Amphitrite

According to Hesiod's Theogony, Amphitrite was one of the 50 Nereid daughters of Nereus and Doris. The mythographer Apollodorus, however, lists her among both the Nereids, as well as the Oceanids, the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys.Apollodorus, [http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng1:1.2.2 1.2.2], [http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng1:1.2.7 1.2.7], [http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng1:1.4.5 1.4.5].

Amphitrite's offspring included seals"…A throng of seals, the brood of lovely Halosydne." (Homer, Odyssey iv.404). and dolphins.Aelian, On Animals (12.45) ascribed to Arion a line "Music-loving dolphins, sea-nurslings of the Nereis maids divine, whom Amphitrite bore." She also bred sea monsters and her great waves crashed against the rocks, putting sailors at risk. Poseidon and Amphitrite had a son, Triton, who was a merman, and a daughter, Rhodos (if this Rhodos was not actually fathered by Poseidon on Halia or was not the daughter of Asopus as others claim). According to the mythographer Apollodorus, Benthesikyme was the daughter of Poseidon and Amphitrite.Hard, [https://books.google.com/books?id=r1Y3xZWVlnIC&pg=PA105 p. 105]; Apollodorus, [http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng1:3.15.4 3.15.4].

File:Amphitrite Penteskouphia Louvre MNC208.jpg on a pinax from Corinth (575–550 BC).{{cite book|last=Ogden |first=Daniel |author-link= |translator-last=Raffan |translator-first=John |translator-link= |title=The Legend of Seleucus |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2017|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-M8oDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA41 |page=41, note 64|isbn=978-1-107-16478-9}}]]

When Poseidon desired to marry her, Amphitrite, wanting to protect her virginity, fled to the Atlas Mountains. Poseidon sent many creatures to find her. A dolphin came across Amphitrite and convinced her to marry Poseidon. As a reward for the dolphin's help, Poseidon created the Delphinus constellation.Gaius Julius Hyginus, De astronomia [https://topostext.org/work/207#2.17.1 2.17.1]

Eustathius said that Poseidon first saw her dancing at Naxos among the other Nereids,Eustathius of Thessalonica, Commentary on Odyssey 3.91.1458, line 40. and carried her off.The Wedding of Neptune and Ampitrite provided a subject to Poussin; the painting is at Philadelphia. But in another version of the myth, she fled from his advances to Atlas,ad Atlante, in Hyginus' words. at the farthest ends of the sea; there the dolphin of Poseidon sought her through the islands of the sea, and finding her, spoke persuasively on behalf of Poseidon, if we may believe Hyginus"…qui pervagatus insulas, aliquando ad virginem pervenit, eique persuasit ut nuberet Neptuno…" Oppian's Halieutica I.383–92 is a parallel passage. and was rewarded by being placed among the stars as the constellation Delphinus.Catasterismi, [https://books.google.com/books?id=0EoZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA158 31]; Hyginus, Poetical Astronomy, ii.17, .132.

Amphitrite is not fully personified in the Homeric epics: "out on the open sea, in Amphitrite's breakers" (Odyssey iii.101), "moaning Amphitrite" nourishes fishes "in numbers past all counting" (Odyssey xii.119). She shares her Homeric epithet Halosydne ({{langx|grc|Ἁλοσύδνη|Halosúdnē|sea-nourished}})[http://www.vollmer-mythologie.de/halosydne/ Wilhelm Vollmer, Wörterbuch der Mythologie, 3rd ed. 1874] with Thetis.Odyssey iv.404 (Amphitrite), and Iliad, xx.207. In some sense, the sea-nymphs are doublets.

Pindar, in his sixth Olympian Ode, recognized Poseidon's role as "great god of the sea, husband of Amphitrite, goddess of the golden spindle." For later poets, Amphitrite became simply a metaphor for the sea: Euripides, in Cyclops (702) and Ovid, Metamorphoses, (i.14).

Though Amphitrite does not figure in Greek cultus, at an archaic stage she was of outstanding importance, for in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, she appears at the birthing of Apollo among, in Hugh G. Evelyn-White's translation, "all the chiefest of the goddesses, Dione and Rhea and Ichnaea and Themis and loud-moaning Amphitrite"; more recent translatorsE.g. Jules Cashford, Susan C. Shelmerdine, Apostolos N. Athanassakis. are unanimous in rendering "Ichnaean Themis" rather than treating "Ichnae" as a separate identity. Theseus in the submarine halls of his father Poseidon saw the daughters of Nereus dancing with liquid feet, and "august, ox-eyed Amphitrite", who wreathed him with her wedding wreath, according to a fragment of Bacchylides. Jane Ellen Harrison recognized in the poetic treatment an authentic echo of Amphitrite's early importance: "It would have been much simpler for Poseidon to recognize his own son… the myth belongs to that early stratum of mythology when Poseidon was not yet god of the sea, or, at least, no-wise supreme there—Amphitrite and the Nereids ruled there, with their servants the Tritons. Even so late as the Iliad Amphitrite is not yet 'Neptuni uxor' [Neptune's wife]."Harrison, "Notes Archaeological and Mythological on Bacchylides" The Classical Review 12.1 (February 1898, pp. 85–86), p. 86.

Amphitrite, "the third one who encircles [the sea]",Robert Graves. The Greek Myths (1960) was so entirely confined in her authority to the sea and the creatures in it that she was almost never associated with her husband, either for purposes of worship or in works of art, except when he was to be distinctly regarded as the god who controlled the sea. An exception may be the cult image of Amphitrite that Pausanias saw in the temple of Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth (ii.1.7).

In the arts of vase-painting and mosaic, Amphitrite was distinguishable from the other Nereids only by her queenly attributes. In works of art, both ancient ones and post-Renaissance paintings, Amphitrite is represented either enthroned beside Poseidon or driving with him in a chariot drawn by sea-horses (hippocamps) or other fabulous creatures of the deep, and attended by Tritons and Nereids. She is dressed in queenly robes and has nets in her hair. The pincers of a crab are sometimes shown attached to her temples.{{Cite web |title=AMPHITRITE - Greek Goddess & Nereid Queen of the Sea |url=https://www.theoi.com/Pontios/Amphitrite.html |access-date=2023-03-15 |website=www.theoi.com}}

File:Theseus Athena Amphitrite Louvre G104.jpg|Theseus and Amphitrite clasp hands, with Athena looking on (red-figure cup by Euphronios and Onesimos, 500–490 BC)

File:Sea thiasos Amphitrite Poseidon Glyptothek Munich 239 front n3.jpg|Sea thiasos depicting the wedding of Poseidon and Amphitrite, from the Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus in the Field of Mars, bas-relief, Roman Republic, 2nd century BC

File:Affreschi romani - nettuno anfitrine - pompei.JPG|Poseidon and Amphitrite. Ancient Roman fresco (50-79 AD), Pompeii, Italy.

File:JacobdeGheynII-NeptuneandAmphitrite.jpg|Neptune and Amphitrite by Jacob de Gheyn II (latter 16th-century)

File:Mosaic of Neptune and Amphitrite.jpg|A Roman mosaic on a wall in the House of Neptune and Amphitrite, Herculaneum, Italy

File:Nicolas Poussin, French - The Birth of Venus - Google Art Project.jpg|The Triumph of Neptune by Nicolas Poussin, showing Amphitrite velificans (1634)

File:Mosaique de sol avec le triomphe de Neptune et son épouse Amphitrite (Louvre, Ma 1880)1.jpg|Triumph of Poseidon and Amphitrite showing the couple in procession, detail of a vast mosaic from Cirta, Roman Africa ({{circa|315–325 AD}}, now at the Louvre)

File:Giovanni Battista Crosato, The Triumph of Amphitrite, 1745-1750, NGA 80940.jpg|Drawing of Amphitrite sitting in a sea shell surrounded by her subjects. The Triumph of Amphitrite by Giovanni Battista Crosato (1745–1750). Held at the National Gallery of Art.

File:Amphitrite Australiastamp.jpgn stamp commemorating completion of submarine telephone cable to Tasmania]]

• Amphitrite is the name of a genus of the worm family Terebellidae.
• In poetry, Amphitrite's name is often used for the sea, as a synonym of Thalassa.
• Seven ships of the Royal Navy were named HMS Amphitrite
• {{ship||Amphitrite|1802 ship}}, which wrecked in 1833 with heavy loss of life while transporting convicts to New South Wales
• Three ships of the United States Navy were named USS Amphitrite.
• An asteroid, 29 Amphitrite, is named for her.
• In 1936, Australia used an image of Amphitrite on a postage stamp as a classical allusion for the submarine communications cable across Bass Strait from Apollo Bay, Victoria to Stanley, Tasmania.
• A statue of Amphitrite stands at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY

{{Reflist|30em}}

• Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1921. {{ISBN|0-674-99135-4}}. [http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-eng1 Online version at the Perseus Digital Library].
• Hard, Robin, The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004. {{ISBN|978-0-415-18636-0}}. [https://books.google.com/books?id=r1Y3xZWVlnIC Google Books].
• Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1914. [http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0020.tlg001.perseus-eng1 Online version at the Perseus Digital Library]. [https://archive.org/details/hesiodhomerichym00hesiuoft/page/78/mode/2up?view=theater Internet Archive].
• {{cite book|last=Smith|first=William|author-link=William Smith (lexicographer)|date=1873|title=Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology|url=|location=London|publisher=|page=|isbn=}} {{cite web|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0104%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DA%3Aentry+group%3D20%3Aentry%3Damphitrite-bio-1|publisher=|title=Amphitri'te}} and {{cite web|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0104%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DH%3Aentry+group%3D1%3Aentry%3Dhalosydne-bio-1|publisher=|title=Halosydne}}

{{Commons category|Amphitrite}}

{{wiktionary|Amphitrite}}

• [https://iconographic.warburg.sas.ac.uk/category/vpc-taxonomy-000278 Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (images of Amphitrite)]

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Category:Nereids

Category:Oceanids

Category:Queens in Greek mythology

Category:Sea and river goddesses

Category:Women of Poseidon