Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Thaumas.
The gallery
Sea-Gods Mosaic from the Baths of Trajan at Acholla (Phorcys, Ceto and Thaumas)
Unknown (Roman mosaicist), Early 2nd century CE
This late Roman floor mosaic, recovered from the Baths of Trajan at Acholla in present-day Tunisia and now held in the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, assembles a family group of marine deities of the line of Pontus. At the centre is the bearded sea-god Phorcys, flanked at right by his consort and sister Ceto; the figure at the left, rendered with the wild hair and aquatic attributes of a primordial sea power, is identified as Thaumas (or, in an alternative reading, Triton). The composition gives visual form to the genealogy of Hesiod's Theogony, in which Pontus and Gaia beget Thaumas alongside Phorcys, Ceto and the other sea-gods. Thaumas, the 'wonder' of the deep and the father of Iris and the Harpies, is almost never shown on his own in ancient art; here he survives only as a member of this chthonic sea-born dynasty, an image of the very contradictions and shared lineage that the ancient sources record.