Amphitrite

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Amphitrite

In ancient Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Amphitrite (?µf?t??t?) (not to be confused with Aphrodite

Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
) was a sea-goddess. Under the influence of the Olympian pantheon, she became merely the consort of Poseidon

Poseidon

In Greek mythology, Poseidon was the god of the sea and, as "Earth-Shaker," of earthquakes. The name of the god Nethuns in Etruscan mythology was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon....
, and was further diminished by poets to a symbolic representation of the sea. In Roman mythology

Roman mythology

Roman mythology, or more appropriately, Latin mythology, refers to the mythology beliefs of the Italic people inhabiting the region of Latium and its main city, Rome....
, the consort of Neptune, a comparatively minor figure, was Salacia.

itrite was a daughter of Nereus
Nereus

Nereus , in Greek Mythology, was the eldest son of Pontus and Gaia , a Titan who fathered the Nereids, with whom Nereus lived in the Aegean Sea....
and Doris
Doris

Doris may refer to:...
(and thus a Nereid), according to Hesiod
Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
's Theogony, but of Oceanus
Oceanus

Oceanus was believed to be the World Ocean in classical antiquity, which the Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece considered to be an enormous river encircling the world....
and Tethys
Tethys (mythology)

File:Tethys mosaic 83d40m Phillopolis mid4th century -p2fx.2.jpgIn Greek mythology, Tethys , daughter of Uranus and Gaia was an archaic Titan ess and Greek sea gods sea goddess, invoked in classical Greek poetry but no longer venerated in cult....
(and thus an Oceanid
Oceanid

In Greek Mythology and Roman mythology, the Oceanids were the three thousand daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys . One of these many daughters was also said to have been the consort of the god Poseidon, typically named as Amphitrite....
), according to Apollodorus
Apollodorus

Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greeks scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace....
, who actually lists her among both the Nereids and the Oceanid
Oceanid

In Greek Mythology and Roman mythology, the Oceanids were the three thousand daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys . One of these many daughters was also said to have been the consort of the god Poseidon, typically named as Amphitrite....
s.

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In ancient Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Amphitrite (?µf?t??t?) (not to be confused with Aphrodite
Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
) was a sea-goddess. Under the influence of the Olympian pantheon, she became merely the consort of Poseidon
Poseidon

In Greek mythology, Poseidon was the god of the sea and, as "Earth-Shaker," of earthquakes. The name of the god Nethuns in Etruscan mythology was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon....
, and was further diminished by poets to a symbolic representation of the sea. In Roman mythology
Roman mythology

Roman mythology, or more appropriately, Latin mythology, refers to the mythology beliefs of the Italic people inhabiting the region of Latium and its main city, Rome....
, the consort of Neptune, a comparatively minor figure, was Salacia.

Mythography
Amphitrite was a daughter of Nereus
Nereus

Nereus , in Greek Mythology, was the eldest son of Pontus and Gaia , a Titan who fathered the Nereids, with whom Nereus lived in the Aegean Sea....
and Doris
Doris

Doris may refer to:...
(and thus a Nereid), according to Hesiod
Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
's Theogony, but of Oceanus
Oceanus

Oceanus was believed to be the World Ocean in classical antiquity, which the Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece considered to be an enormous river encircling the world....
and Tethys
Tethys (mythology)

File:Tethys mosaic 83d40m Phillopolis mid4th century -p2fx.2.jpgIn Greek mythology, Tethys , daughter of Uranus and Gaia was an archaic Titan ess and Greek sea gods sea goddess, invoked in classical Greek poetry but no longer venerated in cult....
(and thus an Oceanid
Oceanid

In Greek Mythology and Roman mythology, the Oceanids were the three thousand daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys . One of these many daughters was also said to have been the consort of the god Poseidon, typically named as Amphitrite....
), according to Apollodorus
Apollodorus

Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greeks scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace....
, who actually lists her among both the Nereids and the Oceanid
Oceanid

In Greek Mythology and Roman mythology, the Oceanids were the three thousand daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys . One of these many daughters was also said to have been the consort of the god Poseidon, typically named as Amphitrite....
s. Others called her the personification of the sea itself. Amphitrite's offspring included seals and dolphins. By her, Poseidon
Poseidon

In Greek mythology, Poseidon was the god of the sea and, as "Earth-Shaker," of earthquakes. The name of the god Nethuns in Etruscan mythology was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon....
had a son, Triton
Triton (mythology)

Triton is a mythological Greek mythology, the messenger of the deep. He is the son of Poseidon, god of the sea, and Amphitrite, goddess of the sea....
, and a daughter, Rhode (if this Rhode was not actually fathered by Poseidon on Halia or was not the daughter of Asopus
Asopus

Asopus or As?pos is the name of five different rivers in Greece and Turkey and also in Greek mythology the name of the God of those rivers....
as others claim). Apollodorus
Apollodorus

Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greeks scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace....
(3.15.4) also mentions a daughter of Poseidon
Poseidon

In Greek mythology, Poseidon was the god of the sea and, as "Earth-Shaker," of earthquakes. The name of the god Nethuns in Etruscan mythology was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon....
and Amphitrite named Benthesikyme
Benthesikyme

Benthesikyme in Greek mythology according to Apollodorus , was a daughter of Poseidon and Amphitrite and wife of an unnamed Ethiopian by whom she had two daughters....
.

Amphitrite is not fully personified in the Homeric epics
Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Hellenic civilization epic poetrys attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer....
: "out on the open sea, in Amphitrite's breakers" (Odyssey
Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Hellenic civilization epic poetrys attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer....
iii.101); she shares her Homer
Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
ic epithet Halosydne ("sea-nourished") with Thetis
Thetis

Silver-footed Thetis , disposer or "placer" , is encountered in Greek mythology mostly as a sea nymph, one of the fifty Nereids, daughters of the ancient one of the seas with shape-shifting abilities who survives in the historical vestiges of most later Greek myths as Proteus ....
: in some sense the sea-nymphs are doublets.

Representation and cult

cultus]], at an archaic stage she was of outstanding importance, for in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, she appears at the birthing of Apollo among "all the chiefest of the goddesses, Dione
Dione (mythology)

Dione in Greek mythology is a vague goddess presence who has her most concrete form in Book V of Homer's Iliad as the mother of Aphrodite who lived among the mortals was known for her kindness....
and Rhea
Rhea (mythology)

This page is about the Greek mythological figure. For the bird, see Rhea .Rhea was the Titan daughter of Ouranos , the sky, and Gaia , the earth, in Classical Greece mythology....
and Ichnaea
Ichnaea

In Greek mythology, Ichnaea , "the tracker" was an epithet that could be applied to Themis, as in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo , or to Nemesis , who was venerated at Ichnae, a Greek city in Macedon....
and Themis
Themis

Themis is an Greek mythology. She is described as "of good counsel", and was the embodiment of divine order, law, and custom. Themis means "law of nature" rather than human ordinance, literally "that which is put in place", from the verb t?????, t?themi, to put....
and loud-moaning Amphitrite." Theseus
Theseus

For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was a legendary king of Athens, son of Aethra , and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, with whom Aethra lay in one night....
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 of Bacchylides
Bacchylides

Bacchylides was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets which included his uncle Simonides....
. Jane Ellen Harrison
Jane Ellen Harrison

Jane Ellen Harrison was a ground-breaking United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland classics scholar, linguistics and feminist. Harrison is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, of modern studies in Greek mythology....
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 the Iliad
ILiad

The iLiad is an electronic handheld device, or e-book device, which can be used for document reading and editing. Like the Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, the iLiad makes use of an electronic paper display....
Amphitrite is not yet 'Neptuni uxor'" [Neptune's wife]" Amphitrite, "the third one who encircles [the sea]", 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 the cult image
Cult image

In the practice of religion, a cult image is a man-made object that is venerated for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents....
of Amphitrite that Pausanias
Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Roman Greece traveller and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius....
saw in the temple of Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth
Isthmus of Corinth

The Isthmus of Corinth is the narrow land bridge which connects the Peloponnese peninsula with the mainland of Greece, near the city of Corinth....
(ii.1.7).

The widely respected Pindar
Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet.Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is by far the best preserved, and critics in antiquity tended to regard him as the greatest....
, 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, in Cyclops (702) and Ovid
Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
, Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses (poem)

The Metamorphoses by the Ancient Rome poet Ovid is a Narrative poetry in fifteen books that describes the Creation myth and history of the world....
, (i.14).

Eustathius
Eustathius of Thessalonica

Eustathius of Thessalonica was a native of Constantinople who became archbishop of Thessalonica. After being a monk in the monastery of St. Florus, he was appointed to the offices of superintendent of peti?tions , professor of rhetoric , and deacon of the church of Constantinople....
said that Poseidon first saw her dancing at Naxos among the other Nereids, and carried her off. But in another version of the myth, she fled from his advances to Atlas
Atlas (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Atlas was the primordial Titan who supported the heavens. Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia or Klym?ne :...
, 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 and was rewarded by being placed among the stars as the constellation Delphinus
Delphinus

Delphinus , is a constellation in the northern sky very close to the celestial equator. Its name is Latin for dolphin. It is one of the smaller constellation, ranked 69th in size out of 88....
.

In the arts of vase-painting and mosaic, Amphitrite was distinguishable from the other Nereids 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 (hippocamp
Hippocamp

The hippocamp or hippocampus , often called a sea-horse in English language, is a mythological creature shared by Phoenician and Greek mythology, though the name by which it is recognized is purely Greek; it became part of Etruscan mythology....
s) or other fabulous creatures of the deep, and attended by Tritons and Nereids
Nereids

In Greek mythology, the Nereids are sea nymphs, the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris . They often accompany Poseidon and are always friendly and helpful towards sailors fighting perilous storms....
. She is dressed in queenly robes and has nets in her hair. The pincers of a crab are sometimes shown attached to her temples.

Other uses

Amphitrite is also a genus of the polychaete
Polychaete

The Polychaeta or polychaetes are a class of annelid worms, generally marine. Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are made of chitin....
family Terebellidae.
In poetry, Amphitrite's name is often used for the sea, as a synonym of Thalassa
Thalassa

* Thalassa , a primordial Greek sea goddess.* Thalassa is a moon of the planet Neptune.* Thalassa, a fictional planet in Arthur C. Clarke's novel Songs of Distant Earth....
.
Seven ships of the Royal Navy
Royal Navy

The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of the British Armed Forces . From the mid-18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early 1940s....
were named HMS Amphitrite
HMS Amphitrite

Seven ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Amphitrite, or HMS Amfitrite, after Amphitrite, a sea goddess of Greek mythology:...
.
At least on ship of the Royal Netherlands Navy was named HM Amphitrite (corvette, in service 1830s)
An asteroid, 29 Amphitrite
29 Amphitrite

'29 Amphitrite' is one of the largest S-type asteroids, probably third in diameter after 15 Eunomia and 3 Juno, although 7 Iris and 532 Herculina are similar in size....
, is named for her.
In 1936 Australia used an image of Amphitrite on a postage stamp
Postage stamp

A postage stamp is adhesive paper evidence of a fee paid for Mail services. Usually a small rectangle attached to an envelope, the stamp signifies the person sending it has fully or partly paid for delivery....
as a classical
Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome....
allusion
Allusion

An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, mythology, or work of art, either directly or by implication....
for the submarine communications cable
Submarine communications cable

A submarine communications cable is a cable laid beneath the sea to carry telecommunications between countries.The first submarine communications cables carried telegraphy traffic....
across Bass Strait
Bass Strait

Bass Strait is a sea strait separating Tasmania from the south of the Australian mainland specifically the state of Victoria ....
from Apollo Bay, Victoria
Apollo Bay, Victoria

Apollo Bay is a coastal town in southwestern Victoria, Australia, Australia. It is situated on the eastern side of Cape Otway, along the edge of the Barham River and on the Great Ocean Road, in the Colac Otway Shire....
to Stanley, Tasmania
Stanley, Tasmania

Stanley is a town on the north-west coast of Tasmania, Australia. Travelling west, Stanley is the second-last major township on the north-west coast of Tasmania, Smithton, Tasmania being the larger township in the Circular Head municipality....
.
The name of the former Greek Royal Yacht.
The United States Merchant Marine Academy
United States Merchant Marine Academy

The United States Merchant Marine Academy is one of the five United States service academies. It is charged with training officers for the United States Merchant Marine, branches of the military, or the transportation industry....
has Amphitrite Pool dedicated to the goddess. When First Classmen are taking their Third Mate
Third Mate

A Third Mate or Third Officer is a licensed mariner of the deck department of a merchant ship. The third mate is a watchstanding and customarily the ship's occupational safety and health....
License Examinations, it is considered good luck if they bounce a coin off of Amphitrite into a seashell at her feet.
Amphitrite is featured in a puzzle in the Playstation 2
PlayStation 2

The PlayStation 2 is a History of video game consoles video game console manufactured by Sony. The successor to the PlayStation, and the predecessor to the PlayStation 3, the PlayStation 2 forms part of the PlayStation of video game consoles....
game God of War
God of War (video game)

God of War is a video game for the PlayStation 2 video game console released on March 22, 2005. It is an action-adventure game based on Greek mythology....
as Poseidon's faithful wife, in which a statue of her is pointing towards the solution to the puzzle, the exit of the room.

See also

USS Amphitrite (ARL-29)
USS Amphitrite (ARL-29)

USS Amphitrite was one of 39 Achelous class repair ship landing craft repair ships built for the United States Navy during World War II. Named for Amphitrite , she was the third U.S....