya, also named Triton, helps the Argonauts find their way back to the sea.

Phorcys

Phorcys is a son of Pontus and Gaia, the brother and husband of Ceto. Their children, according to Hesiod (Theogony 270–336), were the Graiai, the Gorgons, Echidna and the dragon who guards the golden apples. In the Odyssey (1.71; 13.96) Homer calls him the old sea-god, names a harbour in Ithaca after him, and makes him the father of the nymph Thoosa, the mother of the Cyclops Polyphemus by Poseidon.

Glaucus

Glaucus began as a mortal fisherman of Anthedon in Boeotia. In Ovid (Metamorphoses 13.900 ff.) he places his catch on a meadow, sees the fish revive and slip back into the sea, tastes the grass, and is overcome by a longing for the water; he dives in and the sea gods make him one of their own. The early poets do not give his parents: Euripides (Orestes 362–365) calls him “the truthful god Glaucus, Nereus’ seer”, who rose from the waves to tell Menelaus of Agamemnon’s death, and Apollonius (Argonautica 1.1310–1328) likewise makes him the wise interpreter of Nereus who rises from the deep to tell the Argonauts that Heracles must be left behind; Diodorus says that Glaucus appeared beside the Argo after Orpheus prayed to the gods of Samothrace, accompanied the ship and foretold the future of Heracles and the Dioscuri (4.48.6–7). In Ovid he falls in love with Scylla, who runs from him, and asks Circe for a love charm; Circe, who wants him for herself, poisons the pool where Scylla bathes and turns her into a monster (Metamorphoses 13.900–14.74).

Palaemon

Palaemon was born Melicertes, a son of Athamas and Ino. When Hera drove Athamas mad he killed their elder son Learchus, and Ino leapt into the sea with Melicertes. She became the sea goddess Leucothea and he became Palaemon (Apollodorus 3.4.3). Pausanias (1.44.7) retells this story at the Molurian Rock on the road to Corinth, and Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.416 ff.) tells it at length. Pausanias adds that the boy’s body was carried ashore by a dolphin at the Isthmus, where Sisyphus found and buried it and founded the Isthmian Games in his honour (2.1.3).

See Also: Poseidon, Nereus, Triton, Oceanus, Pontus, Proteus, Phorcys, Glaucus, Amphitrite