Greek sea gods
The ancient Greeks had a large number of sea gods.
The philosopher Plato once remarked that the Greeks were like frogs sitting around a pond - their many cities hugging close to the Mediterranean coastline from the Hellenic homeland to Asia Minor, Libya, Sicily and Sourthern Italy. It was natural, therefore, to develop a rich variety of aquatic divinities. The Greek sea gods include everything from primordial powers and an Olympian to chthonic nymphs, trickster figures, and monsters.
Perhaps borrowing from Near Eastern mythology, where water-deities like Tiamat and Apsu are the first gods, some early Greek thinkers made the sea-divinities into primordial powers. Oceanus and Tethys are the mother and father of the gods in the Iliad, while the Spartan poet Alcman made the nymph Thetis a demiurge-figure.
Poseidon, who once outshone Zeus in the Mycenean pantheon, was an important Olympian power; he was the chief patron of Corinth, many cities of Magna Graecia, and also Plato's legendary Atlantis.
Several sea gods conform to a single type: that of the halios geron or Old Man of the Sea. These are Nereus, Proteus, Glaucus and Phorkys. Each one is a shape-shifter, a prophet, and the father of either radiantly beautiful nymphs and hideous monsters. Each one emphasizes different aspects of the archetype: Proteus was known primarily as a shape-shifter and trickster, Phorcys as a father of monsters, Nereus for truth-telling and the beauty of his daughters, and Glaucus as a prophet.
Each one of these Old Men is the father or grandfather of many nymphs and/or monsters, who often bear names that are either allegorical (Thetis, "establishment"; Telesto, "success") or geographical (Rhode from "Rhodes"; Nilos, "Nile"). Each cluster of Old Man and daughters is therefore a kind of pantheon in miniature, each one a different possible configuration of the spiritual, moral and physical world writ small - and writ around the sea.
Homer's Odyssey contains a haunting description of a cave of the Nereids on Ithaca, close by a harbor sacred to Phorcys. The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry read this passage as an allegory of the whole universe - and he may not have far off the mark.
