Triton (mythology)

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Triton (mythology)

Triton (???t??, gen: ???t????) is a mythological Greek god

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....
, the messenger of the deep. He is the son 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....
, god of the sea, and Amphitrite

Amphitrite

In ancient Greek mythology, Amphitrite was a sea-goddess. Under the influence of the Olympian pantheon, she became merely the consort of Poseidon, and was further diminished by poets to a symbolic representation of the sea....
, goddess of the sea. He is usually represented as a merman

Merman

Mermen are mythical male legendary creatures who are human from the waist up and fish-like from the waist down. They are less commonly known than their female counterparts, mermaids....
, having the upper body of a human and the tail of a fish.

Like his father, he carried a trident

Trident

A trident , also called a leister or gig, is a three-tine spear. It is used for spear fishing and was formerly also a military weapon....
.

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Triton (???t??, gen: ???t????) is a mythological Greek god

Greek mythology

Poseidon

Amphitrite

Merman

Like his father, he carried a trident

Trident

A trident , also called a leister or gig, is a three-tine spear. It is used for spear fishing and was formerly also a military weapon....
. However, Triton's special attribute was a twisted conch

Conch

A conch is one of a number of different species of medium-sized to large saltwater snails or their shells.True conchs are Marine gastropod molluscs in the family Strombidae, and the genus Strombus....
shell, on which he blew like a trumpet to calm or raise the waves. Its sound was so terrible, that when loudly blown, it put the giants to flight, who imagined it to be the roar of a mighty wild beast.

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
Theogony

The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogy of the polytheism of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC....
, Triton dwelt with his parents in a golden palace

Palace

A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop....
in the depths of the sea. The story of the Argonauts

Argonauts

In Greek mythology, the Argonauts were a band of heroes who, in the years before the Trojan War, accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece....
places his home on the coast of Libya

Libya

Libya , officially the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya , is a country located in North Africa. Bordering the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Libya lies between Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
. When the Argo

Argo

In Greek mythology, the Argo was the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed from Iolcus to retrieve the Golden Fleece....
was driven ashore on the Lesser Syrtes, the crew carried the vessel to Lake Tritonis

Lake Tritonis

File:Herodotus world map-en.svgLake Tritonis is a large body of fresh water in northern Africa that was described in many ancient texts. Classical-era Greek writers placed the lake in what today is southern Tunisia....
, whence Triton, the local deity, guided them across to the Mediterranean.

Triton was the father of Pallas

Pallas (daughter of Triton)

In Greek mythology, Pallas was the daughter of Triton . Acting as a foster parent to Zeus? daughter Athena, Triton raised her alongside his own daughter Pallas....
and foster parent to the goddess Athena

Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena is the shrewd companion of Hero and the goddess of Hero endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens, which built the Parthenon to worship her....
. Pallas was killed by Athena during a fight between the two goddesses. Triton is also sometimes cited as the father of Scylla

Scylla

Scylla , also known as Scylle , was one of the two monsters in Greek mythology that lived on either side of a narrow channel of water. The two sides of the strait were within an arrow's range of each other?so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis would pass too close to Scylla and vice versa....
by Lamia

Lamia (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Lamia was a Queen of Libya who became a child-murdering daemon . In later writings she is pluralized into many lamiae ....
. Triton might be multiplied into a host of Tritones
Tritons

Tritons are a race of sea gods and goddesses born from Poseidon's and Amphitrite's son Triton. Triton lived with his parents, Poseidon and Amphitrite, also known as Celaeno in a golded palace on the bottom of the sea....
, daimon
Daimon

Daimon may refer to:...
es of the sea.

Triton also appeared in Roman

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....
myths and epics

EPICS

The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System is a software environment used to develop and implement distributed control systems to operate devices such as particle accelerators, telescopes and other large experiments....
. In the Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin Epic poetry written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Rome....
, Misenus

Misenus

In Greek mythology, Misenus was a name attributed to two individuals.*Misenus was a friend of Odysseus.*Misenus was a character in Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid....
, the trumpeter of Aeneas

Aeneas

This article is about the Roman hero. For other uses, see Aeneas .In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas was a Troy hero, the son of prince Anchises and the goddess Venus_....
, challenged Triton to a contest of trumpeting. The god flung him into the sea for his arrogance.

Tritones

Over time, Triton's name and image came to be associated with a class of merman-like creatures, the Tritones, which could be male or female, and usually formed the escort of marine divinities. Ordinary Tritons were described in detail by the traveller 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....
(ix. 21).

Triton fountains

The figure of a Triton is a natural conception for a fountain

Fountain

A traditional fountain is an arrangement where water issues from a source , fills a basin of some kind, and is drained away. Fountains may be wall fountains or free-standing....
, as Romans realized when they came to incorporate fountains in gardens in the first century BCE, Sextus Propertius

Sextus Propertius

Sextus Aurelius Propertius was a Latin elegy poet who was born around 50?45 BCE in Mevania and died shortly after 15 BCE.Propertius' surviving work comprises four books of elegy. He was friends with the poets Gallus and Virgil, and had with them as his patron Maecenas, and through Maecenas, the emperor Augustus....
described "The sound of water which splashes all round the basin, when the Triton suddenly pours forth a fountain from his lips." Bernini's Fontana del Tritone (1642-43)is a feature of the Roman cityscape.

Triton since the Renaissance

Among the things named after Triton include Triton

Triton (moon)

'Triton' is the largest natural satellite of the planet Neptune, discovered on October 10, 1846 by William Lassell. It is the only large moon in the Solar System with a Retrograde and direct motion, which is an orbit in the opposite direction to its planet's rotation....
, the largest moon of the planet Neptune. This name is symbolic, as Neptune is the Roman name for Triton's father.

In Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was a major England Romantic poetry poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romanticism in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
's sonnet "The World is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us

"The world Is Too Much With Us" is a sonnet by the England Romanticism poet William Wordsworth. In it, Wordsworth criticizes the modern world for being absorbed in materialism and distancing itself from nature....
" (ca 1802, published 1807), the poet regrets the prosaic humdrum modern world, yearning for

glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Triton is also associated in modern industry with tough, hard-wearing machines such as Ford's Triton Engines and Mitsubishi

Mitsubishi

The , Mitsubishi Group of Companies, or Mitsubishi Companies is a Japanese Conglomerate consisting of a range of autonomous businesses which share the Mitsubishi brand, trademark and legacy....
's Triton pickup trucks.

King Triton

King Triton

'King Triton' is a Disney character of Disney's The Little Mermaid franchise. He first appears in the 1989 film The Little Mermaid , and later re-appears in the film's prequel television series spin-off The Little Mermaid , direct-to-video sequel The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, and direct-to-DVD prequel The Little M...
as an adaptation, also stars in the 1989 animated Disney Classic The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid

"The Little Mermaid" is a fairy tale by the Denmark poet and author Hans Christian Andersen about a young mermaid willing to give up her life in the sea and her identity as a merperson to gain a human soul and the love of a human prince....
as Sea King and ruler of "Atlantica"

External links

Classical references to Triton in English translation