The Most Important Contest in Athens
When the city we now call Athens was still unnamed, two Olympians wanted to be its patron deity: Poseidon, god of the sea, and Athena, goddess of wisdom. Zeus decreed that each god would offer the city a gift, and the citizens (or in some versions, the other Olympians) would choose which gift was more valuable.
Poseidon's Gift
Poseidon struck the rock of the Acropolis with his trident, and a spring of water burst forth. In some versions, he produced a horse — the first horse, a creature of beauty, speed, and military power. Either gift was spectacular: control of water in a dry climate, or a revolutionary animal that would transform warfare and transportation.
But there was a catch. The spring produced salt water — beautiful but undrinkable, useful for nothing but reminding Athens of the sea's power.
Athena's Gift
Athena knelt and planted a seed. An olive tree grew — unspectacular compared to Poseidon's dramatic display, but infinitely more practical. The olive tree provided food (olives), light and cooking fuel (olive oil), wood for building, and oil for trade. A single olive tree could live for hundreds of years, producing value across generations.
The citizens chose Athena's gift. Practical, sustainable abundance won over dramatic but impractical power.
The Aftermath
Poseidon was furious. He flooded the Attic plain in retaliation (this myth explains the region's history of flooding). But eventually, the Athenians honored both deities on the Acropolis — the Erechtheion temple housed both Athena's sacred olive tree and the marks of Poseidon's trident in the rock, along with his salt spring.
This compromise reflects the Greek genius for balance. Athens was a maritime power (honoring Poseidon) and a center of wisdom and democracy (honoring Athena). The city needed both the sea and the mind.
The Lesson
This myth is fundamentally about values. Poseidon offered power — military might, dramatic force, domination. Athena offered civilization — agriculture, trade, sustainability. Athens chose civilization, and that choice defined the city's identity as the birthplace of democracy, philosophy, and Western thought.
The contest between Poseidon and Athena is the contest between force and wisdom that every civilization faces — and the Greeks believed wisdom should win.
What the ancient versions actually say
The contest is set in the reign of Cecrops, the first king of Attica, a man whose body ended in a serpent's tail. The ancient sources disagree about the gifts, the judges and the result, and the popular version mixes them together.
In the oldest surviving references, Poseidon's gift was not a horse or a freshwater spring but "the sea" itself: a pool of salt water in the rock of the Acropolis. Herodotus, describing the Acropolis when the Persians sacked it in 480 BC, mentions the temple of Erechtheus containing "an olive tree and a sea" which the Athenians said the two gods had placed there as tokens of their quarrel. He adds a famous detail: the Persians burned the olive with the rest of the sanctuary, but the next day a new shoot a cubit long had sprung from the stump.
Apollodorus gives the fullest version. Poseidon arrived first and struck the middle of the Acropolis with his trident, producing the sea later called the Erechtheis. Athena came next, called on Cecrops to witness that she was taking possession, and planted the olive that was later shown in the sanctuary of Pandrosos. Zeus, to stop the quarrel, appointed judges. Apollodorus says these were the twelve gods, not Cecrops or Cranaus as some claimed, and they awarded the land to Athena because Cecrops testified she had planted the olive first. Ovid follows the twelve-god version: in the Metamorphoses, Athena weaves this very scene into her tapestry during her contest with Arachne, with Jupiter enthroned among the judges, Neptune striking the rock so that sea water springs out, and her own spear bringing forth the grey-green olive.
The horse appears in Roman poetry. Virgil's Georgics opens by invoking Neptune, who first made the horse spring from the earth with his trident, and later commentators connected this with the Athenian contest. The Greek sources for Athens itself speak of the sea.
The women's vote
A very different version survives through Saint Augustine, who took it from the Roman scholar Varro. When the olive and the water appeared together, the king consulted the people. The men voted for Poseidon, the women for Athena, and since there was one more woman than man, Athena won. To soothe the furious god, who flooded the land, the Athenians punished the women three ways: they would no longer vote, children would no longer be named after their mothers, and women would not be called "Athenians". Augustine tells the story to mock pagan gods, but it is an important example of a Greek myth used to explain social rules, here the exclusion of women from political life.
Apollodorus records the flood too: Poseidon in his anger drowned the Thriasian plain and put Attica under the sea.
Poseidon's other lost contests
Athens was not Poseidon's only defeat. Ancient writers, especially Pausanias, record a pattern of the sea god disputing cities and losing them:
- Argos — Poseidon and Hera disputed the land. The river Inachus and two other rivers judged for Hera, so Poseidon dried up their waters, which is why, Pausanias says, Argive rivers run only after rain.
- Corinth — Poseidon contested it with Helios. The Hundred-Hander Briareus, acting as judge, gave the Isthmus to Poseidon and the heights of Acrocorinth to Helios, a split decision rather than a loss.
- Troezen — Athena and Poseidon disputed the city and Zeus ordered them to share it; Troezenians honoured Athena Polias and Poseidon the King together.
- Aegina and Naxos — according to Plutarch's list, Poseidon lost Aegina to Zeus and Naxos to Dionysus.
These stories seem to explain why the sea god, though powerful everywhere along Greek coasts, so rarely held the chief position in a city's cult.
The contest on the Acropolis
The myth was written into the monuments of the Acropolis. Pausanias says the west pediment of the Parthenon, the first thing a visitor approaching from the Propylaia would see, showed "the strife of Poseidon with Athena for the land." The sculptures are now fragmentary, but drawings made in 1674, attributed to Jacques Carrey, record the two gods springing apart at the centre, with chariots and Attic heroes on either side. The Erechtheion housed both tokens: the sacred olive in the neighbouring Pandroseion, and in the north porch an opening in the roof and floor over marks in the rock said to be from Poseidon's trident. Pausanias reports that when the south wind blew, the salt well gave a sound like waves. Poseidon was worshipped there combined with the hero-king Erechtheus as Poseidon-Erechtheus, so the losing god kept a place in the city's most sacred building. For the wider setting, see Athens, Athena and Poseidon.
Ancient sources
- Herodotus, Histories 8.55 — the olive and the "sea" in the temple of Erechtheus, and the olive's regrowth the day after the Persian burning.
- Apollodorus, Library 3.14.1 — the fullest account: Poseidon's trident and sea, Athena's olive with Cecrops as witness, the twelve divine judges and Poseidon's flood.
- Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.70–82 — the contest as the central scene of Athena's tapestry in her weaving contest with Arachne.
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.24.5, 1.26.5, 1.27.2 — the Parthenon west pediment, the trident marks and sea well in the Erechtheion, and the sacred olive.
- Augustine, City of God 18.9 — Varro's version with the vote of the citizens and the women's loss of political rights.
- Pausanias 2.1.6, 2.15.5 and 2.30.6 — Poseidon's contests for Corinth, Argos and Troezen.
Frequently asked questions
What did Poseidon give Athens?
In the Greek sources, a pool of salt water, "the sea", in the rock of the Acropolis, created with a blow of his trident. The idea that he offered a horse comes from Roman poetry and later retellings.
Who judged the contest between Poseidon and Athena?
Accounts differ. Apollodorus and Ovid name the twelve Olympian gods; other writers mentioned by Apollodorus said Cecrops or Cranaus; Varro's version has the citizens vote, with the women deciding it for Athena.
Can you still see the olive tree and the trident marks?
An olive tree grows today beside the Erechtheion on the spot of the ancient sacred olive, a modern replanting. The marks in the rock under the north porch are still shown to visitors.
Why did Poseidon lose so many cities?
Myth gives no single reason, but stories of his defeats at Athens, Argos, Aegina and Naxos all explain why a city's chief cult belonged to another god while Poseidon received secondary honours.