Amphitrite both the Nereids "and" the Oceanids. Others called her the personification of the sea itself (saltwater). Amphitrite's offspring included seals and dolphins. Poseidon and Amphitrite had a son, Triton who was a merman, and a daughter, Rhodos (if this Rhodos was not actually fathered by Poseidon on Halia or was not the daughter of Asopus as others claim). "Bibliotheca" (3.15.4) also mentions a daughter of Poseidon and Amphitrite named Benthesikyme. Amphitrite is not fully personified in the Homeric epics: "out on the open sea, in Amphitrite's breakers" ("Odyssey" iii.101), "moaning Amphitrite" nourishes fishes "in numbers past all counting" ("Odyssey" xii.119).
Greek sea gods therefore stand as a powerful symbol of the unknown and otherworldly. Although many people thought about the sea and her depths, no one would enter the watery grave. Thus Cape Tanaerum, the point at which mainland Greece juts most sharply into the Mediterranean, was at once an important sailor's landmark, a shrine of Poseidon, and the point at which Orpheus and Heracles were said to have entered Hades. This motif is apparent in the paradoxical festivals of the shadowy sea-deity Leucothea ("white goddess"), celebrated in many cities throughout the Greek world. Identifying her with the drowned heroine Ino, worshippers would