50 Fun Facts About Poseidon

Which famous temple's west pediment showed Poseidon losing his contest for the city?

The Parthenon was wrecked in 1687, when a Venetian shell set off gunpowder stored inside. The Venetian commander then tried to carry off the pediment's horses, and his lifting tackle failed and smashed them.

The Cyclopes who forged Poseidon's trident also made which other god's weapon?

Zeus's thunderbolt came from the same forge. Once Zeus freed the Cyclopes from Tartarus, they armed all three brothers for the war on the Titans, and Hades got a helmet.

What is Poseidon's Roman equivalent?

Neptune was probably a god of fresh water first, and took over the sea when the Romans matched him with Poseidon, which they had done by 399 BC.

Poseidon lost the patronage of a famous city to which goddess, who offered an olive tree?

Athena won, and her olive became a legend of its own. Burned when the Persians sacked the city, it was said to have put out a fresh shoot by the very next day.

What gift did Poseidon offer the Athenians in the contest for the city?

A salt-water spring, grandly named the Sea of Erechtheus. Centuries later, visitors to the Erechtheion were still shown a well of sea water, said to sound of waves when the south wind blew.

What did Poseidon send to punish the Athenians for not choosing him?

A flood: in one Roman telling, the women had outvoted the men by a single vote to choose his rival. To calm him, the city stripped its women of the vote.

Poseidon and his brothers divided the world by what method?

Drawing lots gave Zeus the sky, Hades the underworld and Poseidon the sea. In the Iliad he uses it to defy Zeus, insisting that earth and Olympus were left common to all three.

Which goddess was Poseidon's sister, and once turned down his offer of marriage?

Hestia was the first-born of Cronus and Rhea. When both Poseidon and Apollo asked to marry her, she swore on Zeus's head to stay a maiden, and Zeus gave her the hearth instead.

In an Arcadian tale, Rhea hid the newborn Poseidon among lambs and gave Cronus what to swallow instead?

A foal: Rhea told Cronus she had given birth to a horse. It was the same trick she later played with a stone for Zeus, and it suits a god the Arcadians linked with horses.

Which Cyclops, Poseidon's son, does Odysseus blind, earning the sea god's lasting hatred?

Polyphemus prayed to his father that Odysseus reach home late, alone and in someone else's ship. Every part of the curse came true.

Which sea goddess was Poseidon's wife and queen?

Amphitrite grew into the role. In Homer she is hardly a goddess yet, and her name is little more than a poetic word for the sea itself.

Which creature persuaded Poseidon's fleeing bride to marry him, earning a place among the stars?

A dolphin tracked her down after she fled to Atlas, at the far end of the sea, and talked her into the match. Poseidon's thanks still hang in the night sky as the constellation Delphinus.

Poseidon's son with his sea-goddess consort, a merman, is which sea deity?

Triton served as his father's herald. He carried a conch shell and blew it like a trumpet to calm the waves or whip them up.

The winged horse Pegasus was Poseidon's child by which monster?

Medusa's children by Poseidon were born as she died. When Perseus cut off her head, Pegasus sprang from her neck along with a warrior brother, Chrysaor.

In an Arcadian tale, Poseidon became a stallion to catch which goddess, who had turned into a mare while seeking her daughter?

Demeter hid among a king's mares, but Poseidon was not fooled. She bore him the immortal horse Arion, and her rage earned her the local title of Fury.

In a Thessalian tale, how did Poseidon create the first horse?

By striking a rock with his trident, and the horse leapt out. Thessalians called him Petraios, 'of the rocks', and said he also split the mountains to drain the vale of Tempe.

Which Athenian hero was Poseidon's son by Aethra, conceived on the same night she slept with King Aegeus?

Theseus proved it on the voyage to Crete. When Minos threw a gold ring into the sea and dared him to fetch it, he dived in and came back with the ring and a crown as well.

Poseidon gave King Minos a splendid animal to prove his right to rule Crete; what was it?

A white bull rose from the sea, and Minos found it too fine to sacrifice as he had promised. Poseidon made his queen fall in love with it, and the Minotaur was the result.

Poseidon built the walls of which city for a king who then refused to pay him?

Troy's king Laomedon sent him and Apollo away unpaid. He later cheated Heracles out of a promised reward in the same way, and Heracles came back with an army and sacked the city.

In Plato's dialogues, which legendary island was Poseidon's domain?

Atlantis was his share when the gods divided up the earth. He ringed the hill where his mortal lover Cleito lived with circles of sea and land, and their eldest son, Atlas, became its first king.

Poseidon sent what to kill Hippolytus, granting his own son's rash wish?

Poseidon sent a sea monster to spook his horses: a bull burst from the surf, and the team dragged him to death tangled in the reins. The accusation that had prompted the wish was a lie.

Poseidon lost a contest for the city of Argos to which goddess, one of his own sisters?

Hera won when three local river gods judged the land hers. In one telling Poseidon dried up their streams in revenge, so that they ran only after rain.

In one telling, which giant of a hunter was Poseidon's son, given the power to walk across the sea?

In the same telling, a king on Chios blinded Orion, and he set a boy on his shoulders as a guide and walked east until the rays of the rising sun healed his eyes.

Poseidon turned Caenis into the male warrior Caeneus at whose request?

It was her own wish. Poseidon offered her anything she liked, and the new Caeneus was also made proof against weapons, so the Centaurs could only beat him by hammering him into the ground with tree trunks.

Poseidon fathered the twins Pelias and Neleus with Tyro after disguising himself as what?

The river god Enipeus was the one Tyro loved, so Poseidon borrowed his shape. One of the twins, Pelias, grew up to be the king who sent Jason after the Golden Fleece.

Poseidon punished which queen's kingdom after she bragged of beauty greater than the sea nymphs'?

Cassiopeia's boast fell hardest on her daughter. An oracle ruled that Andromeda be bound to a rock by the sea as an offering, and there Perseus found her and set her free.

Which giant son of Poseidon and Gaia grew stronger whenever he touched the ground, until Heracles wrestled him?

Antaeus made every stranger wrestle him and was roofing his father's temple with the skulls of the losers. Heracles won by hoisting him clear of the earth and crushing him in mid-air.

Poseidon drowned which Greek warrior, sailing home from the Trojan War, for boasting that he had survived a shipwreck despite the gods?

Ajax the Lesser had scrambled onto a rock when his ship went down. Poseidon heard the boast, split the rock with his trident, and the half he was sitting on carried him under.

To make peace with Poseidon, Odysseus was told to walk inland carrying what, until someone mistook it for a farm tool?

An oar: the ghost of the seer Tiresias told him to walk until someone took it for a winnowing fan. There he was to plant it in the ground and sacrifice a ram, a bull and a boar to Poseidon.

Homer's epithets Enosichthon and Ennosigaios for Poseidon mean what?

Earth-shaker, because earthquakes were thought to be his doing. Worshippers also prayed to him under the opposite title, Asphaleios, the one who keeps things steady, to hold the ground still.

In the Odyssey, how does Poseidon punish the Phaeacian ship that carried Odysseus home to Ithaca?

Turns it to stone, within sight of its own harbour, for ferrying Odysseus home. The shaken Phaeacian king tells his people to stop giving strangers passage.

Which Panhellenic athletic festival at Corinth was held in Poseidon's honour?

The Isthmian Games drew crowds from every Greek city, so the Roman general Flamininus chose them in 196 BC to proclaim the Greek cities free. Plutarch says the roar of the crowd brought ravens tumbling out of the sky.

The marble temple of Poseidon at Sounion, a day trip from Athens, crowns the southern tip of which region?

Attica's southern cape drew Romantic travellers who cut their names into the marble. One column still reads 'Byron', though nobody can prove the poet carved it himself.

Helike, home of a famous sanctuary of Poseidon, was wiped out in a single night in 373 BC by what?

A tsunami, raised by an earthquake, drowned Helike overnight. Generations later, ferrymen told the scholar Eratosthenes that a bronze Poseidon still stood upright under the water, snagging fishermen's nets.

The fish-tailed horses that pull Poseidon's chariot share their name with the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped part of which organ?

The brain's hippocampus is a curled ridge that helps file new memories. Early anatomists could not agree whether it looked more like a seahorse or a silkworm.

The US Navy's P-8 Poseidon, a patrol jet built from the Boeing 737 airliner, was designed chiefly to hunt what?

Submarines are its quarry: the P-8 Poseidon drops sonar buoys that listen for them underwater, and carries torpedoes to finish the job.

Poseidon was one of the caretakers of which oracle before Apollo took it over?

Delphi first belonged to Gaia and Poseidon together, in the tale the travel writer Pausanias heard there. Poseidon gave up his half to Apollo in a swap and came away with a sanctuary of his own elsewhere.

Bronze Age tablets from which palace, King Nestor's in Homer, show Poseidon as the chief god, ahead of Zeus?

Pylos put Poseidon first in its offering lists, and Homer's Pylos honours him too. When Telemachus lands there in the Odyssey, Nestor's people are on the beach sacrificing 81 black bulls to the sea god.

Which Italian carmaker took its trident badge from a statue of Poseidon's Roman counterpart in Bologna?

Maserati's trident copies the one held by the sea god's statue in the centre of Bologna. It was drawn by Mario, the one Maserati brother who became an artist instead of working on cars.

A Hippocratic text of about 400 BC mocks healers who blamed Poseidon for some cases of which 'sacred disease'?

Epilepsy was pinned on Poseidon when a patient's cries sounded like a horse. The author would have none of it, arguing that the 'sacred disease' was no more divine than any other and had a natural cause.

In one tradition, Poseidon traded which island to Leto, who gave birth to Apollo there?

Delos went to Leto, the geographer Strabo reports, in exchange for the little island of Calauria. Poseidon's sanctuary there was a refuge, and the orator Demosthenes fled to it from Macedonian soldiers and took poison there.

Poseidon is the father of the title hero in which best-selling series of novels by Rick Riordan?

Percy Jackson & the Olympians began as bedtime stories: when Rick Riordan ran out of real Greek myths to tell his son Haley, he invented a modern demigod, and Haley told him to write it down.

In which Sony video game does Poseidon appear as a boss for the player to defeat?

God of War III opens with the fight: Kratos takes him on as the Titans storm Mount Olympus. Killing him sends the seas rising to drown the lands below.

In the 1972 disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, what happens to the SS Poseidon?

It capsizes and floats upside down, leaving survivors standing on the ballroom ceiling. Gene Hackman's preacher turns the Christmas tree into a ladder and leads them toward the hull, where the steel is an inch thick.

In the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure, the doomed liner is on its final voyage from New York to which country?

Greece is where the ageing liner is due to be scrapped, and her new owners order full speed to save money. She is racing toward Athens when disaster strikes at midnight on New Year's Eve.

Which song from The Poseidon Adventure won the Academy Award for Best Original Song?

The Morning After is mimed in the film by Carol Lynley to another singer's voice. Maureen McGovern's single topped the US chart in 1973, months after the song won its Oscar.

The head of a trident, Poseidon's emblem, sits at the centre of which Caribbean nation's flag?

Barbados shows only the head of the trident, its shaft broken off on purpose. The old colonial badge carried a whole one, so the snapped version marks the break with British rule at independence in 1966.

In one tradition, Poseidon and Zeus both courted which hero's sea-nymph mother until they heard her son would outshine his father?

Achilles was the son in question. The gods hastily married his mother Thetis off to a mortal, Peleus, so her child could be no threat to them, and Poseidon gave the groom two immortal horses.

In the Iliad, which side does Poseidon support in the Trojan War?

The Greeks have his backing, but not blindly. In Book 20 he snatches the Trojan prince Aeneas out of a fatal duel and flings him clear, because Aeneas is fated to survive and rule what is left of his people.

After Odysseus leaves Calypso's island, Poseidon lets loose all four of what to drown him?

The winds, East, South, West and North, toss his raft back and forth between them. The sea nymph Ino takes pity, lends him her immortal veil and tells him to abandon the raft and swim.