Thalassa was the sea — the same sea as Pontus, but feminine, and treated by some sources as Pontus's consort or as an alternate name for the same divine principle. She had little independent narrative life; she appears occasionally in Aesop and in late mosaic art (notably as a half-figure rising from the sea, a personification of the marine waters), but her cosmogonic place was secondary to that of her masculine counterpart.
Before thisPontus
Next on the wallOurea
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Thalassa appears in Aesop (Fable 217), in the Suda, and in late Roman mosaic art (the so-called "Thalassa mosaics" from Antioch and elsewhere, 4th–6th c. CE). Her relationship to Pontus is variously given; the doubling of marine personifications is one of the more confused points in Greek cosmogony, and reflects regional and chronological variation rather than a coherent theology.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
- Consort ofPontus
treated by some sources as Pontus's consort or as an alternate name for the same divine principle
- Named as the same god asPontus
treated by some sources as Pontus's consort or as an alternate name for the same divine principle
When the sources speak
Dated witnesses for The Primordial Powers. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline
- c. 1600–1100 BCE
- Mycenaean palace tablets in Linear B record offerings and divine names, but little continuous myth.
- c. 1100–800 BCE
- Post-palatial oral traditions and changing cult landscapes precede the surviving alphabetic epics.
- late 8th–7th centuries BCE
- The Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days give influential but non-exclusive divine orders.
- 7th–6th centuries BCE
- Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, colonization, and local sanctuary traditions multiply regional narratives.
- 6th–5th centuries BCE
- Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystery materials develop alternative cosmogonies and afterlife doctrines.
- 5th century BCE
- Athenian tragedy and comedy recast heroic houses and divine justice for civic audiences.
- 4th century BCE
- Philosophers, antiquarians, and local historians interpret or criticize inherited myth.
- 323–31 BCE
- Hellenistic poets and scholars systematize variants across an enlarged Greek world.