Poseidon

• 1. Introduction

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  Poseidon is one of the twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and mythology, a god of such terrifying breadth that sailors prayed to him for safe passage while farmers credited him with the growth of their crops. He ruled the sea, storms, earthquakes, and horses. He was the patron of fishermen and the guardian of entire cities. And yet the oldest surviving records of his worship, written in the Bronze Age script called Linear B, show him not as a sea god at all, but as the chief deity of the inland city of Pylos, carrying a title that translates simply as "earth shaker."

  How does a god of underground rivers and chthonic darkness become the lord of the open sea? Why do his myths so often involve horses, springs, and a shape-shifting pursuit through the wilderness? And what did it mean that Alexander the Great, on the eve of the climactic battle of Issus, paused at the Syrian seashore to cast a four-horse chariot into the waves in Poseidon's name? The answers reach far deeper than Homer's wine-dark sea.

• 2. Before the Sea

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  The Linear B clay tablets from Pylos and Knossos are the oldest written evidence of Poseidon's name, and they record it as Po-se-da-wo-ne. On those tablets, his name appears with greater frequency than the name of Zeus. He held the title wa-na-ka, a Mycenean word meaning king or protector, and carried the epithet E-ne-si-da-o-ne, "earth shaker," inscribed in the script as a sequence of six syllable signs.

  At Pylos, Poseidon was the chief god of the city. He was linked to the protection of the palace itself, not to the ocean. His female counterpart was Po-tini-ja, a title meaning "lady" or "mistress," the Mycenean goddess of nature whose main aspects were birth and vegetation. Tablets from Pylos record offerings destined for "the Two Queens and the King," suggesting a sacred triad at the heart of Bronze Age ritual.

  In this earliest layer of evidence, there is not sufficient proof that Poseidon was connected with the sea at all. The Greeks who carried his cult were not seafarers. They came from far inland, from Thessaly and Boeotia, where his oldest myths center on rivers that disappear underground and burst out again as springs. The natural philosophers Thales, Anaximenes, and Aristotle all believed that earthquakes were caused by the erosion of rocks by underground water. That belief was probably no different from the folk belief that shaped the god in the first place.

• 3. The Horse God

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  Near Thelpusa in Arcadia, a very old myth tells of Demeter changing herself into a mare to escape Poseidon's pursuit. Poseidon took the form of a stallion. From their mating she gave birth to a horse called Arion, described as "very swift," and to a daughter whose name was not permitted to be spoken to the uninitiated. At Lycosura, the daughter was called Despoina, "mistress."

  Demeter, furious at what had happened, put on a black robe and shut herself inside a cave. The fruits of the earth withered. Zeus sent the Moirai to draw her out. The Thelpusians gave her the surname Erinys, meaning Fury, and her sanctuary in a cave at Phigalia showed her with a horse's head carrying a dove and a dolphin, symbols of her power over air and water.

  The same myth, with small variations, appears in Boeotia. At Haliartos near Thebes, Poseidon mates with Erinys near the spring of Tilpousa and she gives birth to Arion. At Delphi, from earlier times, Poseidon was joined in a religious union with the earth goddess Ge, who is represented as a snake. In the Theogony, Hesiod wrote that Poseidon slept with the monstrous Medusa near the mountain Helikon, and that Pegasus sprang from her body when Perseus severed her head; Pegasus struck the ground with his hoof and created the spring Hippocrene.

  Scholars have noted the strong similarity between the Boeotian and Arcadian myths, and particularly the recurrence of the horse Arion in both regions. Walter Burkert suggested that the Hellenic cult of Poseidon as a horse god may be connected to the introduction of the horse and war-chariot from Anatolia to Greece around 1600 BC. The Thessalians, who lived in the region scholars associate with the Minyans and an early form of his cult, were famous charioteers. And in Thessaly, a myth held that Poseidon created the first horse, called Skyphios, by striking a rock with his trident, and drained the valley of Tempe in the same way.

• 4. God of the City

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  When the Achaean colonists from Pylos migrated to Ionia in the 11th century BC, they brought Poseidon with them. In that new, sea-dependent world, his inland identity as a god of waters and earthquakes translated naturally into lordship over the open sea. The month named Poseidaon, the month of winter storms, was observed in Ionic territories, in Athens, in the islands of the Aegean, and in the cities of Asia Minor.

  In Athens, Poseidon was second only to Athena in civic importance. In Corinth and many Ionian cities and in the cities of Magna Graecia, he was the chief god of the polis. The significance of his cult can be read in place names: Poteidaia in the Chalkidiki peninsula, Poseidonia in Italy (the city the Romans called Paestum), and Poseidion along coastlines from the Greek mainland to the Syrian coast.

  His temples became gathering places for political leagues. The Panionia, the festival of all Ionians celebrated near the promontory of Mycale between Samos and Miletus, brought together the representatives of twelve cities in honor of Poseidon Helikonios. The temple at Onchestos in Boeotia became the meeting place of the second Boeotian League. The temple at Helike in Achaea, a city mentioned in Homer's Catalogue of Ships, was the meeting place of the Achaean League. Poseidon was considered a symbol of unity. His sanctuaries provided neutral ground.

  At Tainaron, his sacred sanctuary was built inside a cave at the peninsula's tip. The path into the interior was carved into the rock. Pausanias describes it as a psychopompeion, a place associated with the journey of souls, that also functioned as a site of necromancy and as a refuge for those who fled there for protection. The city of Helike, with its Panhellenic temple, was destroyed by a tsunami in 370 BC.

• 5. The Myths of Rivalry

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  Poseidon lost the city of Athens. The myth of that contest was carved on the western pediment of the Parthenon, the first image a visitor would see arriving at the Acropolis. Each god was to offer the Athenians a gift, and the city would choose. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a saltwater spring burst up. Athena offered an olive tree, and the Athenians, guided by their king Cecrops, chose the tree for its wood, oil, and food.

  Posteidon's response was to flood the Attic plain. He remained a presence on the Acropolis nonetheless, identified in cult with the ancestral figure Erechtheus, and the depression made by his trident remained visible, surrounded by the northern hall of the Erechtheum, open to the sky. Burkert noted that "in cult, Poseidon was identified with Erechtheus."

  He lost Corinth as well. The dispute there was with Helios, the sun god. Their disagreement was brought before Briareos, one of the Hecatoncheires, an elder god, who awarded the Acrocorinth to Helios and the isthmus by the sea to Poseidon. He disputed with Hera over Argos, lost that contest to a local king named Phoroneus, and responded with a drought.

  He also exchanged territories peaceably. He gave the island of Delos, the birthplace of Artemis and Apollo, to the goddess Leto in exchange for the island of Calauria. He exchanged Delphi for Taenarum with Apollo. According to Pausanias, Poseidon was one of the caretakers of the oracle at Delphi before Olympian Apollo took it over, and Apollo gave him the psychopompeion of Kalaureia as compensation.

• 6. Wrath and Obligation

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  In Homer's Iliad, Poseidon supports the Greeks against the Trojans. In the Odyssey, he is the force that keeps Odysseus from reaching home for ten years. Odysseus had blinded Polyphemus, the Cyclops who was Poseidon's son. Poseidon punished him with storms, caused the complete loss of his ship, and killed many of his companions. In Homer, Poseidon is described as a majestic, fearsome, and avenging monarch of the sea.

  Before the Trojan War, Poseidon and Apollo had offended Zeus by joining in a rebellion organized by Hera. Their punishment was to serve King Laomedon of Troy. They built the city's great walls and were promised Laomedon's immortal horses in payment. Laomedon refused to pay. Poseidon sent a sea monster to attack Troy before the war began, and the monster was eventually killed by Heracles.

  The myth of Theseus shows Poseidon bound by his own word in more intimate ways. He had promised Theseus three favors. When Theseus believed, mistakenly, that his son Hippolytus had assaulted his wife Phaedra, he called on Poseidon to destroy the young man. Poseidon fulfilled the request. As Hippolytus was driving near the sea, a monstrous sea creature appeared and spooked his horses, which dragged him to his death.

  A Hippocratic text dated to around 400 BC records that Poseidon was blamed for certain types of epilepsy. Xenophon's Anabasis describes a group of Spartan soldiers in 400-399 BC singing to Poseidon a paean, a kind of hymn normally associated with Apollo. Like Dionysus inflaming the maenads, Poseidon could induce particular forms of mental disturbance. His benevolent and destructive aspects were understood as two sides of the same power: the god who could calm the sea was the same god who sent the storm.

• 7. Temples and Worship

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  At Cape Sounion in Attica, two temples to Poseidon were built on the same headland. The first, begun in 490 BC, was destroyed by the Persians before it was completed. The second was built in 444 BC and was modeled on its predecessor. It measured 13.48 by 31.15 meters at the stylobate, with six columns across the front and thirteen along each side. An Ionic frieze ran across the outer colonnade and continued around the interior at each end. The temple probably contained a colossal bronze statue of Poseidon at the end facing the entrance.

  At Isthmia near Corinth, a building constructed in the early 7th century BC, probably around 690-650 BC, was dedicated to Poseidon and is considered a pioneering example of Doric architecture. It was completely destroyed in 470 BC. The Panhellenic Isthmian Games were celebrated at Corinth in Poseidon's honor, including athletic and musical competitions and horseracing. Traditionally the games were established in the Bronze Age over the dead prince Palaimon.

  At Tinos, a Doric temple to Poseidon and Amphitrite was built near a beach in the 4th century BC and reconstructed in the 3rd. It was made of local marble and decorated with representations of the god's symbols, including dolphins and the trident. The great banquet halls within the complex indicate the large scale of the gatherings there. Poseidon was worshipped at Tinos as a healer god, a function scholars note was a forerunner of the later famous sanctuary of the Evangelistria on the same island.

  The worship of Poseidon was recognized by the Greek government in 2017, as part of the official recognition of modern Hellenic religion.