#tritoness

[tridentandtales]

Greek bust of Tritoness (a minor sea goddess and female counterpart to Triton) or Scylla

Hellenistic period, late 200s BCE

Cleveland Museum of Art 1985.184

[twintailedsiren]

Two tailed Scylla flanked by a Triton and a tritoness. Silver-gilt phalera. 300 - 100 BCE. Private collection. A phalera is a type of medal, a metal disc, award to Roman soldiers.

A dog’s head emerges from Scylla’s skirt and her two tails curl up on either side of her. The Triton on the left holds what looks like a conch shell in one hand an an oar in the other, and the figure on the right has breasts, meaning she’s a water nymph or tritoness.

Scylla with two tails is also common on ancient Roman coins. Scylla and sirens aren't that common on medals, the only other one I've seen is this two tailed siren medal from the 1400s.

Side view:

[twintailedsiren]

Fish-tailed women are rare in ancient art

A lot of writing about mermaids tries to say that they originated in ancient Greek art, and this isn’t true. While the Greek god Triton is usually portrayed with a fish tail, there are very, very few female fish-tailed monsters in Greek, Roman, or Etruscan art. 

“The mermaid was an exceedingly rare type in archaic Greek art,” wrote Katharine Shepard in The Fish-Tailed Monster in Greek and Etruscan Art.

The sea monster Scylla was often portrayed with one or two fishtails, but she was her own character, not a mermaid. Since she was often shown attacking Odysseus’ crew, not even the loneliest sailor or the drunkest satyr would mistake Scylla for an alluring mermaid. One author even flipped the use of “mermaid” when describing Scylla:

“…Scylla could be described as a female merman with dog heads attached to her body.”

Here's Scylla, for reference:

Scylla, Melian relief, about 450 BCE. Ancient Greece. British Museum. Do you want to pet her dogs? That's not wise, but understandable.

Nereids (the daughters of Nereus, water nymphs of the sea) and naiads (water nymphs of fresh water) were shown as regular women, no fish tails, on the backs of hippocampi.

There isn’t even a proper word for fish-tailed women in ancient art. I’ve seen “tritoness” used, which dates from around 1600 CE, so it’s a modern name— and again, connects ancient fish-tailed women to Triton.

Having said that, I do want to share the handful of ancient fish-tailed women I’ve found. Out of five, three of them are part of couples, making it more likely they were copies from Triton.

Pair of armbands with triton and tritoness holding Erotes. Greek, Hellenistic, ca. 200 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund.

Triton and tritoness. Terracotta hydria (water jar) Attributed to the Group of Naples 3227 ca. 350–320 BCE. MET.

“Tritoness” and Eros mosaic. Cyclades, Greece.

Triton and “tritoness,” Campana plaque,  2nd half of the 1st century BCE. Louvre.

Two mermaids from Haifa, Syria, on a Roman clay lamp. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Transfer from the Department of the Classics, Harvard University, Gift of Oric Bates.

Similar to making Atargatis the grandmother to mermaids, I really wish people would just let Scylla be Scylla, Triton be Triton, and accept that mermaids evolved in the middle ages, not in ancient art.

Further reading

Hopman, Marianne Govers. Scylla Myth, Metaphor, Paradox. Cambridge University Press, 2012. Page 97.

Shepard, Katharine. The Fish-Tailed Monster in Greek and Etruscan Art. New York: Private Printing, 1940. Page 14.

[twintailedsiren]

Allegory of the sea, with two fish tails

In my search for mythical women with two mermaid tails, I’ve found only two ancient examples that don’t have a proper name, unlike the Scythian ancestral goddess, Scylla, or the Gorgons. One is the two-tailed ‘tritonesses’ from the Temple of Despoina at Lykosoura, in modern day Arcadia, Greece.

The second twin-tailed woman is from the Sebasteion reliefs, from the ancient city of Aphrodisias, a temple and sanctuary complex dedicated to Aphrodite, and to Roman emperors. The temple was made between 20 and 60 CE and is in modern-day Turkey.

Allegory of the Sea, Sebasteion reliefs, ancient city of Aphrodisias. Made around 20-60 CE. Image via Flickr.

The woman in question is simply known as an “allegory of the sea.” Like the tritonesses, she has a leaf or fin skirt, and her tails curl off to her sides. Here’s her description from an article about the temple excavation:

2. Augustus by Land and Sea (PIs VI-VII)48

“The sea figure is similarly unspecified; that is, she cannot be meant for Amphitrite or a particular sea goddess. She has two, long, fish-tail legs, one appearing in low relief between Augustus' legs, one partly cut off by the adjacent column. A skirt of large fish-fins conceals the transition to her cuirass-like torso. As often on sea-beings in human form, there are extra fish-fins on the shoulders. She has a late classical head and hairstyle and wears a thick wreath with a central medallion. She is handing the steering oar to Augustus. Her right arm, in low relief behind, disappears into uncarved stone beneath Augustus' drapery, while her left hand holds the lower end of the oar.”

The artist could’ve been inspired by Scylla statues, or by images of the Scythian ancestral goddess.

FWIW: The official website for the Aphrodisias Excavations identifies the emperor as Claudius, while the scholarly article identifies him as Augustus. 

Source for quote:

Smith, R. R. R. “The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias.” Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 77, 1987, pp. 88–138.

[twintailedsiren]

Twin-tailed tritoness trio, from the Temple of Despoina at Lykosoura. Photos taken at the National Museum of Archeology in Athens.

These figures look similar to Starbuck’s siren: two fish tails, similar pose, leaf skirt concealing their genitals. However, their tails aren’t symmetrical, making them look more like snake-legged Giants in ancient Greek art.

These figures were made in 190-180 BCE, and they originally adorned the goddess Despoina’s throne as supports. Originally, Despoina and Demeter were shown seated on a shared throne. Despoina is a daughter of Demeter. In the National Museum of Archeology in Athens, they’re identified as “A group of cult statues in the Temple of Despoina at Lykosoura.” The temple was located modern-day Arcadia, Greece. 

FYI: “tritoness” is a modern word, not an ancient name. Triton is the proper name of a Greek sea god, and nereids are the common water spirit in Greek myths. “Tritoness” is a modern word to describe women in ancient Greek art with fish tails, that aren’t Scylla.  The first use of tritoness is around 1600. So, like mixoparthenos, tritoness isn’t a name that will help with twin-tailed siren research.

There's one other example of an ancient women with two mermaid tails in ancient art that doesn't have a proper name, in the Sebastian reliefs in the ancient city of Aphrodisias. In addition, here is an example of the two tailed goddess on a temple to Artemis.

Sources:

Dickins, Guy. "The Sandal in the Palazzo dei Conservatori." The Journal of Hellenic Studies 31 (1911): 308-314.

Themelis, Petros. “Hellenistic Architectural Terracottas from Messene.” Hesperia Supplements, vol. 27, 1994, pp. 141–398. 

Images 588-591: Kaltas, Nikolaos. Sculpture in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Translated by David Hardy. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum Publications, 2003.

[twintailedsiren]

Footnote 51

So I originally took the photos of the two-tailed Tritonesses in Athens in 2010. Before I posted the photos to Tumblr, I did a casual search for them on Google Scholar…

…and found an article about them, with a footnote that casually lists 13 different images of half human, half vegetation figures in ancient art. THIRTEEN.

I’m both excited and dismayed. I don’t have Jstor access, so I can’t download the article, only read it. I took screenshots of the references, but trying to get them OCR’d so I can copy the citations easily is difficult, because many of the citations have foreign writing like Cyrillic or non-standard letters.

Sigh.

I really wanted to get my research about ancient Mistress of Beasts, snaked legged Giants, the Scythian Vegetation Goddess, and two-tailed Scyllas up, to give my research complete context. Instead, I’ll be digging into this citation before I move on.

Here’s the footnote:

“Semihuman, semivegetal figures ("plant divinities") winged or not, male or female, appear on various works of art from the second half of the 4th century H.C. on. 51 

Here’s the article:

Themelis, Petros. "Hellenistic Architectural Terracottas from Messene." Hesperia Supplements, vol. 27,1994, pp. 141-398. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1354012. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

[animus-inviolabilis]

A Canosan Askos depicting Medusa flanked by two Tritonesses

Apulia

Late 4th ~ Early 3rd Century B.C.

[lolavale]

Quick Sketch of a Tritoness-the 'female' version of Sasha's folks. Not Pictured: The half eaten remains of a privateering vessel and or sailors.

Don't fuck with a Sea Wife.