

There were fifty Nereids and three thousand Oceanids, giving her a large family in both stories of her origin.īoth groups of nymphs were minor goddesses of the seas. In either case, she was typically described as being the oldest of her sisters. This made her a daughter of Oceanus, an established Titan, instead of the more elusive Nereus. Perhaps as a sign of the changing belief in The Old Man of the Sea, Amphitrite is occasionally called an Oceanid instead of a Nereid. Historians, however, think it is likely that these pre-Greek gods were passed on from a time before the story of the Titanomachy and rise of the Olympian gods was ever conceived. The Greeks rationalized this by having The Old Man of the Sea, as either of those gods, a more primordial figure who fell under the control of Poseidon when the Olympians took power. While they were eventually supplanted by Poseidon as the ruler of the waters, they lived on in a few stories. Most historians consider it likely that Nereus and Proteus both were ancient gods that predated the adoption of the Greek pantheon. Both Nereus and Proteus, who is sometimes called his brother, were identified as the shape-shifting god of the sea. The Old Man of the Sea was an unusual figure in Greek mythology. Their mother Doris was the daughter of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys.

Their father was the eldest son of Gaia and her own son Pontus, a primordial god of the sea.

The Nereids were the daughters of Nereus, often called the Old Man of the Sea. Instead, she was just one of fifty sisters. While Greek mythology remembers Amphitrite as a nymph who rose to greater power through marriage, there is evidence that there might be more to the sea queen than meets the eye.įrom her place as a mother goddess to the notion that she might be even more ancient than her husband, there is a lot to learn about the character of Amphitrite! Amphitrite the Water NymphĪmphitrite did not begin her story as one of the most important goddesses in mythology. Although she famously fled from his proposal, she eventually became Poseidon’s wife and queen. While Zeus and Hades married well-known goddesses, however, Poseidon’s wife was from a far less lauded background.Īmphitrite was a Nereid, one of the fifty nymph daughters of an ancient sea god. When the gods of Olympus took control of the universe from the Titans, they each found a wife to rule alongside them. Discover the real truth about how Amphitrite went from being a simple nymph to the queen of the seas.
