weapon

Trident of Poseidon

By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.

Description

Three tines, sea and earthquake

The same Cyclopes who forge Zeus's bolt make Poseidon's trident in Hesiod. Homer's Poseidon is earth-shaker as much as sea-king: the trident drives waves and knocks the ground. Athenian civic myth (Apollodorus and later) has him strike the Acropolis and leave a salt spring in the contest with Athena. Fish-spears and Roman Neptune statues keep the shape. No surviving Greek temple advertised the original as a votive in a box; it is the god's tool in hexameter, then an emblem in stone.

Primary Sources

“The Cyclopes also gave Poseidon the trident, and to Hades the cap of darkness.”
Hesiod, Theogony (with Apollodorus's Titanomachy inventory)(c. 700 BCE / 1st–2nd century CE)

“Poseidon struck the rock with his trident and produced a sea, now called Erechtheis.”
Apollodorus, Library 3.14(c. 1st–2nd century CE)

Powers & Abilities

Sea ControlEarthquake GenerationStorm Summoning