Deities
Greek Deities
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
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 Domain / Function Domain / Function Domain DetailBeyond 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 Sources
Textual NoteHomer 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 NameThe 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 CentreThe Isthmian sanctuary near Corinth, and the temple at Cape Sounion 1 Attributes and IconographyBearded, with the trident; the horse, the bull and the dolphin. 1 Worship and PracticeThe 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
LineageHesiod 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 AssociationHomer'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 Attestation
Era of Attestation Veneration TodayHistorically attested; no continuous cult 1 HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2 Belief
TheologyPolytheistic: many gods 1 Position Profile
Key TextPoseidon 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
Archetypes
Pantheons
Planetary Faces
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.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
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..."
This source names Poseidon directly: "Maristiusta (probably corresponding to Poseidon), attending the scene."
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..."
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..."
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..."
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."
This source names Poseidon directly: "General reference article on Poseidon, consulted 2026-08-11."
Rhea, Figures 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..."
Charybdis is named a daughter of Poseidon and Gaia in some accounts of her origin.
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..."
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."
This source names Poseidon directly: "lead statuette titled "Statuette of Poseidon," Greek, Laconian."
Child Of
Poseidon is named among the six children Rhea bore to Cronus.
Rhea, Deities Poseidon is named among the six children Rhea bore to Cronus.
Children
Poseidon is the father in the same passage.
Depicted In
Poseidon, confirmed via retailer description naming Zeus, Poseidon and Ares as included.
Interpretatio Of
Interpretatio romana: Greek sea-god Poseidon identified with Roman Neptune.
Passages on This
Poseidon, named here by his epithet the Earth-Shaker.
Same Figure, Narrative Entry
Worshipped In
Poseidon of the sea and earthquake was honored wherever Greeks sailed.
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. MurrayQuote, 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
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-WhiteQuote, 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.
Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A History
Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Cambridge University Press, 1998View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.