Pontus

Pontus (PON-tus) is the primordial Sea — the salt deep itself, personified at the very dawn of the world. In Hesiod's cosmogony he is one of the first beings to come into existence: not a god who rules the sea from without, but the sea as an elemental power given a name and a place in the family of creation. His Greek name, póntos, means simply "the sea," and in Homer it most often denotes the open salt water, the sea as a road and a barren expanse. He is the sea as substance and origin, older than the gods who would later govern it.

What most distinguishes Pontus is the manner of his birth. Hesiod says that Gaia (Earth) bore him alone, "without delightful love" (áter philótētos ephimérou) — with no father, by no union. Where she had first brought forth Uranus to be her equal and cover her, she conceived the Sea by herself. Pontus is thus Earth's fatherless child, one of the oldest beings in the cosmos and a pure emanation of the primordial world rather than the product of any marriage.

In myth Pontus is above all a genealogical figure: he acts little and speaks not at all, but from his later union with his own mother Gaia springs a remarkable line of sea-powers. From him come Nereus, the gentle and truthful Old Man of the Sea; Thaumas, father of the rainbow Iris and the storm-winged Harpies; the sinister pair Phorcys and Ceto, who between them engender the sea's monsters; and Eurybia, the "wide-force" daughter of Pontus and Gaia of the sea's hard mastery. Through these children the salt deep gives rise to nearly the whole older order of marine divinity — the Nereids, the Gorgons, and the fearful creatures of the deep — before the Olympian Poseidon ever takes the sea in hand.

The fatherless birth

Hesiod places Pontus among the very first things to exist. After Chaos, there came to be Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros; and from Chaos were born Erebus and Night; and Gaia, "first of all," bore Uranus the starry Heaven to be her equal, "so that he might cover her on every side." She then brought forth the great Mountains, and after them "the barren sea, Pontus, seething with its swell — without delightful love" (Theogony 131–132). The phrase is pointed: unlike Heaven, whom Earth bore to be her consort and by whom she then conceived the Titans, Pontus was conceived by Gaia alone, with no father and no act of love. He is the fatherless child of Earth, the Sea welling up out of the primordial ground of the world. This solitary, spontaneous birth marks him as one of the elemental first powers, on a footing with Heaven and the Mountains rather than with the many gods born of later unions.

The children of Pontus and Gaia

Though he was born of Gaia without a father, Pontus in turn lay with his own mother Earth, and from that union came a line of sea-beings who fill the older Greek imagination of the deep (Theogony 233–239; Apollodorus 1.2.6). The Sea's fatherhood is genealogical: he engenders, and through his offspring the whole character of the sea — kindly and monstrous alike — is unfolded.

• Nereus, born first, is the "Old Man of the Sea," described by Hesiod as truthful and gentle (nēmertḗs kaì apseudḗs), mindful of what is right and never forgetful of justice. He weds the Oceanid Doris, and their fifty daughters are the Nereids, the sea-nymphs of the calm and kindly deep, among them Thetis, mother of Achilles, and Amphitrite, who becomes Poseidon's queen.
• Thaumas ("Wonder") weds the Oceanid Electra and fathers Iris, the rainbow and messenger of the gods, and the Harpies, the swift storm-winds given wings. Through him the sea is bound to the marvels of the sky — the rainbow bridging cloud and water, the snatching gusts of the gale.
• Phorcys and Ceto, brother and sister, marry one another and bring forth the sea's monsters: the Graeae, the grey sisters born already old; the Gorgons, among them Medusa; Echidna, the serpent-woman; and, in most accounts, the dragon that guards the golden apples. Where Nereus is the sea's benevolence, Phorcys and Ceto are its terror and its teeming, dangerous fertility.
• Eurybia, the "wide-force" (εὐρύς + βία) daughter of Pontus and Gaia, with a heart of adamant, is the personified strength of the sea. She weds the Titan Crius and bears Astraeus (father of the stars and winds), Pallas, and Perses — a line running toward the powers of the heavens and of witchcraft (Hecate is her granddaughter). She embodies the sea's hard, resistless strength.

So from Pontus, who does almost nothing himself, descends nearly the whole archaic population of the sea — its gentle old man and his fifty daughters, its rainbow and its harpies, its gorgons and grey sisters and serpents, and its flint-hearted force. He is less a character than a wellspring.

Pontus, Oceanus, and Poseidon: three seas, three orders

The Greeks named the water of the world three times over, and it is easy to blur the three. Kept distinct, they map neatly onto the deep's three faces — its substance, its encircling flow, and its ruling power.

• Pontus is the primordial salt Sea itself — the deep as element and origin. Born of Gaia alone at the dawn of things (Theogony 131–132), he belongs to the earliest offspring of Earth, of the generation before the Titans. He is largely inert and genealogical: he does not rule or act so much as exist and engender. Pontus is the sea as raw substance and as ancestor.
• Oceanus is the great fresh-water River that encircles the flat disc of the world, from whose ever-flowing stream all rivers, springs and seas were thought to draw (Theogony 337–345). He belongs to the next generation — a Titan, son of Uranus and Gaia, husband of Tethys, father of the three thousand Oceanids and river-gods. Where Pontus is the barren salt deep, Oceanus is the fresh, circling, life-feeding boundary of the world. The two are cousins in kind but opposite in nature: brine and fresh water, expanse and encircling stream.
• Poseidon is the Olympian god who rules and personifies the sea's power in the reigning order. He is younger still — son of Cronus and Rhea, brother of Zeus — and he wins the sea by lot in the division of the cosmos after the Titans fall (Apollodorus 1.2.1). Poseidon is not the water itself but its lord and its willful force: the earth-shaker who raises storms, drives the horses of the waves, and must be placated by the sailor. The sea Pontus merely is, and Oceanus merely flows, Poseidon governs.

In short: Pontus is the elemental salt Sea (first generation, the deep as substance and origin); Oceanus is the encircling fresh-water River (a Titan, the world's flowing boundary); and Poseidon is the Olympian who commands the sea's power in the age of the ruling gods. The archaic sea-powers descend from Pontus; the waters of the world flow from Oceanus; but the sea is ruled by Poseidon.

A power more genealogical than cultic

Pontus received little in the way of organised worship. Like many of Hesiod's primordial beings — Chaos, Tartarus, Erebus — he was a cosmological and genealogical figure rather than a god with temples, priesthoods, and festivals. The Greeks who prayed for safe passage or a good catch turned not to the abstract salt deep but to Poseidon, lord of the sea, or to Nereus and the Nereids, or to Glaucus and other sea-powers close to the sailor's world. Pontus belongs to the poets' account of how the world came to be, more than to the altars of everyday devotion.

Where he does appear

Pontus survives chiefly in cosmogony and in art. In Hesiod he is a named link in the chain of creation; later mythographers such as Apollodorus (1.2.6) preserve his genealogy. In the visual arts of the Roman period he appears personified — a bearded figure of the sea, sometimes with crab-claw horns and a rudder or ship's mast — most famously beside Thalassa (the female Sea) in mosaics from the eastern Mediterranean. The Greeks acknowledged him as the deep's first origin; but reverence for the living, dangerous sea was paid to the gods who ruled and moved within it, not to the primordial element that underlay them.

Honouring Pontus today

A modern devotee who wishes to honour Pontus honours the sea in its oldest and most elemental aspect — not the ruler of the waves but the deep itself, the salt water out of which the whole marine world was born. He is best approached at the shore, facing the open water. A simple practice is to stand at the sea's edge, name him as the primordial Sea and the fatherless child of Earth, and offer a few words acknowledging him as the origin from whom Nereus and the Nereids, the monsters of the deep, and all the sea's powers descend.

Offerings

The most fitting offering to Pontus is given directly to the sea. Pour a libation — wine, or fresh water, or milk — into the waves, or cast in a pinch of salt, a little barley, or flowers, letting the water take them. Because he is the salt deep itself, what is given should return to the sea rather than be kept. Those far from the coast may keep a bowl of sea water or salt on a small shrine and pour out an offering into it in his name.

Prayer & remembrance

Call on Pontus in reverence for the sea's antiquity and origin — before setting out on the water, in gratitude for the deep, or simply in contemplation of the ocean's age and vastness. It is fitting to name in the same breath his children, through whom he is best known: Nereus the gentle old man of the sea, Thaumas father of the rainbow, Phorcys and Ceto who bore the sea's wonders and terrors, and Eurybia of the wide force. To honour Pontus is to honour the source from which they all flow.