Pontus (mythology)


Greek deities
series
Primordial deities
Titans and Olympians
Chthonic deities
Personified concepts
Other deities
Aquatic deities
Pontos Depiction In Tomis

In Greek mythology, Pontus (or Pontos (Πόντος), English translation: "sea") was an ancient, pre-Olympian sea-god, one of the protogenoi, the "first-born". Pontos was the son of Gaia, the Earth: Hesiod [1] says that Gaia brought forth Pontos out of herself, without coupling. For Hesiod, Pontos seems little more than a personification of the sea, ho pontos, "the Road", by which Hellenes signified the Mediterranean Sea.[2] With Gaia, he was the father of Nereus (the Old Man of the Sea), of Thaumas (the awe-striking "wonder" of the Sea, embodiment of the sea's dangerous aspects), of Phorcys and his sister-consort Ceto, and of the "Strong Goddess" Eurybia. With Thalassa (whose own name simply means "sea" but is derived from a pre-Greek root), he was the father of the Telchines. Compare the sea-Titan Oceanus, the Ocean-Stream that girdled the earth, who was more vividly realized than Pontus among the Hellenes.

Notes

  1. ^ Hesiod, Theogony, 116.
  2. ^ The Black Sea was the Greeks' ho pontos euxeinos, the "sea that welcomes strangers".

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