Pontus

Pontus is the sea personified in Greek mythology, one of the earliest beings in Hesiod’s Theogony. Earth bore him on her own, without a father, and later bore with him the sea-gods Nereus, Thaumas and Phorcys and the goddesses Ceto and Eurybia. His name is the ordinary Greek word for the open sea.

Pontus’s Role and Significance

Pontus's Name

The name “Pontus” (Pontos) is the Greek word for sea. Hesiod uses it both for the god and as an everyday noun, as when he names, beside the children of Earth, Heaven and Night, the gods “whom the salt Pontus nourished” (Hesiod, Theogony 105–107), or when he bids farewell to the islands, the mainlands and “the salt sea within” (Theogony 964). Pontus is the deep, open sea. He is distinct from Oceanus, the great river that Homer places around the rim of the world on the shield of Achilles (Iliad 18.607–608), and who in Hesiod is a separate child of Earth and Heaven (Theogony 133).

Pontus’s Portrayal

Hesiod gives Pontus no story of his own and no speaking part. He describes him as the “fruitless deep with his raging swell” (Theogony 131–132), that is, a sea that bears no crops. The sea’s later ruler in the Olympian order is Poseidon, not Pontus.

Pontus’s Biography

Origins and Lineage

In the Theogony, Gaia (Earth) first bore Uranus (Heaven) and the high hills, and then, “without sweet union of love”, she bore Pontus. Only afterwards did she lie with Uranus and bear Oceanus, the Titans and others (Hesiod, Theogony 126–138). Pontus therefore has a mother, Gaia, but no father. Apollodorus also treats Sea (Pontus) and Earth as the parents of the sea’s next generation (Apollodorus, Library 1.2.6).

Consorts and Offspring

Gaia is the only consort of Pontus named in the sources. Hesiod says Pontus fathered Nereus first, the eldest of his children, whom men call the Old Man of the Sea because he is truthful, gentle and does not forget the laws of righteousness (Theogony 233–236). Then, by lying with Gaia, he fathered:

• Thaumas, called great, and Phorcys, called proud (Theogony 237–238);
• Ceto of the fair cheeks, and Eurybia, who has a heart of flint (Theogony 238–239).

Apollodorus gives the same five children (Library 1.2.6). Their descendants fill much of the sea’s mythology. Nereus and Doris had the fifty Nereids (Theogony 240–264), among them Thetis and Amphitrite. Thaumas and Electra had Iris and the Harpies (Theogony 265–269). Phorcys and Ceto had the Graiae, the Gorgons and the serpent that guards the golden apples (Theogony 270–336). Eurybia married the Titan Crius and bore Astraeus, Pallas and Perses (Theogony 375–377).

Pontus and the Birth of Aphrodite

When Cronus cut off the genitals of Uranus and threw them from the land into the sea, they drifted over the waves and white foam rose around them; from this foam Aphrodite grew (Theogony 188–195). Hesiod names the sea here only by the common word pontos, and he does not make the god Pontus a character in the scene.

Pontus’s Legacy

Pontus has no known temple or cult and no myth in which he acts. His importance is genealogical: the sea gods and monsters of later stories descend from him, and his son Nereus is the sea elder whom Heracles seizes and binds until he tells him where the golden apples of the Hesperides are (Apollodorus, Library 2.5.11).

Pontus Sources

Pontus is known mainly from Hesiod’s Theogony (lines 105–107, 126–138, 188–195, 233–239, 240–336, 375–377, 964), with the family of sea gods repeated in Apollodorus’ Library 1.2.6 and the Nereus episode in Library 2.5.11. Homer’s river Oceanus is in Iliad 18.607–608.

See Also: Gaia, Uranus, Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, Eurybia, Oceanus