Phorcys is an ancient sea-god, son of Pontus (Sea) and Gaia (Earth) and brother of Nereus, Thaumas, Ceto, and Eurybia. With his sister-wife Ceto he fathers the monstrous Phorcides — the grey Graeae and the Gorgons — making him the wellspring of the sea's terrors.1
When Pontus the Sea mated with Earth, he begot a brood of primeval sea-powers: eldest came Nereus, the trusty and gentle elder, and after him "great Thaumas and proud Phorcys, and fair-cheeked Ceto and Eurybia who has a heart of flint within her." So Phorcys stands among the oldest gods of the deep, born of the marriage of sea and land before the reign of the Olympians.2
Apollodorus repeats the same descent, that "to Sea and Earth were born Phorcus, Thaumas, Nereus, Eurybia, and Ceto," and that "to Phorcus and Ceto were born the Phorcides and Gorgons" — fixing Phorcys as the patriarch of the sea's monstrous houses.3
Joined in love with his sister Ceto, Phorcys fathered a lineage of horrors. First Ceto bore the Graiae, grey from birth — Pemphredo well-clad and saffron-robed Enyo; then the three Gorgons, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, who dwell beyond glorious Ocean at the world's edge. Medusa alone was mortal, and when her head was struck off there sprang from her the winged horse Pegasus and Chrysaor, whom she had conceived by Poseidon. Last of all Ceto bore to Phorcys her youngest, "the awful snake who guards the apples all of gold in the secret places of the dark earth at its great bounds" — and with this the poet closes, "This is the offspring of Ceto and Phorcys."4
Apollodorus tells the family's reckoning with Perseus: the hero came first to "the daughters of Phorcus, Enyo, Pephredo, and Dino," the Graeae who shared a single eye and a single tooth between them, and seized their eye to learn the way to the Gorgons. There he beheaded Medusa, and from the slain Gorgon sprang Pegasus and Chrysaor, her children by Poseidon.5
The grey sisters' number and names are told differently: Hesiod counts only two, Pemphredo and Enyo; Apollodorus names three, Enyo, Pephredo, and Dino; and Hyginus gives Pemphredo, Enyo, and Persis, "for which last others say Dino." Yet all alike make them daughters of Phorcys and Ceto and sisters of the Gorgons.6
Homer knows Phorcys not as a genealogical root but as a living sea-elder: the Cyclops Polyphemus is borne to Poseidon by "the nymph Thoosa, daughter of Phorcys who rules over the unresting sea," and the sheltered harbor in Ithaca where the Phaeacians lay the sleeping Odysseus is named "the harbor of Phorcys, the old man of the sea" — a god with his own cult-place upon the shore.7
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
