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Divine Lineage
A sixteenth-century engraving of Amphitrite, queen of the sea, from a set of prints of the sea gods.

Sea

Amphitrite

ἈμφιτρίτηRoman: Salacia

Ran to the ends of the earth to avoid marrying the sea, and was talked back by a dolphin.

Engraving, 1587 — LACMA M.88.91.381b

2
epithets
3
cult sites
1
offspring
1
union
1
recorded birth

Vitals

Kind
Nymph
Generation
2
Domains
the sea's surface, the swell, the queenship of the water
Accent
Sea — salt and fresh water, the swell, the river
Sacred symbols
the crab-claw crown, the net, the dolphin
Principal cult sites
Tenos, Syros, Corinth

What they were called

  • κυανῶπις

    dark-eyed

  • ἁλοσύδνη

    sea-born

Lineage

See in the tree

Descent

FatherNereusApollodorus, Bibliotheca

Her mother is the Okeanid Doris, outside the v1 roster. Hesiod counts Amphitrite among the fifty Nereids; a separate tradition makes her an Okeanid instead.

Offspring in this roster

ChildTriton

Notable myths

  1. The Dolphin's Errand

    Amphitrite fled Poseidon's proposal to the furthest edge of the sea, where Atlas stands. Poseidon sent searchers, and a dolphin located her and made the case for the marriage persuasively enough that she consented. For the service the dolphin was set among the stars, which is the constellation Delphinus.

    Hyginus, De Astronomica 2.17 (Roman-era)

The account

Amphitrite is the queen of the sea and, unusually for a Greek marriage story, she got a negotiation. Poseidon wanted her; she went off to Atlas at the far edge of the world to avoid it. He sent messengers, and a dolphin found her and argued the case so well that she agreed to come back — and Poseidon put the dolphin in the sky as a constellation for it. That is a version in which the woman is persuaded rather than seized, and the Greeks kept a monument to the persuasion. Homer uses her name almost as a synonym for the sea itself: the loud-moaning Amphitrite, where the sea-monsters are, over which Odysseus travels. She and Poseidon have Triton, and in the Odyssey it is she who breeds the creatures that Charybdis and the rest belong to. In art she rides beside her husband in the chariot drawn by hippocamps, wearing a net over her hair and crab claws in it. She is one of very few figures here who is worshipped as a queen and not as a function.

Ancient sources

  • Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1.2.7
  • Hyginus, De Astronomica 2.17

Where a line reference is not given, the work is cited without one rather than guessed at.

Image credit

Title
Amphitrite
Artist
Philip Galle (Holland, Haarlem, 1537-1612)
Date
1587
Licence
Public domain
Source
Wikimedia Commons file page