Greek PantheonTemple
Cape Sounion
A dramatic clifftop promontory crowned by the Temple of Poseidon, where Aegeus leapt to his death upon seeing black sails.
About Cape Sounion
Poseidon's cliff, a father's mistake
Sounion is a marble temple of Poseidon on Attica's southern tip. The Odyssey already parks a death here: Phrontis, Menelaus's helmsman, is struck down at sacred Sounion. Later storytellers (Plutarch's Theseus and the common school version) have Aegeus watch for white sails and throw himself down when Theseus forgets. The leap is not in Homer. The cult is Poseidon's; the suicide is an Attic footnote attached to a conspicuous cape.
On the map
Cape Sounion among other places of the Greek Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Homer, Odyssey 3
About this entry
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.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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