Sea
Pontos
ΠόντοςRoman: Pontus
The sea itself, long before Poseidon claimed it.
Roman floor mosaic, Acholla, Tunisia
- 1
- epithet
- 0
- cult sites
- 2
- offspring
- 1
- union
- 1
- recorded birth
Vitals
- Kind
- Primordial
- Generation
- 0
- Domains
- the open sea, the sea before it had a ruler
- Accent
- Sea — salt and fresh water, the swell, the river
- Sacred symbols
- the swell, the salt flood
- Principal cult sites
- No cult attested
What they were called
ἀτρύγετος
unharvestable
Lineage
See in the treeDescent
Bore them aloneGaiaHesiod, TheogonyGaia bore him without love and without any union.
Offspring in this roster
Notable myths
The Older Sea
Pontos and Gaia produced Nereus, Thaumas, Phorkys, Keto and Eurybia. From that one generation come the Nereids, Iris, the Gorgons, the Graiai, the Hesperides' guardian serpent and most of the monsters a Greek hero eventually has to deal with. The sea's genealogy runs older and stranger than the Olympian one that later covers it.
Hesiod, Theogony 233-239
The account
Gaia produced Pontos by herself, without desire and without a partner — Hesiod says so twice, as though the barrenness of it needed stating. He is the salt sea as a bare fact, before it belongs to anyone. Then he lies with his mother and the result is the oldest generation of sea powers: Nereus, honest and unlying; Thaumas, the wonder of it; Phorkys and Keto, who between them produce the Gorgons and the other things at the edge of the map; and Eurybia, with a heart of flint. Everything strange that lives in water descends from that line. What Pontos is not is a ruler. He has no palace, no court, no quarrel with anyone, and when Poseidon takes the sea by lot after the Titan war there is no confrontation, because there was never a throne to take. He is what the sea was when it was only water.
Ancient sources
- Hesiod, Theogony 131-132
- Hesiod, Theogony 233-239
Where a line reference is not given, the work is cited without one rather than guessed at.
Image credit
- Title
- Mosaïque d'Océan d'Acholla - Tunisia-4752 - Pontus
- Artist
- Dennis G. Jarvis
- Date
- Unknown
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
