In Greek mythology, Phorcys (also Phorcus) is a primordial sea god, generally cited first in Hesiod's Theogony as a son of Pontus (Sea) and Gaia (Earth). His wife was his sister Ceto, and he is most notable in myth for fathering by her a host of monstrous children, including the Gorgons and the Graeae. In surviving Hellenistic-Roman mosaics he was depicted as a fish-tailed merman with crab-claw legs and red, spiky skin.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Phorcys" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Parents
According to Hesiod's Theogony, Phorcys is the son of Pontus and Gaia, and the brother of Nereus, Thaumas, Ceto, and Eurybia.
A different genealogy appears in Plato's dialogue Timaeus, where Phorcys, Cronus, and Rhea are named as the eldest offspring of Oceanus and Tethys.
II.Offspring
Hesiod's Theogony lists the children of Phorcys and Ceto as the Graeae (naming only two, Pemphredo and Enyo), the Gorgons (Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa), probably Echidna (though the text is unclear on this point), and Ceto's youngest, the awful snake (Ladon) who guards the golden apples.
Other ancient sources add further children whose parentage varies between accounts. According to Apollodorus, Scylla was the daughter of Crataeis, her father being either Trienus (Triton?) or Phorcys. A fragment of Sophocles makes Phorcys the father of the Sirens, and the scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes cites Phorcys and Ceto as the parents of the Hesperides.
Homer refers to Thoosa, the mother of the Cyclops Polyphemus, as a daughter of Phorcys, who is described as ruling over the unresting sea.
III.Depiction and other traditions
In extant Hellenistic-Roman mosaics, Phorcys was depicted as a fish-tailed merman with crab-claw legs and red, spiky skin. The scholar Karl Kerenyi connected him with the similar sea deities Nereus and Proteus.
Servius, the commentator on the Aeneid, reports a very ancient version already reflected in Varro and distinct from the Greek vulgate. In this account Phorcos was once king of Sardinia and Corsica; after being annihilated in a naval battle in the Tyrrhenian Sea and shot down by King Atlas along with a large part of his army, his companions imagined him transformed into a marine deity, perhaps a monster, half man and half sea ram.