Amphitrite (the third one who encircles, i.e., the sea) In Greek mythology, a sea goddess, daughter of Nereus and Doris (or Oceanus and Tethys); wife of Poseidon; mother of Albion, Benthesicyme, Charybdis, Rhode, and Triton. Poseidon saw Amphitrite dancing with the Nereids on the island of Naxos and carried her off. According to a variant account, she fled from Poseidon to Atlas, but Poseidon’s dolphin saw her and brought her to the god. Homer does not call her Poseidon’s wife but a sea goddess who beats the billows against the rocks. Amphitrite had no separate worship or cult.
She was often portrayed with a net confining her hair, with crabs’ claws on the crown of her head, being carried by Tritons or by dolphins and other marine animals, or drawn by them in a chariot of shells. The Romans identified her with Salacia, their goddess of the salt waves. Amphitrite appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (book 1) and Keats’s Endymion (II.108) She appears in Poussin’s painting The Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite.
SOURCE:
Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, Third Edition – Written by Anthony S. Mercatante & James R. Dow
Copyright © 2009 by Anthony S. Mercatante