Pontus is the primordial Sea, the fruitless deep with its raging swell, whom Gaia bore of herself without sweet union of love — so the Sea has a mother but no father.1
In Hesiod's reckoning Gaia, the broad-breasted Earth, bore Pontus of herself, the fruitless deep with his raging swell, "without sweet union of love" — parthenogenetically, as she had brought forth starry Ouranos and the long hills. So the Sea stands apart from the line Earth later got by lying with Heaven: he has a mother but no father.2
Mated then with Gaia, Pontus fathered the first generation of the sea. Eldest came Nereus, the truthful old man who does not lie; after him great Thaumas and proud Phorcys, fair-cheeked Ceto, and Eurybia, who has a heart of flint within her. Apollodorus too gives Sea and Earth the same five children — Phorcus, Thaumas, Nereus, Eurybia, and Ceto — making Pontus the well-spring of every later sea-divinity.3
From this root the monstrous branch grew. Phorcys and Ceto, two of Pontus's children, joined to produce the grey Graiae and the Gorgons who dwell beyond Ocean toward Night — Sthenno, Euryale, and Medusa, of whom Medusa alone was mortal while the other two were undying and unaging. When Perseus struck off her head there sprang forth great Chrysaor and the winged horse Pegasus, the children she had borne to Poseidon. Apollodorus traces the same descent, naming the Phorcides and Gorgons among the offspring of Phorcus and Ceto and reserving their tale for Perseus.4
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
