In Homeric and later classical summaries Poseidon is one of the three principal brothers who divided the cosmos after the overthrow of Cronus: Zeus received the sky, Hades the underworld, and Poseidon received the sea; the earth and Mount Olympus remained common to them. Bronze Age (Mycenaean) records show Poseidon attested as an important chief deity at sites such as Pylos and Thebes, where he bears chthonic titles (for example rendered in Linear B) that indicate an older, complex role in prehistoric cults.
Classical Greek artistic tradition commonly represents major Olympian gods in anthropomorphic form; within that tradition Poseidon is typically depicted as a mature, bearded adult male. While the provided sources do not preserve a single canonical description, later mythographic tradition and artistic convention present him as a powerful adult figure often associated with seafaring iconography (for example carrying or connected with a trident in later imagery) and with epithets such as 'earth-shaker'.
Poseidon presides over the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses. He is described as able to raise storms at sea, to cause earthquakes (ancient epithet rendered as 'earth-shaker'), and in mythic narratives he can affect springs and waters by striking the ground (later tradition supplies the image of a trident). He acts as protector of seafarers and as guardian of Hellenic cities and colonies; his favor or wrath directly influences navigation, voyages and civic fortunes, as in Homeric episodes where he delays and punishes voyagers (notably Odysseus) or in foundation myths where he retaliates when denied civic patronage.
Weaknesses
- conditionLoss of civic favor / dishonor
- conditionOffence to divine order (e.g., harming or insulting his kin/sons)
Wards
- ritualPropitiatory offerings
- ritualCult veneration at sanctuaries (including offerings in sanctuaries and caves such as the Mycenaean cave at Amnisos)
Zeus
Zeus (Ancient Greek: Ζεύς) is the supreme deity of the classical Greek pantheon, a sky-and-thunder god who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus and functions as a sky‑father who assigns roles among the immortals.
Athena
Athena is a major ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, handicraft (notably weaving), and warfare; she serves as a tutelary protector of cities—most prominently Athens—and is central to myth, cult, and civic identity in the Greek world.
Polyphemus
Polyphemus is the Homeric Cyclops — a one‑eyed giant shepherd who lives outside Greek civic norms, notorious for refusing hospitality and for blinding and being blinded by Odysseus. Later literature reframes him variously as comic, rhetorical, or lovesick, but the core tradition presents him as a liminal, semi‑divine monstrous figure (son of Poseidon).
Erinyes
The three avenging Furies of Greek myth — Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone — who pursued and tormented those guilty of crimes against blood kin, especially murder of family members.
*Péh₂usōn (reconstructed)
Péh₂usōn is a hypothetical Proto‑Indo‑European pastoral guardian reconstructed by comparative scholars from parallels in Greek and Vedic traditions. Proposed as a Graeco‑Aryan ancestor‑figure, the reconstruction describes a protector of flocks, roads, and travellers rather than an attested historical cultic personality.
Aba (disambiguation / name-form)
Aba is a polyvalent name-form attested across many unrelated contexts (place names, personal names, animal names, and brief mythological listings). The provided sources do not support a single, coherent supernatural entity called "Aba" and offer no descriptive or ritual material for such a being.
Abarbarea
Abarbarea is a name attested in classical Greek and Roman sources for freshwater nymphs (naiads). The name appears for at least two individual mythic figures — a naiad wife of Bucolion and a naiad counted among ancestors of the Tyrians — and Hesychius records plural forms that may indicate the name was also used as a class-name (Abarbareai / Abarbalaiai).
Abas
Abas (Ancient Greek: Ἄβας, gen.: Ἄβαντος) is not a single mythic being but a recurring personal name borne by multiple mortals and minor mythic figures in Greek epic and genealogical traditions — kings, founders, seers, warriors, attendants, a centaur, and a youth transformed by a goddess. The name is glossed in the sources as 'guileless' or 'good-hearted' and appears across Argive, Theban, Trojan, Euboean, and other local cycles.
Abderus
Abderus (Ancient Greek: Ἄβδηρος, romanized Ábdēros) is a mortal heroic figure in Greek myth closely associated with Heracles, remembered as the youth left in charge of the Mares of Diomedes who was killed by them. He functions as an eponymous local/divine-hero ancestor for the city of Abdera and received funerary commemoration and athletic agones at his tomb.
Abomination of Desolation
An apocalyptic prophetic phrase originating in the Book of Daniel designating a profaning thing or act that renders the Jerusalem Temple cult desolate; later reused in the Synoptic Gospels as an eschatological sign prompting urgent flight. The term denotes ritual/cultic impurity (Hebrew shiqquts) and is variously interpreted as pagan offerings or altar, a foreign cult statue, or (in some New Testament readings) an acting agent.
Absyrtus
Absyrtus (Ancient Greek: Ἄψυρτος) is a Colchian prince in the Greek Argonautic cycle, son of King Aeëtes and brother or half-brother of Medea. He appears in variant traditions either as a companion taken by Medea during her flight with Jason and murdered/dismembered to delay pursuit, or as a pursuer sent by Aeëtes who is overtaken and slain by Jason; his death functions as a key narrative device in the escape from Colchis.
Acacallis
Acacallis (Ancient Greek: Ἀκακαλλίς; also Acalle) is a mythological princess of Crete in Greek tradition, daughter of King Minos and Pasiphae. She functions primarily as a dynastic and etiological figure: in varying accounts she is mother, by gods such as Hermes (Mercury) or Apollo, of eponymous or founder-figures like Cydon (founder of Cydonia), Miletus, or Lydon/ Lydus.
Acacus
Acacus (Ancient Greek: Ἄκακος) is, in Arcadian Greek tradition, a mortal eponymous founder-king of Acacesium and is remembered as the foster-father who reared the infant Hermes (Mercury) in that local tradition. He is presented in genealogies as a son of Lycaon and functions as a local ancestral/onomastic figure rather than a supernatural spirit.
Academus
Academus (Greek: Akádemos / Hekádemos) is an Attic hero-eponym tied to a sacred grove (Akademeia) on the Cephissus near Athens. In myth he revealed where Helen was hidden to the Dioskouroi, an act said to have saved the city, and the place bearing his name became a long-lived sacred precinct, later the site of Plato's Academy.
Acamas
Acamas (Ancient Greek: Ἀκάμας) is a personal name recurrent in ancient Greek narrative traditions applied to multiple human characters (warriors, princes, suitors), once to a Cyclops, and once as a hound's name. Rather than a single supernatural entity, bearers of the name appear episodically across the Trojan War, Theseid, and Theban cycles as mortal actors whose deeds intersect with gods and fate.
Acantha
Acantha (Ancient Greek: Ἀκάνθα, 'thorn') is a late or secondary mythological figure known from modern retellings as a nymph transformed into the acanthus plant. The tale that she scratched Apollo and was changed into a spiny-leaved plant is not attested in surviving classical corpora and appears to be a modern compilation or invention rather than a firmly documented ancient myth.
Community Record
- [1]Poseidon. Wikipedia: 'Poseidon is one of the twelve Olympians...' and related entries on Mycenaean attestations, epithets, domains and cult practice.wiki
- [2]Poseidon (Wikidata). Wikidata summary entry for Poseidon, used as a supporting database statement.other