![]() They live with their father in the depths, but rise to the surface in order to amuse themselves with every kind of pastime and to assist sailors in distress. His daughters are likewise benevolent beings, well disposed to mortals. He is represented as an old man with the leaves of seaweed or hair and a sceptre or trident. Like all gods of water, he has the gift of prophecy and of transforming himself into any shape he chooses to assume. He is described as a venerable old man, of a kindly disposition towards mortals, and as dwelling in a resplendent cave in the depths of the Aegean. The eldest son of Pontus and Gaea, husband of Doris, daughter of Oceanus, father of 50 (according to a later account, 200) beautiful Sea-nymphs, the Nereids. As the Romans identified Poseidon with their Neptune, so they did Amphitrite with Salacia, a goddess of the salt waves. ![]() She is often represented with a net confining her hair, with crabs' claws on the crown of her head, being carried by Tritons, or by dolphins and other marine animals, or drawn by them in a chariot of shells. In Homer she is not yet called Poseidon's wife, but a sea-goddess, who beats the billows against the rocks, and has the creatures of the deep in her keeping. According to another account she fled from him to Atlas, when the god's dolphin spied her out and brought her to him. Poseidon saw her dancing with the Nereids on the island of Naxos, and carried her off. They were, however, always regarded as attendants on the other sea-gods while riding or driving over the waves and they were represented accordingly in works of art ( see cuts).ĭaughter of Nereus and Doris, is the wife of Poseidon and queen of the sea. In the course of time there grew up the notion of a large number of Tritons, all represented as beings of double form and sometimes with the fore-feet of a horse as well as a human body and a fish's tail (called Centauro-tritons or Ichthyo-tauri). He was represented as man in his upper parts, terminating in a dolphin's tail his special attribute is a twisted sea-shell, on which he blows, now violently, now gently, to raise or calm the billows. The mythical lake Tritonis, near the Mediterranean coast of Libya, was regarded as his peculiar abode, especially in the storyof the Argonauts. ![]() He is described as living with them in a golden palace in the depths of the sea. ![]()
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