Lord of the Sea and Shaker of the Earth

Poseidon was a son of Cronus and Rhea and, after the Olympians' victory over the Titans, received the sea as his share when he and his brothers Zeus and Hades divided the cosmos by lot, Zeus taking the sky and Hades the underworld while the earth and Olympus remained shared ground. Beyond the sea itself, Poseidon carried a cluster of related powers in Greek myth: he was called the Earth Shaker for his association with earthquakes, and he was credited with creating the first horse, which grounded his long standing patronage of horsemanship and chariot racing. His most famous local myth is his contest with Athena for patronage of Athens, in which he struck the Acropolis rock with his trident to produce a spring of seawater while Athena produced an olive tree, and the city's judges chose Athena's more useful gift, a decision Poseidon is said to have resented for a long time afterward. He fathered a large number of offspring across Greek myth, mortal and monstrous alike, including the Cyclops Polyphemus blinded by Odysseus in the Odyssey, whose suffering father then cursed Odysseus's own long journey home. Homer's Iliad also places Poseidon among the gods actively hostile to Troy, still resentful that the Trojan king Laomedon had once cheated him and Apollo of the payment he owed them for building the city's walls.