Amphitrite Goddess Of Sailors And The Storms Of The Sea

Know in detail Amphitrite, the goddess of Sailors and Storms. Get to know her legends and discover which are her most outstanding features.

Amphitrite. Goddess of Sailors

Amphitrite Goddess of sailors and sea storms. Greek mythological accounts tell of the sea nymphs who helped sailors cope with storms at sea. They lived in the depths of the Aegean Sea with their father Nereus, better known as the Old Man of the Sea, from Homeric passages. There are 50 Nereids in all, and the eldest is Amphitrite. She is a direct descendant, and granddaughter, of the primeval titan Oceanus.

Originally, Amphitrite was an important goddess. She witnessed the birth of the god Apollo along with other high-ranking deities. Her legendary husband was the mighty Poseidon, the god of the sea, and brother of the chief of the gods, Zeus. In later years, she played a minor role in the myths and eventually her name simply represented the sea itself.

Origin

The name Amphitrite means the third element, or the third encompassing one. In creation myths, the heavens and the earth preceded the sea. She is often depicted wearing a crab claw crown and sitting on a throne near her husband Poseidon or in a chariot drawn by hippocampi, seahorses. The story of her courtship with Poseidon began on the island called Naxos in the Aegean Sea. She was dancing with her sisters and when the god of the sea saw her, he decided he wanted her as his wife.

Unfortunately, for the enamored Poseidon, the goddess was not interested in his proposal nor in giving up her life as a virgin of the sea and ran to the Atlas Mountains to hide. Being the persistent type, Poseidon called Delphinus, the king of the dolphins, to find the goddess and persuade her to marry him. The intelligent and gentle natural dolphin embarked on the mission, to find her 15 days later. She was such a lovely creature that Amphitrite was attracted to him and listened to his persuasion.

Delphinus

Delphinus explained that her steadfastness would balance Poseidon’s volatile nature, and that if she married him there would be harmony in the sea and joy for all. As a reward, Poseidon placed an image of Delphinus in the sky. Once married, the sea god returned to his ways and had numerous affairs with other goddesses, nymphs and mortals. Although he generally had a kind nature toward the creatures of the sea, the goddess was increasingly annoyed and jealous due to her husband’s extracurricular activities outside of their marriage.

Particularly irritating to Amphitrite was his extreme infatuation with the beautiful sea nymph, Scylla. In a fit of jealousy, she threw magic herbs into Scylla’s bath and the nymph turned into a terrible hideous monster with twelve arms and six mouths. Scylla spent her days living in a cave and grabbing sailors as they passed with her long arms and eating them for lunch. Amphitrite rode his magical seahorse to the happily ever after of the ocean.

Mythology

Amphitrite was the daughter of Nereus and Doris (and therefore Nereid), according to Hesiod’s Theogony, but of Oceanus and Tethys (and therefore Oceanid), according to the Bibliotheca, which actually classifies her between the Nereids and Oceanids. Others called her the personification of the sea itself (salt water). Poseidon and Amphitrite had a son, Triton, who was a man, and a daughter, Rhodes (if this Rhodes was not really begotten by Poseidon in Halia or was not the daughter of Asopo, as others say). The Library (3.15.4) also mentions a daughter of Poseidon and Amphitrite named Benthesikyme.

Amphitrite is not fully personified in the Homeric epics: “in the open sea, on Amphitrite’s breakers” (Odyssey iii.101), “Amphitrite groaning” feeds the fish “in numbers that count no more” (Odyssey xii.119). She shares her Homeric epithet Halosydne (“fed by the sea”) with Thetis in a sense the sea nymphs are doubles.

Amphitrite family Goddess protector of sailors from the storms of the sea

Nereus, the elder of the sea and lord of the fish, and his wife Doris had 50 daughters called the Nereid, meaning daughters of Nereus, derived from the word neros (wet). The eldest was Amphitrite, who had two sons with Poseidon after marriage. Her sons were Triton, who was a famous man, and her daughter Rhode, who was a sea nymph.

Modern Influence

In later Greek mythology, Amphitrite’s name became synonymous with the sea. Many ships, both in the U.S. and the British Royal Navy, were named in her honor. A painting by Baroque artist Nicole Poussin completed in 1604 is called The Triumph of Amphitrite and depicts her marriage ceremony. It can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There are several priceless works of art depicting Amphitrite’s image around the world, including a sculpture in the Louvre in Paris by Jacques Prou. There, she cuddles with a dolphin while wearing her identifying crab claw crown.

We can also find the goddess above us in the stars. The great Asteroid 29 Amphitrite lies within the constellation Aries. Wherever we find her, Amphitrite is a reminder of the wondrous and mysterious creatures, both real and mythological, that inhabit the seas.

Representation and worship

Although Amphitrite does not figure in the Greek cult, at an archaic stage she was of great importance, for in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, she appears at the birth of Apollo, among others, in Hugh G. Evelyn-White’s translation, “all the principal goddesses. Dione and Rhea and Ichea and Ichnaea and Ichnaea and Ichnaea and Themis and loud-moaning Amphitrite”; later translators are unanimous in rendering “Ichnaean Themis” rather than treating “Ichnae” as a separate identity.

Theseus in the underwater halls of his father Poseidon saw the daughters of Nereus dancing with liquid feet, and “august, ox-eyed Amphitrite,” who wrapped him with her wedding crown, according to a fragment of Bacillide. 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, not supreme there-Amphitrite and the Nereids ruled there, with their servants the Tritons. Although the Iliad Amphitrite is not yet ‘Neptuni uxor’ the wife of Neptune.”

Goddess of sailors

Amphitrite goddess of sailors, “the third who encircles the sea,” was so totally confined in her authority to the sea and creatures that she was almost never associated with her husband. Either for purposes of worship or in works of art, except when he was clearly to be regarded as the god who controlled the sea. Pindar, in his sixth Olympic 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, in Cyclops (702) and Ovid, Metamorphoses, (i.14).

Eustathius said that Poseidon first saw her dancing on Naxos among the other Nereids, and took her away. But in another version of the myth, she fled from his advances to the Atlas, at the farthest ends of the sea; there Poseidon’s dolphin sought her through the islands of the sea, and finding her, spoke persuasively on Poseidon’s behalf, if we may believe Hyginus, and was rewarded by being placed among the stars as the constellation Delphinus.

In the arts of vase and mosaic painting, Amphitrite was distinguished from the other Nereids only by her queenly attributes. In works of art, both ancient and post-Renaissance, Amphitrite is depicted enthroned next to Poseidon or riding with him in a chariot drawn by seahorses or other fabulous creatures of the deep, and assisted by Tritons and Nereids. She is dressed in queenly robes and has nets in her hair. The claws of a crab are sometimes shown attached to her temples.