Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Phorcys.
The gallery
Mosaic of Marine Deities (Phorcys, Ceto, and Triton or Thaumas)
Unknown (Roman mosaicist), Late Roman period (c. 2nd–4th century AD)
This late Roman floor mosaic, recovered from the Trajan Baths at Acholla in present-day Tunisia and now in the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, ranks among the very few surviving images to name the old sea-god Phorcys directly. He appears at the center as a fish-tailed marine power, flanked by his sister-wife Ceto on the right and a third aquatic deity on the left, identified as either Triton or his brother Thaumas. The composition embodies the Greco-Roman vision of Phorcys as a primeval lord of the deep — Homer's 'old man of the sea' and, with Ceto, progenitor of the Gorgons and Graeae. It is the principal illustration of Phorcys's own Wikipedia article and the clearest visual attestation of the rarely-depicted sea-god.