Poseidon

Also known as: Neptune · Family: Gods · Role: god · First appears: Aeschylus, The Persians — Scene 4

Poseidon, also known as Neptune, is identified as Rhea’s son and as the father of Theseus. At the Hellespont, Xerxes attempted to enslave the strait and master the gods, an act Dareios condemned: “To curb the sacred Hellespont with fetters, As though it were his slave, and sought to alter The stream of God, the Bosporos”

In Theseus’s story, Poseidon granted him a privilege and promised him three curses. After Theseus banished Hippolytus and prayed for his destruction, Poseidon answered the prayer; one curse caused Hippolytus’s chariot disaster and death. In Tauris, he calmed the sea and guided Orestes’s ship, while he is also said to have tamed something and given it to Peleus.

At Troy, Poseidon and Apollo had reared many towers around Ilion. Though he and Athena shared an ancient hate, Poseidon joined her and Zeus in planning storms against the Greeks’ returning fleet after Troy was sacked. The Cyclopes are called Poseidon’s sons, with Polypheme as their master, and his son Halirrhothius was judged by the great gods after wronging Poseidon’s daughter.