Where lately lean goats browsed shapeless seals play. Sometimes, by chance, an anchor embeds itself in a green meadow, or the curved boats graze the tops of vineyards. One man sails over his cornfields or over the roof of his drowned farmhouse, while another man fishes in the topmost branches of an elm. There one man escapes to a hilltop, while another seated in his rowing boat pulls the oars over places where lately he was ploughing. Any building that has stood firm, surviving the great disaster undamaged, still has its roof drowned by the highest waves, and its towers buried below the flood.Īnd now the land and sea are not distinct, all is the sea, the sea without a shore. Overflowing, the rivers rush across the open plains, sweeping away at the same time not just orchards, flocks, houses and human beings, but sacred temples and their contents. "Neptune himself strikes the ground with his trident, so that it trembles, and with that blow opens up channels for the waters. Although ancient writers did not shy away from describing the god's wrathful treatment of heroes such Odysseus, it seems that sculptors took no risks and preferred to present his grandeur.Īccording to Roman poet Ovid, it was Poseidon (known to the Romans as Neptune), who caused the Great Flood when his brother Zeus decided to destroy the first human race. In comparison to the pugilistic statue of "Athena with the cross-banded aegis" on gallery 2, page 13, this statue makes the cruel sea god and seismic earth-shaker Poseidon (Ποσειδῶν), brother of Zeus, look rather beneficent. The statue is now in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, along with many other archaeological finds from Pergamon. The god originally held a trident in his raised right hand and a dolphin in his left. The statue group decorated the roof (akroterion) of the altar. Found at the Great Altar of Zeus (the "Pergamon Altar" see gallery 2, page 23) among statues of tritons. This statue was made of Proconnesian marble around 160 BC, during the reign of Eumenes II (197-159 BC). Statue of Poseidon, circa 160 BC, from the Great Altar of Zeus. My Favourite Planet > English > Middle East > Turkey > Pergamon > gallery 2 Statue of Poseidon from Pergamon - My Favourite Planet
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