Amphitrite
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In ancient Greek mythology, Amphitrite (not to be confused with Aphrodite) was a sea-goddess. Under the influence of the Olympian pantheon, she became merely the consort of Poseidon, and was further diminished by poets to a symbolic representation of the sea.
In Roman mythology, the consort of Neptune, a comparatively minor figure, was Salacia.[1]
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[edit] Mythography
She was a daughter of Nereus and Doris—and thus a Nereid—according to Hesiod's Theogony, but of Oceanus and Tethys—and thus an Oceanid—according to Apollodorus, who actually lists her among both the Nereids[2] and the Oceanids[3].
Amphitrite's offspring included seals [4] and dolphins. By her, Poseidon had a son, Triton, and a daughter, Rhode (if this Rhode was not actually fathered by Poseidon on Halia or was not the daugther of Asopus as others claim). Apollodorus (3.15.4) also mentions a daughter of Poseidon and Amphitrite named Benthesikyme.
Amphitrite is not fully personified in the Homeric epics: "out on the open sea, in Amphitrite's breakers" (Odyssey iii.101); she shares her Homeric epithet Halosydne ("sea-nourished")[5] with Thetis[6]; in some sense the sea-nymphs are doublets.
[edit] Representation and Cult
Amphitrite, "the third one who encircles (the sea)"[7], was so entirely confined in her authority to the sea and the creatures in it that she was almost never associated with her husband, either for purposes of worship or in works of art, except when he was to be distinctly regarded as the god who controlled the sea. An exception may be the cult image of Amphitrite that Pausanias saw in the temple of Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth (ii.1.7). Though Amphitrite does not figure in Greek cultus, at an archaic stage she was of importance, for in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, she appears at the birthing of Apollo among "all the chiefest of the goddesses, Dione and Rhea and Ichnaea and Themis and loud-moaning Amphitrite." The widely respected Pindar, in his sixth Olympian Ode, recognized Poseidon's role as "great god of the sea, husband of Amphitrite, goddess of the golden spindle." For later poets, Amphitrite was simply a metaphor for the sea: Euripides, in Cyclops (702) and Ovid, Metamorphoses, (i.14).
In the arts, Amphitrite was distinguishable from the other Nereids only by her queenly attributes. It was said that Poseidon first saw her dancing at Naxos among the other Nereids (EB 1911), and carried her off. But in another version of the myth, she fled from his advances to Atlas, at the farthest ends of the sea; there the dolphin of Poseidon found her, and was rewarded by being placed among the stars as the constellation Delphinus.[8]
In works of art, Amphitrite is represented either enthroned beside Poseidon or driving with him in a chariot drawn by sea-horses (hippocamps) or other fabulous creatures of the deep, and attended by Tritons and Nereids. She is dressed in queenly robes and has nets in her hair. The pincers of a crab are sometimes shown attached to her temples.
In poetry, Amphitrite's name is often used for the sea, as a synonym of Thalassa.
An asteroid, 29 Amphitrite, is named for her.
Amphitrite is featured in a puzzle in the Playstation 2 game God of War, in which a statue of her is pointing towards the solution to the puzzle, the exit of the room.
Amphitrite is also a genus of the polychaete family Terebellidae.
[edit] Notes
- ^ "...Salacia, the folds of her garment sagging with fish" (Apuleius, The Golden Ass 4.31).
- ^ Bibliotheke i.2.7
- ^ Bibliotheke i.2.2 and i.4.6.
- ^ "...A throng of seals, the brood of lovely Halosydne." (Homer, Odyssey iv.404).
- ^ Wilhelm Vollmer, Wörterbuch der Mythologie, 3rd ed. 1874 [1]
- ^ Odyssey iv.404 (Amphitrite), and Iliad, xx.207.
- ^ Robert Graves, The Greek Myths 1960.
- ^ Catasterismi, 31; Hyginus, Poetical Astronomy, ii.132.
[edit] References
- Theoi.com: Amphitrite
- Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology: "Halosydne" and "Amphitrite"
