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The world known to men was apportioned at the beginning of the present age to the three sons of Kronos, Zeus obtaining the upper world, including heaven, which is at the top of Mount Olympus in Thessaly; Poseidon the sea, and Hades the under-world, above Tartarus, to which men go after death. Zeus rules in Olympus. He presides there over those gods who are at present in power.
Thus he spake, and the sun went down and darkness came on. Then the goddess, grey-eyed Athene, spake among them, saying: 'Yea, old man, thou hast told all this thy tale aright. But come, cut up the tongues of the victims and mix the wine, that we may pour forth before Poseidon and the other deathless gods, and so may bethink us of sleep, for it is the hour for sleep.
And of his father Thessalos' lightning feet is record by the streams of Alpheos, and at Pytho he hath renown for the single and for the double stadion gained both in a single day, and in the same month at rocky Athens a day of swiftness crowned his hair for three illustrious deeds, and the Hellotia seven times, and at the games of Poseidon between seas longer hymns followed his father Ptoiodoros with Terpsias and Eritimos.
He knew nothing of those fables of the pagans of old Poseidon and white-armed Leucothea and the blithe crew of Triton and silver-footed Thetis moving upon the placid sunlit waters; nothing of that fair sea-born goddess whose beauty swayed the hearts of men.
The cloud-compelling Zeus might do as he pleased on land; but far beyond the range of outlook from the white watch-tower of Olympus rolled the immeasurable waves of the wine-purple deep, acknowledging only the Enosigaios Poseidon. Consequently, while Zeus allotted to this and that hero and demigod Argos and Mycene and the woody Zacynthus, each to each, the ocean remained unbounded and unmeted.
And about the olive they have nothing else to tell but that the goddess used it as a proof of her right to the country, when it was contested by Poseidon. And they record also that this olive was burnt when the Persians set fire to Athens; but tho burnt, it grew the same day two cubits.
Alexander stopped by the pillared temple of Poseidon, which stood close on the shore, between the Choma and the theatre, and, looking toward the flat, horseshoe-shaped coast of the opposite island which still lay in darkness, he asked: "Do you still remember when we went with our mother over to Antirhodos, and how she allowed us to gather shells in the little harbor?
Afterward, for a whole day, no wind blew and the sail of the Argo hung slack. But the heroes swore to each other that they would make their ship go as swiftly as if the storm-footed steeds of Poseidon were racing to overtake her. Mightily they labored at the oars, and no one would be first to leave his rower's bench.
'Let us all, he said, 'write an Electra, an Antigone, an Agamemnon, and shew what we can do with it. But he did not write any of them, because these legends are no longer religious: Aphrodite and Artemis and Poseidon are deader than their statues.
Then he leaped up, and stood, and beheld the Trojans and Achaians, those in flight, and these driving them on from the rear, even the Argives, and among them the prince Poseidon.
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