We have all been accustomed to associate the familiar form of the trident with a marine deity, whether the Greek Poseidon or the Roman Neptune, but it may not have occurred to many to enquire what is the particular appropriateness of such an emblem to the ruler of the sea, or in what way it was adopted as his emblem. It is my purpose to offer some suggestions which may throw light on the subject, and may further tend to show that, in artistic representations at least, the trident is merely an evolution of a somewhat different form, that it is in fact the development of an originally purely decorative ornament.

Such developments of simple decorative motives into definite mythological representations are by no means uncommon in Greek art. In a former number of this Journal Miss Harrison has traced the ‘Odysseus and Sirens’ type to a purely decorative origin. The same writer, in her Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. cxiv., cxxv., suggests that the tortoise of the robber Skiron slain by Theseus, and the clue which guided that hero through the labyrinth of the Minotaur, found their way into mythology from vase-paintings in which they were merely decorative. These may be only suggestions, but I am of opinion that difficult points in many myths may be cleared up in this way.