Poseidon. Let’s just go ahead and agree right now to never call him Neptune. Stupid Romans, his name is Poseidon. God of the sea, earthquakes, and horses. Often shows up riding a chariot drawn by the beautiful hippocampus. No, not the region of the brain*, that would be weird. I mean this one:
Yeah, I know. I want one, too.
There are three main Olympian gods: Zeus, god of thunder and sky, Hades, god of the Underworld, and Poseidon, god of the sea. Okay, obviously there are a lot more super awesome Greek gods and goddesses but right now we’re just talking about the big three here. In a very interesting article about garbology and the Mediterranean (which we will talk about next time) the author brings to light the idea that the distribution of power between the three main gods, as well as the Greek creation story, show the ancient Greek understanding of important delineations in categories of the universe: heaven, mountains, and sea.
Now, the creation story specifically mentions heaven and mountains, which I think we could probably attribute to Hades and Zeus, respectively. However, I just want to point out that Zeus technically is the god of the sky, not the mountains. So maybe instead of only three distinct types of territory, there are four. “Mountains” would then be separated into sky and land, with the land being the domain of the humans. I know there are Greek gods and goddesses who are associated with things on land, like Demeter, but we are essentializing to the main triad right now. If you read the creation story it distinguishes mountains/land, sea, and the underworld. Funnily enough, it does not classify the sky as its own entity, at least not for the Olympians (Zeus’ granpappy, Uranus, is also god of the sky, though). Interesting that Hades and Poseidon are granted named categories of the known world while Zeus, the king, rules over the more ambiguous “sky.” (Edit: Some sources disagree on whether he received just the sky or the combo of earth and sky and some say Poseidon received the sea and earth so who really knows anymore.)
Either way you slice it, that still gives the sea its own category and that, for all intents and purposes, is what we are concerned with here. So let’s talk about Poseidon for a hot second.
(…usually he has a face) source
You know, he was always my favorite Greek god. Horses, ocean, how could you go wrong? For a Greek god he always seemed really chill. Besides, without him Odysseus would have gotten home a bit more quickly and he was definitely the coolest character in the Iliad. Maybe Homer liked him, too. Poseidon also got around, if you know what I mean. And he once had an affair with a certain young nymph named Chios, who gave birth to a son, also named Chios. Who, according to a certain book of myths I found in the maritime museum, is the namesake of this here rock on which I sit. Some historians say the name “Chios” just comes from the Greek word for “snow,” but I rather prefer the version where it’s named after the mythical child of Poseidon.
Let’s go back and review the origin story of the Olympians. They are the children of Rhea and Kronos, two Titans (themselves the children of Gaia and Uranus, the creator goddess and god in Greek mythology). The story goes that Kronos ate all his children except Zeus — Rhea liked Zeus more or something and fed Kronos a rock instead — who was able to free all his brothers and sisters and take over from the Titans. Yay, Zeus! This is how he ends up as king of the Olympians. But here’s the thing, Poseidon’s role in this story seems to be controversial.
Each Greek deity had specific cities associated with them. For Poseidon, these were Thebes and Pylos. There is some evidence that he may have been worshiped as the chief deity there before the arrival of the Olympian gods. Tablets written in Linear B (ancient Mycenaean Greek) portray the god Poseidawon (sometimes translated as Master of the Sea) who was associated with water, horses, the earth, and the Underworld. He appears in myths with other characters analogous to future Olympians, such as Demeter (his sometimes wife). However, there is not concrete evidence that he was actually associated with the sea. It’s only later that Poseidawon, when his origin is retrofitted to the Olympian story, that he becomes overlord of the sea, relinquishing power of the Underworld and the earth to Hades and Zeus, respectively.
Even in the Olympian origin story, though, there are myths that distinguish Poseidon from his brothers and sisters. You see, it turns out that Poseidon may have also avoided being eaten by daddy Kronos. A secondary myth claims that he was actually smuggled away by Rhea, given to a flock of sheep, and raised by the Telchines on the island of Rhodes. This time, she gave Kronos a colt to eat instead of a rock. To be honest, since one of Poseidon’s manifestations is a horse this makes a heck of a lot more sense than a rock for Zeus…
Anyways, this is exciting for a few reasons.
Reason 1: I will be on the island of Rhodes in 10 days.
Reason 2: The Telchines have their own super cool mythology, but we’ll have to get into that another time. Suffice to say, they were sea-magicians powerful enough to craft the sword that castrated Uranus and may or may not have looked like fish-people.
Reason 3: Poseidon, as god of the sea, was such an important figure that he had to be separated even further from the rest of the Pantheon. He either existed before the Olympians or he was more awesome than everyone else (except Zeus).
So, basically, Poseidon really has a lot of things going for him. Perhaps his association with the sea, one of the most important elements of Greek life (Plato once referred to Greeks as “frogs around a pond”), is what necessitated his differentiation even from the other gods and goddesses. But, it’s important to note that Poseidon was lord of the Aegean and the Mediterranean only; he was god of the sea specifically. A localized lord of the waters, someone to pray to when sailing through the waters near home but not someone who could help you if, say, you were Pytheas crossing the Atlantic. There was someone else who had control of the ocean…
Say hello to my HUMONGOUS friend, Oceanus (pronounced Okeanos, btw)
You know, he looks a lot like Poseidon. The main difference is that Oceanus has bull’s horns and is associated with serpents, not horses. Also, I don’t think he actually had a trident, come to think of it…
Oceanus was a Titan, the precursors to the Olympians. But in the war between Titans and Olympians, in which Zeus et al triumph and throw their parents, aunts, and uncles (actually, their parents are also their aunt and uncle…) into the pit of Tartarus, Oceanus and his wife/sister, Tethys, stayed out of the conflict. They refused to pick sides and were therefore allowed to stay out of jail. Oceanus continued to rule over the largest body of water known to the ancient Greeks. They conceived of an enormous ocean-river that encircled the world. This was the “river” oceanus. When Pytheas was sailing the Atlantic, he was also traveling along Oceanus.
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A reconstruction of the world according to Herodotus (ca 450 BCE). Oceanus really has a lot more territory than poor little Poseidon.
While the Titans are said to be born of the union between Gaia and Uranus, there are also myths that Oceanus was actually from the union of Gaia and Chaos (Chaos being the original nothingness before the world was created). Note that once again, the god associated with the sea/ocean is given an alternate history to his peers. The sea and the ocean were that important that for these deities special rules had to be created.
I should probably also note that Oceanus was also the font of all freshwater, literally providing life for everything on earth, and that he governed the celestial bodies as they rose from or sank beneath the ocean-stream at the edges of the earth. Kind of a lot of power for one guy, don’t you think? During the Hellenistic era he no longer has these powers, but still rules over the world’s oceans.
Okay so you’re obviously wondering what on earth Santa Claus is doing in the title of this post. Well, the thing is people don’t really believe in the gods of Olympus anymore. Yes, I’m sad about that, too, but the Olympians seem to be doing okay in terms of ancient Gods. I mean, no one is making movies or writing novels about Zoroaster or Ba’al.
Sorry, buddy. Bloodthirsty bull fertility gods just aren’t as popular these days.
But here’s the deal, Christianity came to Greece, as it inevitably seems to do in all corners of the world. Well, okay, so Greece is kind of very close to where all those events in the Bible may or may not have originally happened, anyways. Christianity was a pretty early arrival in Greece, although Chios seems to have held onto traditional spirituality longer than other islands, if their stories are to be taken as fact. By the time of Genoan occupation, however, they became a stronghold of Christianity. At that time, many other islands were under Ottoman control. Chios was a safe place for Christians and some believers fled to the island to escape persecution. But that is neither here nor there for the moment because what I really want to talk about is Santa Claus.
This is relevant. Trust me.
Okay so waayyyy back in my Sunday School years, we learned about this Greek dude named St. Nicholas. The details of said story became incredibly fuzzy since I think I was about 7 when I learned about it. However! I recently subscribed to a wonderful podcast called Myths & Legends, which I would highly recommend, and there was an episode about St. Nicholas!
If I were you, I’d go download the episode instead of relying on me to tell the story properly. It’s only about half an hour long and very entertaining. But the gist of it is that St. Nicholas was this amazingly pious and well-known bishop in Myra, Greece (now Demre, Turkey) who lived from 270-343 CE. There are lots of myths about him, including acts of furtive gift-giving in the middle of the night, and after a very long time he became Jolly Ol’ St Nick.
You can see it, right? …kind of…
But before that he was the patron saint of the sea down here in Greece. The myths from Chios reference seafarers praying to St. Nicholas for safe passage after the Genoan conquest and the advent of Christianity on the island. I’m in Rhodes now and their old harbor is home to the Fort of St. Nicholas! And so, the domain of the sea passed from Poseidon to Santa Claus.
The world is weird, indeed.
*For anyone who might be wondering why on earth someone would give the name of an epic mythological creature to a region of the brain that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the sea, it’s actually because the hippocampus that’s in your brain kind of looks like a mushy, grey-pink seahorse and these days “hippocampus” just refers to plain old seahorses. 
Pictured: Two hippocampi j chillin’ in the warm waters of the Med
Also, part of the reason for the idea of the hippocampus and Poseidon’s association with horses is because the crest of the wave was thought to look like horses (can confirm, frequently think of ponies when watching waves). Hippocampuses were sometimes called two-legged horses and you can find them throughout the Greek epics.
Originally, I was going to say “Tune in next time for Installment 4!” but I think maybe we are coming to the end of our history lesson. I’m boarding a ship in two days and then I will leave you for about a month (well, I might get wifi briefly whenever we make port). I’ll be writing about my time in Chios and I might upload some of that in the next couple of days.
Thank you to everyone who is following along 🙂
onesmallfish 
