Hippocampus (mythology) Poseidon (or Roman Neptune) 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
Dragons in Greek mythology Dragons in Greek mythology Dragons play a significant role in Greek mythology. The word dragon derives from the Greek δράκων (drakōn) and its Latin cognate draco. Ancient Greeks applied the term to large, constricting snakes. Daniel Ogden speaks of three ways to explain the origins of Greek dragon myths: as "vertical" evolution from (reconstructed) Proto-Indo-European mythology, as "horizontal" adaptation from Ancient Near Eastern mythology, or as sitting within "the cloud of international folktale". Regarding theories of vertical transmission, Ogden argues that they carry "an unspoken assumption that prior to such a transfer the Greeks' own myth-world was a "tabula rasa"",