Phorcys

A son of Earth and Sea

Phorcys is one of the oldest gods of the sea. The early Greek poet Hesiod places him in an early generation of gods. Gaia, the Earth, joins with Pontus, the Sea, and bears five children: Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia. This family comes before Poseidon receives the sea as his share of the world, after the defeat of the older gods called the Titans.

In the Odyssey, Homer’s epic poem about the voyage home of Odysseus, Phorcys has a realm of his own. Zeus explains why Poseidon is angry with Odysseus. The reason is Polyphemus, a Cyclops and a son of Poseidon, whom Odysseus has blinded. His mother is the nymph Thoosa, daughter of Phorcys, who rules over the unresting sea. So Homer treats Phorcys as a power of the moving water from which Poseidon’s Cyclops son was born.

The phrase “old man of the sea” does not pin down a single god. Homer uses it for Phorcys at Ithaca, while other passages use similar words for Nereus and Proteus. It describes a type of ancient sea power as much as one fixed role.

The children of Phorcys and Ceto

In Hesiod’s Theogony, a poem on the births of the gods, Phorcys joins with his sister Ceto. Their first named children are the Graiae, who are grey-haired from birth, and the three Gorgons, Sthenno, Euryale and Medusa. Hesiod places the Gorgons beyond Ocean, the river at the edge of the world, towards Night. Two of them are immortal. Medusa alone can die, and the hero Perseus cuts off her head.

The family goes on to include other beings that guard borders and live at the far limits of the world. Hesiod ends the list with the serpent set to guard the golden apples. In the account of Apollodorus, whose book, the Library, retells the Greek myths, Perseus must first reach the Graiae. They share a single eye and a single tooth, and he has to seize them before the Graiae will tell him the way to the Gorgons.

A father of things hard to reach

No surviving story shows Phorcys giving orders to these daughters. He matters because of the family tree itself. With Ceto, he is the source of beings that no one can approach directly. Their shared eye has to be seized. A mortal Gorgon has to be faced through a reflection. A serpent keeps watch at the edge of the known earth.

These stories place his family far from human homes. The best-known place that carries his name, though, is a harbour, and it lies on Ithaca, the home island of Odysseus. Homer tells how Odysseus finally arrives there after his long voyage.

The harbour at the end of the voyage

The Phaeacians, a seafaring people, carry Odysseus home. Their ship races into a harbour on Ithaca while Odysseus sleeps. Two headlands shelter the harbour from heavy waves, so ships can lie inside it without being tied up. The sailors run half the ship up onto the shore. They lift Odysseus onto the sand with his bedding and pile his gifts beside an olive tree.

Homer names the place before anyone on Ithaca speaks. It is the harbour of Phorcys, the old man of the sea. Beside the olive tree is a cave sacred to the Naiads, the nymphs of springs. It holds stone vessels and springs that never stop flowing, and it has two doors, one for mortals and one for gods.

When Odysseus wakes, he does not recognise his own island. In the end the goddess Athena clears the mist and points out the harbour of Phorcys, the olive tree, the cave and the wooded Mount Neriton. These landmarks prove where he is. A sea god’s name belongs to the place where ten years of wandering end, even before the returning king can recognise the ground.

The danger and the refuge

The two places Phorcys appears in the Odyssey pull in opposite directions. He rules an unresting sea, and he stands behind Thoosa, Polyphemus and the anger that keeps Odysseus away from Ithaca. Yet his harbour gives the same traveller a safe landing. The jutting headlands turn back the waves, and the Phaeacians know the entrance well enough to arrive before dawn.

That contrast fits a god whose family includes both ancient sea powers and monsters at the edges of the world. Phorcys stands for more than danger. The harbour on Ithaca is also no proof that he was worshipped there as a protector. The poem records no sacrifice to him at the harbour. What it does record is his name, fixed to the coast at the moment Odysseus comes home.

On Ithaca, the sea that has held Odysseus back finally carries him into shelter. Phorcys belongs to both sides of that crossing: the restless water behind the voyage and the harbour where it ends.