In Greek mythology, Pontus (Ancient Greek: Πόντος, lit. 'Sea') is the personification of the sea. In Hesiod's Theogony (8th or 7th century BC), he is the offspring of Gaia (the Earth), who produces him alone. With Gaia, he becomes the progenitor of a family comprising mostly marine beings and monsters; the pair's children are Nereus, Phorcys, Ceto, Thaumas, and Eurybia. In a fragment of the lost Titanomachy (late 7th century BC or afterwards), Pontus and Gaia are described as the parents of Aigaion. The 2nd-century AD Fabulae assigns Pontus a consort named Mare ('The sea'), and places him as the son of Gaia and Aether (the Upper Sky).
Pontus is depicted on a Roman mosaic from Mérida, Spain, dating to around the late 2nd century AD, on which only fragments of his body survive. A 2nd-century AD marble statue shows him as a patron deity of Tomis (modern-day Constanța, Romania), alongside the Roman goddess Fortuna.
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Name
In Ancient Greek, the word póntos (πόντος) means 'sea', and derives from the Proto-Indo-European *pont-eh₁-, *pn̥t-h₁, meaning 'path'. The name was also sometimes used to refer to the Black Sea.
Genealogy
Pontus is the Greek personification of the sea. He does not appear in any mythological stories, and in literature is attested solely in a genealogical context. In the Theogony of the poet Hesiod, who dates to the 8th or 7th century BC, Pontus is the offspring of Gaia (the personification of the Earth), produced without the aid of a father. With Gaia, he becomes the progenitor of a family that includes mostly beings connected with the sea and various monsters; the latter group are made descendants of Pontus owing to their terrible nature, which requires that they be made genealogically distant from the main divine family of the Olympians. The offspring of Pontus and Gaia are: Nereus and Phorcys, both of whom are sea gods; Ceto, a sea monster; and Eurybia and Thaumas. According to Martin Litchfield West, it appears that all of these children dwell in the sea. They are interpreted by Francisco Díez de Velasco as representing the two dimensions of the sea which sailors would have experienced early on in the archaic period (c. 800–480 BC): Nereus stands for the "favourable" sea, and Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia for that which is "monstrous".