Note 288 — Chapter VI · CHARACTERISTICS OF FISHERMEN IN GREECE AND ROME—POVERTY “THE BADGE OF ALL OUR TRIBE”—DEITIES OF FISHING

Some recent scholars hold that Poseidon was an early differentiation of Zeus, and that his fish-spear was developed from the three-pronged lightning symbol of that deity as soon as the former became himself specialised into first a river god, and second a sea god. From my friend Mr. A. B. Cook’s forthcoming work, Zeus, vol. ii. c. 6, s. 4, I learn that the commonly supposed Trident (in Æschylus, Septem., I. 31), “the fish-striking tool of the sea-god,” is more likely in pre-classical times to have been the three-pronged lightning symbol of the highest Deity of all, and observable not only in Greece, but also in Asia. Against this view lies the fact that only once in all the Greek art is Poseidon represented with an unmistakable thunder-bolt, and this is on a silver tetradrachm of Messana about 450 b.c. The name Poseidon merely equals, it is held, ποτεί-Δας, or ‘Lord Zeus,’ the correlative of πότνια Ἥρη, ‘Lady Hera.’