The Hippocampus was the “sea-horse” of Greek myth — a magnificent creature with the head and forelegs of a horse and the coiling, scaled tail of a great fish, which drew the chariots of the sea-gods across the waves. It is the very image of the ocean's power harnessed into beauty, and it gave its name to a real animal and to a part of the human brain.
The Steed of the Sea-Gods
The Hippocampus (from the Greek hippos, “horse,” and kampos, “sea-monster”) was a noble sea-creature: a horse from the chest forward, with a green or fish-scaled body tapering into the long, coiling tail of a fish or serpent, and often webbed, fin-like hooves. Herds of them swam the deep, and they were the chosen steeds of the gods of the ocean.
The Chariot of Poseidon
Poseidon, lord of the sea, was most often depicted riding across the waves in a great chariot drawn by these splendid Hippocampi, their golden manes flying and their fish-tails churning the water to foam. His queen Amphitrite, the Nereids, and the other sea-deities rode them too. To the Greeks, the white-capped waves rolling toward shore were the manes of Poseidon's sea-horses galloping — the ocean's motion imagined as a herd of divine steeds. The Hippocampus thus embodied the link the Greeks felt between horses and the sea, both of which were Poseidon's domain.
From Myth to Science
The Hippocampus endures with unusual reach into the modern world. Its name was given to the small marine fish we still call the sea horse (genus Hippocampus), whose horse-like head and curling tail recall the mythical beast. And anatomists, noticing that a particular curved structure deep in the human brain resembled a sea-horse's shape, named it the hippocampus — the region central to memory. So the mythical steed of Poseidon lives on in both the sea and the mind.
The Beauty of the Deep
Where so many sea-creatures of myth are monstrous, the Hippocampus is a creature of beauty and majesty — the noble face of the ocean, the divine steed that turns the sea's raw power into something to be ridden in splendour. It remains a beloved emblem of the sea in art, heraldry, and fountains the world over, forever drawing the chariot of the sea-king across the waves.
The white-capped waves rolling to shore, the Greeks said, are the flying manes of Poseidon's sea-horses at the gallop.