Poseidon, as god of the sea, was an important Olympian power he was the chief patron of Corinth, many cities of Magna Graecia, and also of Plato's legendary Atlantis. Pontus is the primordial deity of the sea. The primacy of water gods is reminiscent of, and may even have been influenced by, ancient Near Eastern mythology - where Tiamat (salt water) and Apsu (fresh water) are the first gods of the Enuma Elish, and where the Spirit of God is said to have "hovered over the waters" in Genesis. The pre-Socratic cosmogony of Thales, who made water the first element, may be seen as a natural outgrowth of this poetic thinking.
Orpheus's song in Book I of the Argonautica hymns Eurynome, a daughter of Oceanus, as first queen of the gods and as wife of Ophion, first king of the gods. Oceanus and Tethys are the father and mother of the gods in the Iliad while in the seventh century BC the Spartan poet Alcman made the nereid Thetis a demiurge-figure. The range of Greek water deities of the classical era range from primordial powers and an Olympian on the one hand, to heroized mortals, chthonic nymphs, trickster-figures, and monsters on the other. Thus, they venerated a rich variety of water divinities. The philosopher Plato once remarked that the Greek people were like frogs sitting around a pond-their many cities hugging close to the Mediterranean coastline from the Hellenic homeland to Asia Minor, Libya, Sicily, and southern Italy.
The ancient Greeks had numerous water deities.
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