The hippocampus or hippocamp, also hippokampos, often called a sea-horse in English, is a mythological creature shared by Phoenician, Etruscan, Pictish, Roman and Greek mythology, though its name has a Greek origin. The hippocampus has typically been depicted as having the upper body of a horse with the lower body of a fish.
Mythology
Coins minted at Tyre around the 4th century BC show the patron godMelqart riding on a winged hippocampus and accompanied by dolphins. Coins of the same period from Byblos show a hippocampus diving under a galley. A gold sea-horse was discovered in a hoard from the kingdom of Lydia in Asia minor, dating to the 6th century BC.
Greek and Roman
In the Iliad, Homer describes Poseidon, god of horses, earthquakes, and the sea, driving a chariot drawn by brazen-hoofed horses over the sea's surface, and Apollonius of Rhodes, describes the horse of Poseidon emerging from the sea and galloping across the Libyan sands. This compares to the specifically "two-hoofed" hippocampi of Gaius Valerius Flaccus in his Argonautica: "Orion when grasping his father’s reins heaves the sea with the snorting of his two-hooved horses." In Hellenistic and Roman imagery, however, Poseidon often drives a sea-chariot drawn by hippocampi. Thus hippocampi 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. The appearance of hippocampi 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 into account the condensation of atmospheric water as rain to replenish the water table, but imagined the waters of the sea oozing back landwards through vast caverns and aquifers, rising replenished and freshened in springs. , Rome Thus it was natural for a temple at Helike in the coastal plain of Achaea to be dedicated to Poseidon Helikonios,, the sacred spring of Boeotian Helikon. When an earthquake suddenly submerged the city, the temple's bronze Poseidon accompanied by hippocampi continued to snag fishermens' nets. Likewise, the hippocampus was considered an appropriate decoration for mosaics in Roman thermae or public baths, as at Aquae Sulis modern day Bath in Britannia. 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 hippocampi; the Romanised Greek Pausanias described the rich ensemble in the later 2nd century AD :
Etruscan
Hippocampi appear with the first Oriental-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.
Pictish
The sea-horse also appears in Pictish stone carvings in Scotland. The symbolism of the carving is unknown. Although similar but not identical to Roman sea-horse images, it is unclear whether this depiction originates from images brought over by the Romans, or had a place in earlier Pictish mythology.
Medieval, Renaissance, and modern
The mythic hippocampus 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. In appearance, the heraldic sea-horse is depicted as having the head and neck of a horse, the tail of a fish and webbed paws replacing its front hooves. Its mane may be that of a horse or it may be replaced with an additional fin. Sea-horses may be depicted with wings, but this motif does not appear to be present within any officially sanctioned arms. The sea-horse is also a common image in Renaissance and post-renaissance art, for example, in the Trevi fountain, dating to 1732. A winged hippocampus has been used as a symbol for Air France since its establishment in 1933 ; it appears today on the engine nacelles of Air France aircraft. Bronze hippocampi appear in Dublin, Leinster, Ireland on lampposts next to a statue of Henry Grattan and on Grattan Bridge.
Closely related to the hippocampus is the "sea goat", represented by Capricorn, a mythical creature with the front half of a goat and the rear half of a fish. Canonical figures, most of which were not themselves cult images, and coins of the Carian goddess associated with Aphrodite as the Aphrodite of Aphrodisias through interpretatio graeca, show the goddess riding on a sea-goat. Brody describes her thus: Aside from aigikampoi, the fish-tailed goats representing Capricorn, other fish-tailed animals rarely appeared in Greek art, but are more characteristic of the Etruscans. These include leokampoi, taurokampoi or pardalokampoi.
Astronomy
In 2019, a small moon of Neptune was named Hippocamp, after the creature.
