Poseidon

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POSEIDON is the ancient Greek god who embodies primitive power—the power of the untamed, the brutal, the wild. His name, which has not yet been convincingly explained, occurs on clay tablets from Pylos dating from the period preceding the destruction of Mycenaean civilization (1200 BCE). The god thus belongs to the older strata of Greek religion. His exact place in the Mycenaean pantheon is unknown, but he seems to have been more important that Zeus, who was the most prominent Greek god in the Classical period. The tablets of Pylos also mention the Posidaion (a sanctuary most probably located within the city of Pylos) and a goddess Posidaeja (possibly Poseidon's wife, though she is not heard of in later times).

In the Classical period, Poseidon was mainly connected with the sea, earthquakes, the horse, and men's associations. In Homer's Iliad, most commonly dated from the eighth century BCE, Poseidon is pictured as the ruler of the sea. When he drives over the waves, his chariot remains dry and the monsters of the deep play beneath him: "They know their lord" (Iliad 12.28). In the post-Homeric period, he was not so much the god of the sailors as of the fisherman, whose tool, the trident, became his symbol.

Besides the sea, Poseidon was also connected with the earth. His anger was considered the cause of the earthquakes that hit Greece regularly (Homer refers to him as gaiēochos, "earthshaking"), but the god was also invoked to end them; in many cities (especially on the western coast of Asia Minor) Poseidon was worshiped with the epithet asphaleios ("the immovable one"). When volcanic activity in 198 BCE caused the emergence of a new, small island, the inhabitants of neighboring Thera, as was typical, dedicated a temple to Poseidon Asphaleios on it.

Poseidon was also widely associated with horse breeding and racing; Greek myth even made him the father of the first horse, and the father or grandfather of the famous horses Pegasus and Areion. Whereas the goddess Athena was considered to be responsible for the technique of horse racing, Poseidon was connected with the wild, nervous, and powerful nature of the horse. Consequently, Athena was invoked during the race, but Poseidon before or after.

Finally, Poseidon was connected with men's associations. His temples were the meeting places of the pan-Ionic league and of the early amphictyony that comprised Athens and its neighbors. Various epithets of the god connect him with specific clans and tribes. Elsewhere Poseidon was worshiped with the epithet phutalmios ("the fostering one"), which points to an association with rites of initiation. Indeed, myth relates that the god's love turned the girl Kaineus into an adult man; her sex change is a mythical reflection of the ritual transvestism of the initiands. At a festival for Poseidon in Ephesus, boys acting as wine pourers were called "bulls," just as the god himself was sometimes called "Bull." All this evidence seems to point to a onetime connection of the god with Archaic men's associations (Männerbünde) and their ecstatic bull-warriors, which also could be found among the early Germanic peoples.

The Greeks experienced the power of Poseidon as both numinous and untamed. His sanctuaries were usually located outside city walls. Although his power was inescapable, the god was given no place within the ordered society of the Greek city-state.

Berserkers.

The best collection of sources for Poseidon's cult is still the reliable discussion in Lewis R. Farnell's The Cults of the Greek States, vol. 4, Poseidon, Apollo (Oxford, 1907), pp. 1–97. The epigraphical material presented by Farnell on a number of epithets is now supplemented by Fritz Graf's Nordionische Kulte (Rome, 1985), pp. 171–2, 175, and 207–8; see now also Joannis Mylonopoulos, Heiligtümer und Kulte des Poseidon auf der Peloponnes (Liège, 2003). Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant subtly discuss Poseidon's relationship with the horse in Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, translated by Janet Lloyd (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1978), pp. 187–213. For a new synthesis see my "'Effigies Dei' in Ancient Greece: Poseidon," in D. van der Plas (ed.), Effigies Dei: Essays on the History of Religions (Leiden, 1987), pp. 35–41.