Deity

Poseidon

poh-SY-don

Greek Deities

As the face of the planet Neptune, Poseidon embodies the deep, dissolution, and the mystical. Poseidon is the Greek god of the sea, of earthquakes, storms, and horses, one of the Twelve Olympians, son of Cronus and Rhea, who received the sea for his realm when the three brothers divided the cosmos. Wielding the three-pronged trident, he raises storms and shakes the earth, earning the title Earth-shaker, and he is moody and quick to wrath. He contended with Athena for the city of Athens, offering a saltwater spring and the horse against her olive, and he fathered many offspring, among them the Cyclops Polyphemus. In the Bronze Age he was a chief god at Pylos. His Roman counterpart is Neptune, and he embodies the fathomless, storm-tossed, dissolving deep.

Facts

Function

Domain / Function

Earth 1

Domain / Function

Sea and ocean 1

Domain / Function

Herds and pastoralism 1

Domain Detail

Beyond his primary character as sea god, Poseidon retained an older association with horses and with earthquakes that predates full identification with the sea alone, reflected in Linear B evidence and in cult titles such as Hippios, of horses, that persisted long after his maritime character became dominant. 2

Belief

Theology

Polytheistic: many gods 1

Sources

Textual Note

Homer repeatedly calls Poseidon by the epithet Ennosigaios, or Earth shaker, a title ancient audiences understood as connecting the sea god directly to earthquakes, which the Greeks attributed to his power just as readily as they attributed storms and shipwrecks to him. 3

Origins

Origin of the Name

The name Poseidon already appears in Linear B tablets as po se da o, showing that his cult predates the literary sources of the classical Greek pantheon by centuries. 2

Cult

Principal Cult Centre

The Isthmian sanctuary near Corinth, and the temple at Cape Sounion 1

Attributes and Iconography

Bearded, with the trident; the horse, the bull and the dolphin. 1

Worship and Practice

The Isthmian Games at Corinth, one of the four Panhellenic athletic festivals alongside Olympia, Delphi and Nemea, were held in Poseidon's honor, and his sanctuary at Cape Sounion, whose surviving columns still overlook the Aegean, served sailors as a landmark and a place to give thanks for a safe voyage. 2

Practice

Lineage

Hesiod and Homer alike count Poseidon a son of Cronus and Rhea, brother to Zeus, Hades, Demeter, Hera and Hestia; Homer's Iliad has Poseidon himself recall that the three brothers, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, divided the cosmos by lot, with the sea falling to him. 2

Attributions

Mythic Association

Homer's Iliad describes Poseidon quietly favoring the Achaeans in the Trojan War despite Zeus's order of divine neutrality, at one point rousing the Greek ranks disguised as the seer Calchas to rally their flagging morale. 3

Identity

Gender

Male 1

Attestation

Era of Attestation

1400 BCE to 400 CE 1

Veneration Today

Historically attested; no continuous cult 1

Historicity

Not a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2

Position Profile

Key Text

Poseidon carried the epithet Ennosigaios, earth shaker, in Homeric verse, reflecting a widespread ancient Greek belief that he struck the ground with his trident to cause earthquakes, a destructive power that placed him alongside his rule of the sea as a source of dread independent of storms at sea. 3

Learn More

Earth-Shaker Before He Was God of the Sea

The Greeks knew Poseidon best as lord of the sea, but his oldest and most persistent title is Enosichthon / Ennosigaios, the Earth-shaker. He was the god of earthquakes, and the Greek world, sitting on a seismically violent set of faults, took that power very seriously. His association with the horse is equally deep, he is Hippios, and myth makes him the sire of horses and of the winged Pegasus. Sea, earthquake and horse form a single older complex of a god of the surging, uncontainable forces beneath and around the land.

Linear B confirms his antiquity and something surprising about his rank. In the Mycenaean tablets from Pylos, written before 1200 BCE, the name po-se-da-o appears prominently, at that palace apparently more often than Zeus, receiving offerings alongside a pair of goddesses. Whatever the exact hierarchy, Poseidon was a major deity of the Bronze Age mainland, not a late specialist of the waves.

By the classical period his marine role dominated, fitting a seafaring people whose ships he could wreck or spare. Sailors sacrificed to him before a voyage; his anger, in the Odyssey, is what keeps a man from home for ten years.

The God Who Kept Losing the Cities

A recurring pattern in Greek myth has Poseidon contend for the patronage of a city and lose. For Athens he struck the Acropolis and produced salt water (or a horse); Athena gave the olive and was chosen, and one strand of the tradition has Poseidon flood the Attic plain in anger. He disputed Corinth with Helios, Argos with Hera, Aegina with Zeus. The stories are not random: they seem to record real historical friction, the settling of an older, powerful god into a subordinate place as the Olympian order took its classical shape.

He was not left without honour. At Athens he was worshipped on the Acropolis as Poseidon-Erechtheus, fused with a local hero-king, and his trident-mark and salt spring were shown there for centuries. His great Panhellenic sanctuary was the Isthmus of Corinth, where the Isthmian Games were held in his honour, and the temple at Sounion, on the cliff at Attica's tip, greeted every ship approaching Athens.

The Odyssey gives the sharpest portrait of his character: implacable in a grudge, able to raise a storm at will, yet bound like the other gods by the larger decisions of Zeus and fate.

In the Texts

Theogony 453-458Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (Loeb Classical Library)theogony

But Rhea was subject in love to Cronos and bare splendid children, Hestia, Demeter, and gold-shod Hera and strong Hades, pitiless in heart, who dwells under the earth, and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker, and wise Zeus, father of gods and men, by whose thunder the wide earth is shaken.

Poseidon, named here by his epithet the Earth-Shaker.

Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (Loeb Classical Library). translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White.

About This Passage

Correspondences & Relations

Poseidon holds this planet only because the body discovered in 1846 was given the Roman sea god's name. The Greek attribution is a back translation of a nineteenth century naming decision, not an ancient correspondence.

Connections

Associated With

Athena

This source names Poseidon directly: "As patron of crafts, strategy and civic order she contests Poseidon for patronage of Athens and wins by the gift of the olive tree, and her myths run largely to aiding favored heroes at moments of..."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Bronze Mirror: The Birth of Menrva (British Museum, 1856,1213.4)

This source names Poseidon directly: "Maristiusta (probably corresponding to Poseidon), attending the scene."

Source Mirror, Birth of Menrva, registration 1856,1213.4 (The British Museum)

Cronus

This source names Poseidon directly: "him, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon in turn, warned by Gaia and Uranos that his own son would depose him exactly as he had deposed Uranos; Rhea saves the youngest, Zeus, by giving Cronus..."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Cyclops

Polyphemus, the best-known individual cyclops in Homer's Odyssey, is named as a son of the sea god Poseidon.

Florence 4209, the Francois Vase (Perseus Project Art and Archaeology Artifact Browser)

This source names Poseidon directly: "the wedding procession frieze naming Poseidon, Amphitrite, Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena, Artemis, Hermes, Maia, the Moirai, Nereus, Doris and Okeanos, plus the separate scene of Hephaistos riding..."

Source Florence 4209, the Francois Vase (Perseus Project Art and Archaeology Artifact Browser)

Linear B

This source names Poseidon directly: "their offering lists name Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Dionysus and Artemis some five hundred years before Homer, which established that those gods were worshipped in the Bronze Age and not..."

Source The Decipherment of Linear BJohn Chadwick

Neptune

This source names Poseidon directly: "of Neptune is a trident, the weapon of Poseidon and Roman Neptune, and it was proposed by Urbain Le Verrier, whose calculations led to the planet's discovery in 1846."

Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion

Poseidon (Wikipedia)

This source names Poseidon directly: "General reference article on Poseidon, consulted 2026-08-11."

Source Poseidon (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Rhea

This source names Poseidon directly: "When each child she bears him, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon, is swallowed at birth on Cronus's fear of being overthrown, Rhea travels to Crete to bear her sixth child, Zeus, in secret..."

Source TheogonyHesiod

Scylla and Charybdis

Charybdis is named a daughter of Poseidon and Gaia in some accounts of her origin.

Source MetamorphosesOvid

Sea Thiasos Relief, File Record (Wikimedia Commons, Glyptothek Munich 239)

This source names Poseidon directly: "maritime procession for the wedding of Poseidon (Neptune) and Amphitrite, the divine couple shown in the bridal carriage drawn by two music-playing Tritons, dated to the second half of the 2nd..."

Source Sea Thiasos Relief, File Record (Wikimedia Commons, Glyptothek Munich 239)

Statuette of Poseidon (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 24.195.91)

This source names Poseidon directly: "lead statuette of the Greek sea god Poseidon, Laconian workmanship, undated precisely by the museum beyond a broad Archaic to Hellenistic bracket typical of Laconian votive lead figurines."

Source Statuette of Poseidon, accession 24.195.91 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Statuette of Poseidon, accession 24.195.91 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

This source names Poseidon directly: "lead statuette titled "Statuette of Poseidon," Greek, Laconian."

Source Statuette of Poseidon, accession 24.195.91 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Child Of

Cronus

Poseidon is named among the six children Rhea bore to Cronus.

Source TheogonyHesiod

Rhea

Poseidon is named among the six children Rhea bore to Cronus.

Source TheogonyHesiod

Children

Pegasus

Poseidon is the father in the same passage.

Source TheogonyHesiod

Depicted In

Francois Vase (Florence 4209)

Source Florence 4209, the Francois Vase (Perseus Project Art and Archaeology Artifact Browser)

Gods and Titans

Poseidon, confirmed via retailer description naming Zeus, Poseidon and Ares as included.

Source Gods and Titans (official deck site)Stacey Demarco and Jimmy Manton

Interpretatio Of

Neptune

Interpretatio romana: Greek sea-god Poseidon identified with Roman Neptune.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price

Passages on This

Theogony 453-458

Poseidon, named here by his epithet the Earth-Shaker.

Sacred to This Deity

Horse

The horse is sacred to Poseidon in Greek religion under his epithet Hippios, and he is credited in myth with creating the first horse.

Source The Facts on File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and LegendAnthony S. Mercatante, revised and expanded by James R. Dow

Same Figure, Narrative Entry

Poseidon

Sibling Of

Demeter

Both entities carry live child-of edges to Cronus and Rhea (RelationshipId-checked before this write); Rhea's own stored description names all six -- Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Zeus -- as her children by Cronus, per Theogony, making them siblings.

Source TheogonyHesiod

Hades

Source TheogonyHesiod

Hera

Source TheogonyHesiod

Hestia

Source TheogonyHesiod

Zeus

Source TheogonyHesiod

Worshipped In

Ancient Greek Religion

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Ancient Greeks

Poseidon of the sea and earthquake was honored wherever Greeks sailed.

Source Greek ReligionWalter Burkert

Sources

1. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition

Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2012s.v. PoseidonView the Source

2. Greek Religion

Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press, 1985The Earth-shaker and horse complex; the Pylos Linear B evidenceView the Source

3. Iliad

HomerIliad, Book 1, lines 35-37, tr. A.T. Murray

Quote, Iliad, Book 1, lines 35-37, tr. A.T. Murray

Hear me, god of the silver bow, who stand over Chryse and holy Cilla, and rule mightily over Tenedos, Sminthian god

View the Source

Encyclopedia of Religion

Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source

Theogony

HesiodTheogony, lines 19-20, tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White

Quote, Theogony, lines 19-20, tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White

Earth, too, and great Oceanus, and dark Night, and the holy race of all the other deathless ones that are for ever.

View the Source

Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A History

Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Cambridge University Press, 1998View the Source

The Facts on File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend

Anthony S. Mercatante, revised and expanded by James R. Dow, Facts on File, 2004Sacred to This Deity: HorseView the Source

Take a Related Quiz

Gods of Ancient GreeceIncludes a question about Poseidon.
Gods of Ancient Greece: BeginnerIncludes a question about Poseidon.
Gods of Ancient Greece: ExpertIncludes a question about Poseidon.

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