Deity · Greek · c. 700 BCE
Poseidon
Also called Neptune (Roman) · also recorded as Posidon, Poseidōn (per Wikidata)
God of the sea and of earthquakes — 'earth-shaker' — who receives the waters in the same three-way division that gives Hades the underworld.
Deep source base
The Homeric Hymns give him both domains at once, the sea and the ground that shifts, and the second is the one later reception forgets in favour of the trident. The Iliad has him state the constitutional position of the Greek gods more plainly than any other passage in this corpus: the world was divided by lot between three brothers, he holds the sea by right rather than by permission, and the earth and Olympus are common ground — a rebuke delivered to Zeus's face. That matters for what the corpus does with Hades, whose underworld is a jurisdiction held on the same terms. Neither of them is a subordinate, and neither is an adversary, which is exactly what the later collapse of Hades into the devil has to ignore.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Isthmia, where the games were his; also Sounion on the headland, and Helike, which an earthquake put under the sea and which the Greeks took as his own doing.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Iliad · c. 750 BCE
- Rank
- Lord of the Sea
- Pantheon
- Greek
- Order
- Greek pantheon
- Base of operations
- Isthmia, where the games were his; also Sounion on the headland, and Helike, which an earthquake put under the sea and which the Greeks took as his own doing.
- Era
- c. 700 BCE
- Traditions
- Greek, Roman
- Placed in
- The Greek Succession
Traits
- Domain
- The sea, earthquakes, horses
- Traditional form
- Bearded, bearing the trident
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
1 site
Where was it worshipped?
Attested cult sites, located against the Pleiades gazetteer of the ancient world where it reaches and against Wikidata everywhere else. An absence here is not evidence that no cult existed: a good number of figures never had one, and the entry above says so where that is the case.
The sanctuary on the Isthmus where the games were his.
37.916, 22.993 · Pleiades 107524051
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to Poseidon, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- malefic2
- material1
3 texts
Which texts say so?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 3 texts that names Poseidon, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
3 texts spanning roughly 150 years
Reminds Zeus to his face that the world was divided by lot between three brothers and that the earth and Olympus are common ground — the corpus's clearest statement anywhere that the Greek underworld and sea are jurisdictions held by right rather than delegated.
Takes the grey sea as his portion; contends with Athena for Athens.
Named as the mover of the earth and of the barren sea, given the two domains together — the earthquake and the water — which the later reception mostly forgets in favour of the trident. A god of the ground that shifts is a different proposition from a god of the sea.
“I begin to sing about Poseidon, the great god, mover of the earth and fruitless sea, god of the deep who is also lord of Helicon and wide Aegae.”
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Poseidon?
Is Poseidon the same as Yam?
What rank is Poseidon?
How else is Poseidon spelled?
What is Poseidon said to do?
How old is Poseidon?
Nearest in the corpus
If Poseidon is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Artemis
Mistress of Animals · Greek
Huntress and protector of the young, whose Ephesian cult statue looks nothing like her and whose temple gave the ancient world one of its most durable protective formulas.
Hades
Lord of the Underworld · Greek
Ruler of the dead by lot rather than by punishment — a god of the underworld who is not evil, a distinction Christian cosmology cannot express.
The Daimones
Class of Spirits · Greek
Guardian spirits — Socrates had one that advised him — whose name the Greek scriptures borrowed for evil spirits, permanently poisoning the word.
Hecate
Goddess of Crossroads · Greek
Hesiod has Zeus honour her above all others. By the medieval period she presides over witchcraft instead, a demotion with no wrongdoing attached to it anywhere.
Apollo
God of Prophecy · Greek
Oracle-giver at Delphi, and the god who both sends plague and lifts it. Later traditions split that duality between an angel and a demon; Greece kept it in one figure.
Ares
God of War · Greek
War as slaughter rather than strategy — disliked by the Greeks who worshipped him, and rehabilitated entirely by the Romans as Mars.
The books behind Poseidon
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Theogony & Works and Days
Hesiod · c. 700 BCE · Ancient Greek
Read Theogony & Works and Days in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Hesiod · Wikimedia file page
The Homeric Hymns
Anonymous; attributed in antiquity to Homer; tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White · c. 700–500 BCE · Ancient Greek
Read The Homeric Hymns in full ↗
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.