Amphitrite's offspring included seals[3] and dolphins.[4] She also bred sea monsters and her great waves crashed against the rocks, putting sailors at risk.[1] Poseidon and Amphitrite had a son,Triton, who was a merman, and a daughter,Rhodos (if this Rhodos was not actually fathered by Poseidon onHalia or was not the daughter ofAsopus as others claim). According to the mythographerApollodorus,Benthesikyme was the daughter of Poseidon and Amphitrite.[5]
When Poseidon desired to marry her, Amphitrite, wanting to protect her virginity, fled to theAtlas Mountains. Poseidon sent many creatures to find her. Adolphin came across Amphitrite and convinced her to marry Poseidon. As a reward for the dolphin's help, Poseidon created theDelphinus constellation.[7]
Eustathius said that Poseidon first saw her dancing atNaxos among the other Nereids,[8] and carried her off.[9] But in another version of the myth, she fled from his advances toAtlas,[10] at the farthest ends of the sea; there the dolphin of Poseidon sought her through the islands of the sea, and finding her, spoke persuasively on behalf of Poseidon, if we may believe Hyginus[11] and was rewarded by being placed among the stars as the constellationDelphinus.[12]
Amphitrite is not fully personified in theHomeric epics: "out on the open sea, in Amphitrite's breakers" (Odyssey iii.101), "moaning Amphitrite" nourishes fishes "in numbers past all counting" (Odyssey xii.119). She shares herHomeric epithetHalosydne (Ancient Greek:Ἁλοσύδνη,romanized: Halosúdnē,lit. 'sea-nourished')[13] withThetis.[14] In some sense, the sea-nymphs are doublets.
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 became simply a metaphor for the sea: Euripides, inCyclops (702) andOvid,Metamorphoses, (i.14).
Though Amphitrite does not figure in Greekcultus, at an archaic stage she was of outstanding importance, for in theHomeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, she appears at the birthing of Apollo among, in Hugh G. Evelyn-White's translation, "all the chiefest of the goddesses,Dione andRhea andIchnaea andThemis and loud-moaning Amphitrite"; more recent translators[15] are unanimous in rendering "Ichnaean Themis" rather than treating "Ichnae" as a separate identity.Theseus in the submarine halls of his father Poseidon saw the daughters of Nereus dancing with liquid feet, and "august, ox-eyed Amphitrite", who wreathed him with her wedding wreath, according to a fragment ofBacchylides.Jane Ellen Harrison recognized in the poetic treatment an authentic echo of Amphitrite's early importance: "It would have been much simpler for Poseidon to recognize his own son… the myth belongs to that early stratum of mythology when Poseidon was not yet god of the sea, or, at least, no-wise supreme there—Amphitrite and the Nereids ruled there, with their servants the Tritons. Even so late as theIliad Amphitrite is not yet 'Neptuni uxor' [Neptune's wife]."[16]
Amphitrite, "the third one who encircles [the sea]",[17] 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 thecult image of Amphitrite thatPausanias saw in the temple of Poseidon at theIsthmus of Corinth (ii.1.7).
In the arts of vase-painting and mosaic, Amphitrite was distinguishable from the otherNereids only by her queenly attributes. In works of art, both ancient ones and post-Renaissance paintings, 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 byTritons andNereids. She is dressed in queenly robes and has nets in her hair. The pincers of a crab are sometimes shown attached to her temples.[18]
Hard, Robin,The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004.ISBN978-0-415-18636-0.Google Books.
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