Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained - in today’s video
we’re going to be discussing Poseidon.
Poseidon was the Greek god of the sea, which he could both calm and enrage, making him,
intermittently, either the bane or benefactor of sailors and fishermen,
both of who used the sea at Poseidon’s sufferance and thrived or perished based on his whim. Storms,
rivers, and floods were phenomena associated with Poseidon. Any skill,
activity, or event that revolved around the sea, such as navigation and maritime warfare,
fell under Poseidon’s purview. He was also the god of Earthquakes. (The earth was said to roil
when Poseidon struck it with his trident.) And he was the master of horses, who were his creations.
All equestrian pursuits - like taming, breeding, racing - were associated with him.
Poseidon was portrayed as a mature bearded man, usually wielding a trident. Dolphins,
bulls, and horses were sacred to him, as were pine trees because of their tall trunks
making ideal ship masts. The Romans equated Poseidon with their own sea god, Neptune,
and though Poseidon was master of the sea, he was not the sea personified. Pontus,
one of the three children independently produced by Gaia, was the actual personification of the
sea. Given the domain Poseidon had mastery over, religious sites dedicated to him were usually
built at coastal locations, but locations further inland could also be sacred to him.
His temples and sanctuaries could be found near springs and areas where the earth was sundered.
Poseidon’s consort was Amphitrite, an Oceanid and sea goddess, and by her
he sired the sea god Triton, who, per the poet Ovid’s description, had shoulders clad in what
looked like epaulets of barnacles and possessed a conch shell whose sound could control water.
Though Poseidon was a committed man, much like his brother, Zeus, he had a penchant for philandry in
the form of extramarital pursuits. He pursued the goddess Demeter while she was grief stricken from
having her daughter abducted by Hades. She spurned his advances and even transformed herself into a
mare to escape him, but Poseidon took the form of a stallion and mounted her. The result was
the immortal horse Arion, who was Hercules’ own horse for a time. Another instance had Poseidon
save Amymone, a Danaid, from the violation of a Satyr, but this chivalrous act was later undone
when Poseidon fell in love with her and took her by force. Yes, Poseidon was certainly a
prolific adulterer - though perhaps not to the same extent as his lightning-wielding
brother - and many of his infidelities resulted in the siring of famous children,
including Medusa, Pegasus, the hero Theseus, and the Cyclops Polyphemus.
Poseidon was one of the first generation Olympians. He had three sisters, Hestia, Demeter,
and Hera, and two brothers, Zeus and Hades. He was the son of Cronus and Rhea. Cronus, the youngest
of the first-generation titans, became king of the cosmos after castrating his father Uranus,
the personification of the sky, and Rhea was a titan goddess of life and fertility.
Cronus learnt from his parents that he was destined to be overthrown by his son. To forestall
such an eventuality, he decided to swallow his children whole as soon as they were born. Rhea,
unable to bear the sight of her last child being swallowed, proffered a stone swaddled to look like
a baby in Zeus’ stead. Cronus was taken in by this ruse, and he promptly swallowed the stone without
inspecting it. Zeus was raised in secret, then made a triumphant return to the public eye when he
freed his five siblings by making Cronus disgorge them. The Titanomachy, which was the cataclysmic
ten-year war in which the gods defeated the titans for supremacy of the cosmos, ensued.
Led by Zeus, Poseidon and his brothers and sisters travelled to the underworld
at the onset of the Titanomachy. They slew the dragon Campe, who guarded the gates of Tartarus,
and released the three Hecatonchires and the three Cyclopes, all of them joining forces
with the Olympians on account of them being kept prisoners by Cronus. The Hecatonchires
were colossal and powerful. They each had 50 heads and 100 arms, and they bombarded the titans with
an onslaught of boulders. The three Cyclopes that were freed were unlike others in Greek mythology.
They were godlike and master craftsmen. They created Poseidon’s trident, Zeus’ lightning bolts,
and Hades helmet of darkness, which granted perfect invisibility to whoever wore it.
After the Titanomachy, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon drew lots to determine how the world would be
divided amongst them. To Zeus went the skies; hades, the underworld; and Poseidon, the sea.
It was agreed that the earth was sacred,
so they shared stewardship of it while ultimately leaving it to Gaia.
Though Poseidon was one of the most powerful Olympians,
he wasn’t above rivalry and enmity with other gods. His feud with Athena perhaps
best exemplifies this. Their relationship was characterized by acrimony and, at times,
even animosity. The two of them competed for the right to be the Patron god of Athens.
Poseidon struck stone with his trident and thereby created a saltwater spring,
a strong symbol of naval power, but Athena’s gift was judged as being more valuable. She created
the olive tree, which offered food to eat, oil to burn, and wood to build. Poseidon and Athena were
also at odds in one of the versions of Medusa’s origin story, in which Poseidon desecrated one of
Athena’s temples by laying with Medusa - sometimes willing, others forced - on the temple floor. As
retribution, Athena transformed medusa, who was a beautiful woman, into a snake-haired
monster so hideous to behold that anyone who looked upon her would be turned to stone.
Poseidon and Athena often locked horns and found themselves in conflict with one another,
but the two of them were - likely begrudgingly on both their parts - allies on occasion. They
both took Hera’s part in her bid to overthrow Zeus, for example.
The Iliad describes Poseidon as being one of the three gods - the other two being Hera and
Athena - who participated in a coup against Zeus. The attempt was thwarted when Metis,
a sea goddess and mother of Achilles, fetched Briareus,
one of the hundred-handed Hecatonchires, the mere sight of whom struck fear into the
hearts of the gods moving against Zeus, causing them to abandon their uprising.
Poseidon - either as punishment for his role in the insurgency against Zeus
or to witness first hand the cruelty of Laomedon, the king of Troy - along with
Apollo spent a year building the walls of Troy. After their year of servitude was finished,
Laomedon reneged on his promise to pay them for their labour, but both gods would take revenge.
Poseidon sent a sea monster, and Apollo sent a pestilence.
Poseidon and Athena also both fought for the Greeks in the Trojan war - Poseidon because a
greedy bygone king refused to pay him and Athena because Paris, a prince of Troy,
chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful, not her. But Poseidon’s wrath wasn’t reserved for Troy,
a fact Odysseus can attest to. He was forced to blind the cyclops Polyphemus to escape the cave
he and his men were trapped in. because of the abhorrent treatment they were subjected to,
Odysseus, after he and his men had set sail, couldn’t resist taunting Polyphemus. Odysseus,
in the midst of the gibes and jeers he was yelling to shore, revealed his name,
a blunder he would come to rue for years to come. Polyphemus was the son of Poseidon,
and so the Sea God made Odysseus’ return home both harrowing and interminable. In all,
it took Odysseus 10 years to make it home after the Trojan War, and were it not for
other gods becoming sympathetic to his plight, he never would have seen his wife and son again.
Another example of Poseidon’s wrath is the origin story of the minotaur.
King Minos declared that his right to rule was divinely sanctioned,
and to prove this true, he claimed that Poseidon would grant anything he asked. Minos asked for a
bull so that he could sacrifice it in Poseidon’s honor, but the beauty of the animal was such that
he kept it for himself, sacrificing another in its stead. For this offence, Poseidon punished Minos
by causing his wife Pasiphae to fall madly in love with the bull Minos had promised to sacrifice.
Pasiphae enlisted the services of Daedalus, who was a great inventor.
He fashioned a hollow wooden cow that Pasiphae could climb into so that she could be mounted
by the bull she so deeply lusted for. The child she bore was the minotaur, a half-man,
half-bull monstrosity. Rather than kill it, Minos commissioned Daedalus to construct a vast,
virtually inescapable labyrinth to imprison the monster. Every nine years Minos sent 14 youths,
seven boys and seven girls, into the labyrinth to feed the minotaur. Athens was forced
to provide these youths as recompense for killing Minos’ son years earlier.
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