Hippocampus (mythology)

This article is about the mythological animal hippocamp(us). For other uses, see hippocampus (disambiguation).

Tritons and winged hippocamps in the Trevi Fountain, Rome

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Arion on a Sea Horse (1855)

The hippocamp or hippocampus (plural: hippocamps or hippocampi; Greek: ἱππόκαμπος, from ἵππος, "horse" and κάμπος, "monster"), often called a sea-horse in English, is a mythological creature shared by Phoenician and Greek mythology, though the name by which it is recognised is purely Greek; it became part of Etruscan mythology. It has typically been depicted as a horse in its forepart with a coiling, scaly, fishlike hindquarter.

Mythology

Hippocamp in Roman mosaic in the thermae at Aquae Sulis (Bath)

A sea-lion mosaic in the Baths of Neptune, Ostia Antica

Homer describes Poseidon, who was god of horses (Poseidon Hippios), earthquakes, and the sea, drawn by "brazen-hoofed" horses over the sea's surface, and Apollonius of Rhodes, being consciously archaic in Argonautica (iv.1353ff), describes the horse of Poseidon emerging from the sea and galloping away across the Libyan sands. In Hellenistic and Roman imagery, however, Poseidon (or Roman Neptune) often drives a sea-chariot drawn by hippocampi. Thus hippocamps sport with this god in both ancient depictions and much more modern ones, such as in the waters of the 18th-century Trevi Fountain in Rome surveyed by Neptune from his niche above. (illustration, right)

The appearance of hippocamps in both freshwater and saltwater is counter-intuitive to a modern audience, though not to an ancient one. The Greek picture of the natural hydrological cycle did not take account of the condensation of atmospheric water as rain to replenish the water table, but imagined the refreshening of the waters of the sea oozing back landwards through vast underground caverns and aquifers, rising replenished and freshened in springs.

Thus it was natural for a temple at Helike in the coastal plain of Achaea to be dedicated to Poseidon Helikonios, (the Poseidon of Helicon), the sacred spring of Boeotian Helikon. When an earthquake suddenly submerged the city, the temple's bronze Poseidon accompanied by hippocamps continued to snag fishermens' nets. Likewise, the hippocamp was considered an appropriate decoration for mosaics in Roman thermae or public baths, as at Aquae Sulis modern day Bath in Britannia (illustration, below).

Poseidon's horses, which were included in the elaborate sculptural program of gilt-bronze and ivory, added by a Roman client to the temple of Poseidon at Corinth, are likely to have been hippocamps; the Romanised Greek Pausanias described the rich ensemble in the later 2nd century CE (Geography of Greece ii.1.7-.8):

Within the sanctuary of the god stand on the one side portrait statues of athletes who have won victories at the Isthmian games, on the other side pine trees growing in a row, the greater number of them rising up straight. On the temple, which is not very large, stand bronze Tritons. In the fore-temple are images, two of Poseidon, a third of Amphitrite, and a Sea, which also is of bronze. The offerings inside were dedicated in our time by Herodes Atticus, four horses, gilded except for the hoofs, which are of ivory, and two gold Tritons beside the horses, with the parts below the waist of ivory. On the car stand Amphitrite and Poseidon, and there is the boy Palaemon upright upon a dolphin. These too are made of ivory and gold. On the middle of the base on which the car is has been wrought a Sea holding up the young Aphrodite, and on either side are the nymphs called Nereids.

Hippocamp Art Deco fountain, Kansas City, Missouri, (1937)

File:Hippocamp from Lydian Treasure Usak.jpg

Croesus' Treasure From Lydia

Hippocamps appear with the first Orientalising phase of Etruscan civilization: they remain a theme in Etruscan tomb wall-paintings and reliefs, where they are sometimes provided with wings, as they are in the Trevi fountain. Katharine Shepard found in the theme an Etruscan belief in a sea-voyage to the other world.

Aside from aigikampoi, the fish-tailed goats representing Capricorn or Aegeus ("goat-man") other fish-tailed animals rarely appearing in Greek art but more characteristic of the Etruscans included leokampoi (fish-tailed lions), taurokampoi (fish-tailed bulls) or pardalokampoi (fish-tailed leopards).

The mythic hippocamp has been used as a heraldic charge, particularly since the Renaissance, most often in the armorial bearings of people and places with maritime associations. However, in a blazon, the terms hippocamp and hippocampus now refer to the real animal called a seahorse, and the terms seahorse and sea-horse refer to the mythological creature. The above-mentioned fish hybrids are seen less frequently.

See also

• Capricorn (astrology)

References

Sources

• Classical references: Homer, Iliad xlii. 24, 29; Euripides, Andromache 1012; Virgil Georgics iv. 389; Philostratus Imagines i. 8; Statius Thebaid ii. 45 and Achilleid 1.25.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. London: John Murray. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• Theoi Project - Hippokampoi
• A gold fibula, part of the "Lydian treasures" found in the former Lydian kingdom, made in the second half of the sixth century BC.