An important center of Poseidon’s cult was landlocked Arkadia, where he, not Zeus, was considered the father of Demeter’s daughter, the mistress of the underworld. His sanctuaries were concentrated in the central plains and valleys around Orchomenos, Kaphyai, Methydrion, and Mantineia, poorly drained areas subject to flooding.25 At Mantineia, Poseidon was a civic god and his trident adorned the shields of the citizens, while late inscriptions show that calendar years were reckoned by the names of his priests. Like Zeus Lykaios, Poseidon Hippios had an inviolate area in his sanctuary outside Mantineia where no human being was permitted to tread; according to legend, a mere woolen thread marked the boundary of the sacred area. When the hero Aipytos cut this thread, he was blinded by a miraculous wave of seawater. Arkadia was a great repository of traditions about the births of the gods; one such legend, tied to a spring in the territory of Mantineia, said that Rhea fooled the murderous Kronos by telling him she had given birth to a horse, and gave him a foal to eat instead of the infant Poseidon, who was sheltered in a lambs’ pen.26
In most regions of Greece, we encounter a belief in Poseidon as the creator of the first horse or as the sire of miraculous steeds such as the winged Pegasos, who was the offspring of Poseidon and Medousa. In Arkadia, the god himself becomes a horse, as in the Mantinean birth legend and the myths attached to the city of Thelpousa. Here, Demeter Erinys sought to escape the lustful Poseidon by transforming herself into a mare, but he became a stallion and mated with her. The offspring of this union were a goddess whose name was kept secret (presumably the Arkadian equivalent of Kore) and the divine horse Areion. Pausanias, our source for most of this information, speaks of the sanctuary of Demeter outside Thelpousa, but does not elaborate on the cult of Poseidon here, except to say that he had the title of Hippios. Similarly at a cave sanctuary outside Phigaleia in the Neda river gorge, the cult myth recounted the coupling of Demeter and Poseidon in the shape of horses, specifying that their daughter was the goddess known as Despoina (Mistress). Poseidon Hippios also had an altar at the important sanctuary of the Mistress at Lykosoura.27 Here Poseidon is hardly a god of the sea, and his cults are presumably least changed from their Mycenaean antecedents (just as Arkadian Posoidan is the dialect form closest to Linear B). The few references to his marine nature are due to Panhellenizing influences during the Classical period and later.
World History
