Talk:Poseidon

Codrus

Can someone more technologically savvy than me add Codrus to the list of offspring?--Mr. 123453334 (talk) 00:10, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Page and TP cleanup and archive

Please review or tag the article page for a cleanup to British English, since that seems to be the most used style on this inconsistent page. Also please archive the discussion, as the talk page takes a while to scroll on mobile and users are replying to decade-old comments. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 14:19, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Poseidon is still worshipped today

Please remove ‘still’ because it implies a continuous thread of worship into the past whereas in reality current worship is without exception revivalist in nature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 05:28, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Military Section

What are the functions of the military weapons named after Poseidon?

Buzzancam1 (talk) 02:12, 7 February 2022 (UTC)buzzancam1

Semi-protected edit request on 21 May 2022

--> }} 97.123.82.180 (talk) 19:52, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

poseidon has seven kids every day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.123.82.180 (talk) 19:53, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

the sea

he likes strawberries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.123.82.180 (talk) 19:55, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

English

What's posiedon Roman name 2C0F:ED28:104C:C010:E8CA:A84E:63A4:5069 (talk) 14:41, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Neptune C0137H (talk) 15:07, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Medusa

Some suggest that he had sex with or raped Medusa. I believe this is a very noteworthy piece of information and should be in the article. 47.16.242.188 (talk) 19:25, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Try actually reading this article. This information is already included in the section "Consort, lovers, victims and children":

• • "Poseidon also raped Medusa on the floor of a temple to Athena. Medusa was then changed into a monster by Athena. When Medusa was later beheaded by the hero Perseus, Chrysaor and Pegasus emerged from her neck." Dimadick (talk) 10:31, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Two tables of offspring

@Caeciliusinhorto-public: the two tables were my choice and I remain uncertain about them; this is to explain, not defend. I found tables like this very hard to take in until I worked out that we weren't meant to read right across them, and they were awful to edit. I feared a single two-column table would be so tall it would be overwhelming and seem of great importance, then found that two tables would be displayed side-by-side on many desktop widths, though sadly that doesn't work on mobiles. I steadily replaced the old tables at Ares, Zeus, Hermes, Dionysus, Apollo, Hephaestus, Demeter and maybe more, attracting little comment, but after more than a year I'm still not really happy with using twin tables. It stops them being sortable as one, or collapsible or collapsed together. Should we merge them all? NebY (talk) 14:20, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

This is something I've been wondering as well. I've been considering what to do with the tables at Zeus for a while now. – Michael Aurel (talk) 14:25, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I understand what you mean about big tables being dreadful to edit. I suppose the other alternative would be to significantly trim back or remove the tables entirely, and rely on e.g. Category:Children of Poseidon and Category:Women of Poseidon for navigation. I don't know how useful this list is to readers – the important offspring and lovers are already mentioned in the text, and simply listing that e.g. Byzenus is a child of Poseidon and an unknown mother doesn't seem very helpful to me. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:35, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Or, if say "children of Poseidon" is a notable group, we could have stand-alone lists for this sort of thing. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:36, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I think, sortability alone makes one table better than two "twin tables". As for being "overwhelming", having the table be collapsible (and collapsed by default) would certainly help. But can you collapse a table? I wasn't aware you could, but if we can we should. Otherwise moving the table to its own article could work. Paul August ☎ 15:00, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

You can, I made the tables at Zeus collapsible (mostly because I wanted to be able to stop looking at them all the time...). – Michael Aurel (talk) 15:09, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

That's good to know. I would suggest that you consider adding prose introductions, and collapsing the tables by default. Paul August ☎ 15:31, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, collapsing them by default is definitely a good idea. I'm glad you've suggested having prose introductions, I had been thinking that potentially splitting them into multiple tables (by sources), with prose in between, would work well. – Michael Aurel (talk) 15:39, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, beginning with them collapsed is straightforward and less overhead than a separate list article, but can carry more information. For me, it's also a better balance; there's so much more to Greek religion. Rather than having multiple tables for different ancient sources, would an extra column, also sortable, of ancient source or even earliest ancient source, work? I've hesitated to suggest it before because it would take up even more space but defaulting to collapsed solves that.

I've set the table to collapsed as a demo - permalink. Revert if that's too hasty! NebY (talk) 16:18, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Definitely better. As above I would suggest a prose introduction be added to the section. Paul August ☎ 17:26, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Good! Michael, would you care to add an intro? NebY (talk) 18:04, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

The introduction could be as short "The following table lists ...". Also the current placement of the table in the section called "Rape and assault victims" is inappropriate. Paul August ☎ 19:58, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I've created a subsection and I think improved the rendering of the collapsed table. Just now I can't come up with any "The following table lists ..." intro that's not otiose; maybe the subsection title and table header are enough.

By the way, the family tree below could also be defaulted to "hidden" - ie collapsed to one line - if so desired. NebY (talk) 20:31, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

That's better, and sure collapse the chart as well. Paul August ☎ 20:47, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Done. These are pretty quick and straightforward changes (subsection, join tables, collapse table and chart); are we all happy with them and happy to implement them in similar articles? NebY (talk) 22:39, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I've just seen this, and yes, I think all of these changes are improvements, and that we would benefit from having them elsewhere. Thanks to you both. – Michael Aurel (talk) 23:15, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I also think that these changes are all improvements, and should probably be made elsewhere. But, I want to emphasize that such table-or-chart-only sections really should have some (at least minimal) introduction, especially when they are collapsed by default. Paul August ☎ 15:03, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Can you suggest anything, maybe that would sit under a better section header (we need a section header to keep it out of the "Rape and assault victims" section)?

BTW, while figuring out how to keep the long list of initial letters out of the Zeus table of contents (was like this) I looked at the {{TOC limit}} template that's still used in Apollo and elsewhere to restict the depth of menus. It turns out that it doesn't work with Wikipedia's new Vector 2022 skin, now the default for readers and editors too - they'll have an unlimited menu. NebY (talk) 15:25, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

What really needs to be done, I think, is a reorganization, which (among other things) moves the content about offspring from the section "Consort, lovers, victims and children" (with an appropriate rename of that section, and by the way "victims" is inappropriate) to a section titled say "Offspring" which also includes the table. Paul August ☎ 15:53, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

That's quite a re-organisation. It would be regrettable if I/we couldn't proceed with collapsing tables until a major re-organisation was done. There's no prospect of me doing that and I don't get the impression you're up for it either.

Do you have a better word than "victims"? Neither "lovers" nor "affairs" would do. "Consort, lovers, rapes and children"? NebY (talk) 16:05, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

No, no, it's ok with me to leave things just as they are. As I've said what you've done is definitely an improvement. But the reorg I'm thinking of probably wouldn't be very hard, and I am "up for it" just not right now. If nothing else, it will probably end up being added to the very long list of others things I'm up for—just not right now ;-)

As for "victims", off the top of my head, and without the reorg we've been considering, what about just "Relationships"??

Paul August ☎ 17:59, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah good, I'll press on at the handful of other articles, though not all at once in case other issues arise.

In another case, a one-word header "Relationships" might work very well. But though most rapes do happen within relationships, neither premeditated nor opportunistic assaults such as those on Tyro, Demeter, Medusa, Caenis, Asteria and others constitute relationships with them, abusive or otherwise, and I fear many readers wouldn't know or at least bring to mind the old euphemism "to have relationships with". What else? I suppose we could try "Sexual activities", then wait to see what it was replaced with. :) NebY (talk) 19:22, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes well, as for Medusa, it is not clear that Ovid has Medsua being raped! See what we say about that at Medusa#Mythology (fixing that is one of the things on up for—just not right now list. Paul August ☎ 01:51, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I should have said "such as those described here on". My reading of Ovid is capricious not comprehensive, my memory likewise, but that surprised me. Overall, however, I have an impression of a qualitative difference in ancient accounts of Poseidon and say, Zeus, who in even in the Rape of Europa is presented more as a seducer or otherwise in some degree welcome; perhaps the violence of the sea never is. NebY (talk) 17:44, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I was hinting at this when I put forward the idea of having multiple tables with sections of text in between. I think there are certain children which deserve mentioning in prose, and others which should probably be relegated to a row in a table, and that having such a section would resolve that issue. – Michael Aurel (talk) 22:31, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Citations for Linear B (Mycenean Greek) inscriptions

All of the Citations for the main bulk of this section are from the 1920's or earlier. I'm pretty sure all the newer research is much, much less speculative (at least I can't find any newer academic sources that have any similar claims, and the only places where I can find these claims seem to be copied from some version of this page). The only newer citation (that actually concerns Poseidon), from 1966, proves my point, standing next to an older citation that makes far more sweeping claims about the same topic. (I'll note that that citation also does not seem to give the correct title of the book and should also be fixed). Therefore I would suggest either finding newer sources for this section or at least acknowledge that the contents of the section are based on old research and isn't echoed by the current research.

I should also add that the main source for this section isn't even concerned with Poseidon, but with Potnia. The discussion of Poseidon is only there to construct a (in my opinion very speculative) connection to equally old reconstructions of the Minoan religion, and the claim that Wanax is a chthonic entity is entirely based on the better established fact that Poseidon was worshiped as a chthonic god, which appears the other way around in the article.

I should also mention that the linked source does not have all the pages available for free, but the book is available to borrow on the Internet Archive (I don't know whether we can use those as sources, but if so that would be a better source to link to here than google books).

Side note - the claim that Wa-na-ka appears connected to Poseidon isn't sourced, and at least on the tablets I can't find them together (though it might appear as an inscription with depictions of him, but at least there should be a source for that - that's kinda what made me look into this section) QueenShelia (talk) 11:42, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Okay, my mistake, I got the birth year of the author and the publication date confused (would also not make sense, Linear B wasn't deciphered in the 20s). Nevertheless, I would argue that changing the language here would be good, since the section does almost entirely rely on a single author. I would suggest making it more similar to how the Cretan Bull article does this (might make a more specific proposal later). QueenShelia (talk) 17:48, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

Movies

I would hazard movies about a capsized ocean liner, regardless of its name, aren't closely related enough to the Greek god to merit mention here. Spartan198 (talk) 15:19, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 January 2024

Under "Origins" section, first paragraph, sentence "Through Homer the Mycenean titles were also used..." change "Grreece" to "Greece" Wheel Dragon (talk) 20:17, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done PianoDan (talk) 21:55, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Etymology

It seems impossible that the word dawon:water is Doric. Nilsson asserts that the name "Poseidan" was adopted by the Dorians from the older population. The word derives probably from a IE ROOT.It would be useful to include the exact sentence from the book of Janda Jestmoon(talk) 11:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)