Part of our profiles on the origins of false gods. The Twelve Olympians are embedded in our history and still influence our culture today!
POSEIDON (puh-SYE-dun or poh-SYE-dun; Roman name Neptune) was the god of the sea, earthquakes, and horses. Although he was officially one of the supreme gods of Mount Olympus, he spent most of his time in his watery domain.
Poseidon was Zeus’s and Hades’s brother. These three gods divided up creation. Zeus ruled the sky, Hades ruled the Underworld, and Poseidon ruled all water, both fresh and salt.
Who was Poseidon in Greek Mythology
By Joshua Typos
Although various rivers were personified as gods, they were technically under Poseidon’s sway. Similarly, Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea, wasn’t considered on a par with Poseidon, who drove his chariot through the waves with unquestioned dominance. Poseidon had married Nereus’s daughter, the sea-nymph Amphitrite.
POSEIDON Greek Gods: Ruler of the Seas
After dividing heaven, the watery realm, and the subterranean land of the dead, the Olympians agreed to rule the earth jointly, with Zeus as king. This led to territorial disputes among the gods. Poseidon vied with Athena for the title of patron deity of Athens. The god demonstrated his power and benevolence by striking the Acropolis with his three-pronged spear, which caused a spring of salt water to emerge.
Athena, however, planted an olive tree, which the Athenians saw as a more useful favor. Her paramount importance to the Athenians is seen in her magnificent temple, the Parthenon, which still crowns the Acropolis. The Athenians were careful, all the same, to honor Poseidon as well (as soon as his anger cooled and he withdrew the flood of seawater that ravaged the land after his loss in the contest with Athena).
Poseidon was Theseus’s father, though the mortal Aegeus also claimed this distinction. Theseus was happy to have two fathers, enjoying each lineage when it suited him. Thus, he became king of Athens through Aegeus, but he used Poseidon’s parentage to meet a challenge from King Minos of Crete. This monarch threw his signet ring into the sea and dared Theseus to retrieve it. The hero dove beneath the waves, found the ring, and Poseidon’s wife, Amphitrite, gave him a crown.
Poseidon was not so well-disposed toward another famous hero. Because Odysseus blinded the Cyclops Polyphemus, Poseidon’s son, the god not only delayed the hero’s return home from the Trojan War but also made him face enormous perils. At one point he whipped up the sea with his trident and caused a storm so severe that Odysseus was shipwrecked.
Poseidon similarly cursed King Minos’s wife. Minos proved his divine right to rule Crete by calling on Poseidon to send a bull from the sea, and the king promised to sacrifice it. Poseidon sent the bull, but Minos liked it too much to sacrifice it. So Poseidon asked Aphrodite, the goddess of love, to make Minos’s queen, Pasiphae, fall in love with the bull. The result was the monstrous Minotaur, half man, half bull.
As the god of horses, Poseidon often adopted the shape of a steed. It is uncertain whether he was in this form when he wooed Medusa. But when Perseus later killed the Gorgon, the winged horse Pegasus sprang from her severed neck.
Poseidon sometimes granted others shape-shifting power. He also granted the maiden Caenis’s request to be transformed into the invulnerable male warrior Caeneus.
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