Poseidon- Greek GodDeity"Earth-Shaker"

Lord of the Seas

When the three sons of Kronos cast lots for the cosmos after defeating the Titans, Poseidon drew the seas.

His palace lay beneath the Aegean, near Euboea. Homer describes a shining structure of gold that never tarnished, built on the sea floor, where immortal horses waited in stables of pearl. From this palace the god rose in his chariot, drawn by bronze-hoofed, golden-maned steeds. The sea parted before him. Dolphins swam alongside, and the waves went still.

Poseidon never entirely accepted his share. Homer preserves a tradition in which Poseidon, Hera, and Athena conspired to bind Zeus in chains. Only Thetis, who summoned the hundred-handed Briareus to Olympus, freed the king of gods. In the Iliad, Poseidon openly defies Zeus's commands when Troy's fate hangs in the balance. He considered himself Zeus's equal, and the sea was his to rule alone.

The Earth-Shaker

He is Enosichthon, the Earth-Shaker. Earthquakes answer to his trident as surely as waves do. The three-pronged spear was forged by the Cyclopes during the Titanomachy, and when it strikes the ground, the earth splits. Herodotus records that the Thessalians credited him with cleaving their mountains apart to create the Vale of Tempe. The blow drained a vast inland lake and opened the only passage south.

The Tamer of Horses

The Greeks called him Hippios and said he created the first horse, which sprang from rock when he struck it with his trident. A darker story begins with Demeter. While she searched the earth for Persephone, Poseidon pursued her. She transformed into a mare to escape him. He became a stallion and overtook her. From this union came Arion, the immortal horse with the power of speech. Pausanias, at the Phigalian shrine in Arcadia, adds that the goddess Despoina was born of the same coupling.

The Contest for Athens

Both Poseidon and Athena desired Athens, and Zeus decreed the matter would be settled by gifts. Poseidon struck the Acropolis with his trident. Salt water gushed from the rock. In Apollodorus, the first horse leaped from the stone instead. Athena planted an olive tree. The citizens chose the tree. Poseidon flooded the Thriasian plain in vengeance. Yet Athens remained utterly dependent on his seas, and he was worshipped there alongside Athena. His temple at Sounion watched over the approach to the city's harbor.

The Walls of Troy

Zeus sent Poseidon and Apollo to serve King Laomedon of Troy for one year as punishment for rebellion. Poseidon built Troy's walls, massive fortifications that would withstand ten years of Greek siege, while Apollo tended the king's cattle. When the year ended and Laomedon refused to pay, Poseidon sent a sea monster to ravage the coast. Heracles killed the beast and rescued the princess Hesione, but Poseidon's hatred of Troy was set.

During the Trojan War, he openly supported the Greeks against Zeus's prohibition. His grudge was personal and undiminished. After the war, when Ajax the Lesser violated Cassandra in Athena's temple, Poseidon joined Athena to wreck the Greek fleet on its voyage home.

The Wrath of the Sea

Odysseus blinded the Cyclops Polyphemus in his cave, and the giant prayed to his father. The sea god answered. For ten years after Troy fell, Poseidon drove storms against Odysseus's ships and drowned his companions one crew at a time. When Odysseus finally built a raft to leave Calypso's island, Poseidon spotted him from the mountains of the Solymi and shattered the raft with a single wave. Only Athena's counter-protection and Odysseus's own endurance brought him home.

His vengeance fell on kingdoms as readily as on men. When Cassiopeia boasted that her daughter Andromeda surpassed the Nereids in beauty, Poseidon sent flood and sea monster against Ethiopia. The kingdom would have been destroyed had Perseus not killed the beast. When the people of Argos chose Hera as their patron over him, he dried up every spring and river in the land.

Children of the Sea

Poseidon lay with Medusa in Athena's temple. The outraged goddess cursed Medusa for the sacrilege: her hair became a nest of serpents, her gaze turned men to stone. When Perseus severed her head years later, two of Poseidon's children sprang from her neck: Pegasus the winged horse and Chrysaor the golden-sworded giant, born at the moment of their mother's death.

The giant Antaeus, born from Poseidon and Gaia, drew invincible strength from the earth until Heracles lifted him and crushed him in midair. Orion inherited from his father the power to walk across the surface of the sea.

Amphitrite and the Dolphin

Poseidon's queen was Amphitrite, a Nereid. When he first sought to marry her, she fled to the far edge of the world. He sent a dolphin to find her and plead his case. The dolphin succeeded where the god could not. In gratitude, Poseidon set the dolphin among the stars as a constellation. Amphitrite bore him Triton, who became his herald. Triton's great conch shell could calm the waves or rouse them at his father's command.

The Temple at Sounion

Sailors sacrificed to Poseidon before every voyage. The sea was as likely to drown them as deliver them. Coastal cities raised his temples on promontories and headlands. At Sounion, white columns overlooked the cape where ships rounded toward Athens. The temple still stands. The Corinthians, whose city sat on the narrow isthmus between two seas, held the Isthmian Games in his name. Victors received crowns of his sacred pine.

At Pylos, Linear B tablets from the thirteenth century BCE record offerings to "Poseidaon." He was worshipped centuries before the first classical temple was raised.