A confusing depiction of Poseidon

  I got this picture from the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Poseidon 159).  I assumed that Poseidon was riding Pegasus due to what looks like a wing at the rear of the creature. When reading what the commentator, Ingrid Krauskopf says, apparently it is not Pegasus but a creature called a Hippalectryon, a half-horse half-cockerel. I gazed a bit longer at the image to see if I disagreed with the commentator's definition. When looking at the back two legs they do not seem very 'horse-like'. They seem to be too thin and the leg joints do not seem to bend as much as a horse's may when it is just standing on the back two legs. I then decided to do some research on this creature on THEOI Greek Mythology Encylopedia.

  According to the website, the Hippalectryon only appear on early Athenian vase painting, and it is surmised that it may be an early artistic rendering of Pegasus. The cockerel was apparently a prophylactic symbol, a symbol to ward away disease that used solar power to ward away demons in the morning, maybe associated with the cockerel's wake-up call marking the end of the night. Horses, especially ones with wings, were associated with guiding the souls of the dead. It is also surmised that they had apotropaic qualities as the strange combination of a horse and cockerel was supposed to make people laugh.

  Marcel Detienne suggests identifying the complementary differences between two divine powers to identify the relationship between two beings (Detienne (1971) 161). Poseidon is associated with the sea, horsemanship and earthquakes. Susan Deacy has suggested that as Poseidon was the rapist/lover of Medusa, the quintessential apotropaic figure, that the combination with the Hippalectryon is to combine two beings with apotropaic qualities (pers. comm.). I am not sure I agree with this. Male deities seem to be rarely defined by their spouses, except a few possibilities such as Hades and Persephone, who seem to appear more often as a couple than in individuality. If Poseidon was to be defined by a partner it would be Amphitrite. The coupling of Poseidon and Medusa would only affect the attributes of their offspring, Pegasus and Chrysaor.

 If we look back at the siring or horses in Greek mythology, the first one, Sciphius, was born of Earth, by the seed of Poseidon (Bonnefoy (1992) 81). The horse Sciphius would be seen as a chthonic power. Poseidon may be depicted riding a horse-like creature to portray that his realm is not just the sea, but also the land.

  Perhaps, as has been suggested, these depictions of the Hippalectryon are for laughter, a depiction of the god Poseidon, known for wrecking ships at sea and flooding the Attic plain, riding a half-horse half-cockerel, may have been a way of encouraging laughter and warding away evil.

Sources Used

Bonnefoy, Y. (ed.), (1992) Greek and Egyptian Mythologies. Translated under the direction of Wendy Doniger by Gerald Honigsblum, Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Detienne, M., 'Athena and the Mastery of the Horse'. Translated by A. B. Werth, In: History of Religions, Vol 11, No. 2 (Nov., 1971), pp. 161-184
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC) / Rédaction : Hans Christoph Ackermann, Jean-Robert Gisler], Zürich: Zürich : Artemis, 1981]-